U.S. Officials: Al-Qaida Leadership Cadre 'Decimated'

by Tom Gjelten

Morning Edition, February 3, 2009 · CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a "complete al-Qaida defeat" in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan.

The officials say the terrorist network's leadership cadre has been "decimated," with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.

"The enemy is really, really struggling," says one senior U.S. counterterrorism official. "These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we've seen in several years."

Another senior U.S. official described "a significant, significant degradation of al-Qaida command and control in recent months."

The intelligence reports have been shared with President Barack Obama and underlie his decision to authorize the continued use of unmanned aircraft to launch missile and precision-guided bombs against suspected al-Qaida targets in Pakistan's border region. One such strike was carried out on Jan. 23, just three days after Obama took office.

The CIA has been using drone aircraft to carry out attacks on suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan for several years, but such attacks were significantly expanded last summer under orders from President George W. Bush. They also became more lethal, with the CIA for the first time using Reaper drones, an enhanced version of the Predator model used previously. The Reaper is capable of carrying two Hellfire missiles, as well as precision-guided bombs.

'Too Early To Declare Victory'

The officials interviewed by NPR asked not to be identified because of sensitivities surrounding the CIA campaign. They also insist it is too early to declare victory in the struggle against al-Qaida in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, and they caution that a number of the factors that explain the recent successes could yet be reversed.

The threat of another al-Qaida terrorist attack against the United States has not gone away, they warn, noting that about 100 fighters have already "graduated" from the al-Qaida training camps and are prepared for possible terrorist operations in the West.

"Where those people are and what they're doing, we don't know," says one senior official.

The officials are also careful to say that the weakening of al-Qaida in Pakistan doesn't necessarily extend to the network's operations in other areas, such as in east or north Africa.

Leadership Severely Weakened

Still, the counterterrorism and intelligence officials interviewed for this report say the achievement of the past several months should not be understated.

"In the past, you could take out the No. 3 al-Qaida leader, and No. 4 just moved up to take his place," says one official. "Well, if you take out No. 3, No. 4 and then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to revive the leadership cadre."

Such claims could not be independently verified, although Pakistani sources have identified by name a number of foreign militants killed in the border region in recent months. ....

The officials also report the emergence of some tension between the al-Qaida leadership and local tribal leaders in the border areas. They warn, however, that this tension is, in part, the product of increased Pakistani military activity in the border areas, a development that could be reversed if the Pakistani authorities turn their attention back toward India as a result of tensions stemming from the November attacks in Mumbai.

Al-Qaida Still May Endure And Adapt

The claims of dramatic success against al-Qaida in Pakistan will undoubtedly be met with some skepticism.

"In the past 7 1/2 years, al-Qaida's obituary has been written any number of times," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "We have to be hesitant in assessing the long-term impact of this kind of damage done to al-Qaida."

Hoffman and other al-Qaida analysts note that the network has demonstrated many times over its ability to endure attacks and adapt to new pressures.

Another question is whether the Pakistani government will demand an end to the drone attacks, which have been roundly denounced by Pakistani political leaders as a violation of their country's sovereignty. For now, however, it appears the Obama administration is determined to continue with the attacks.

In a Senate hearing last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked to respond to recent criticism of the missile strikes by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

"I think that the strikes that are being undertaken are …" Gates began, but he did not finish the thought. "Let me just say," he continued, "both President Bush and President Obama have made clear that we will go after al-Qaida wherever al-Qaida is. And we will continue to pursue that."

WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT?

(Compiler's note: In addition to this must read article, you will also want to see http://www.numbersusa.com/about/posters.html. Then work to keep your representatives in Washington DC on the right track! Please remember that the operative word here is "illegal.")

by Larry Williams

You think the war in Iraq is costing us too much? Read this:

I was confused until I read this. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the
Iraq war and the war on terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until it finally sinks in so that the reader will get completely sick of reading them. Also included are the URL's for verification of all the following facts:

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.
Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US .
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'
Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin.
Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm>

14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States .'
Verify at: http: // www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.

Are we THAT stupid?

If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message. If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every legal resident in the country including every elected representative in Washington , D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restore some semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof.
_________________
http://nwcreation.net/videos/

http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud.html

North Korea to 'Test Missile Capable of Striking U.S.'

The Yonhap News Agency in Seoul quoted South Korean officials who described satellite image showing a long cylindrical object being transported on a train through the North Korean countryside. The sinister object has been identified as a Taepodong-2, an intercontinental missile with a range of more than 4000 miles, capable of crossing the Pacific and striking targets in Hawaii or Alaska. ....

"One of big deficiencies in our strategy on our war on terrorism remains a serious effort to counter Islamist ideology"

from Jihad Watch & Atlas Shrugs

Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until August 2005, was interviewed by several bloggers today, and Pamela Geller asked him a very serious, important, and pointed question:

Geller: To what extent did the Islamic doctrines of jihad and the requirement to subjugate infidels under the rule of Islamic law enter into your calculations for Iraq, and do you think the persecution of Christians had anything to do with those doctrines?

Feith: Well ... uh, the jihadist ideology was obviously a major... issue, uh, in our analysis of the strategy for the war on terrorism. And one of the things the Pentagon took the lead on ... was calling attention to the ideological component of the war on terror, and one of the things I deal with with in the book (which is a very sad story), was how it was Rumsfeld and General Myers and others at the Pentagon, who over and over again, right from the beginning, right after 9/11, were emphasizing the importance of an ideological effort, a strategic communications effort and a general strategy for countering ideological support for terrorism. And when the rest of the government wasn't doing very much in that area, we created within my office, within the policy office at the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Influence to do work in this area. And the Public Affairs people in the Pentagon and other people around the US government were very unhappy with the creation of this office, some of it was for turf reasons and some of it was for other reasons, but one of the consequences was somebody leaked - well, leaked, no - no, somebody lied - to The New York Times and gave a report saying that this Office of Strategic Influence was intending to lie to foreign journalists. And The New York Times ran a front page story saying that. It caused a big imbroglio that resulted in the shutting down of this office.

I don't think the US government has recovered to this day from that fiasco, because every time anyone suggested creating an office to really deal with jihadist ideology in a systematic or strategic way at the Pentagon, people would say, oh, no, we are not going to have another Office of Strategic Influence problem. And that meant the Pentagon couldn't do it, and the Pentagon was the place that kept recognizing the importance of the ideological struggle. The State Department, which was the logical place to do it, for its own institutional and cultural reasons wasn't inclined to fight the battle that way, and they tended to think that all we needed was a public diplomacy campaign. Uh, and that's why you got all these brochures that were famous about rebranding America and showing how America treats its Muslims very nicely and ...which is a fine thing to do but it is far short of an ideological campaign against jihadist extremism. And so anyway, I would say that one of big deficiencies in our strategy on our war on terrorism remains a serious effort to counter Islamist ideology. ...

You can say that again. But it doesn't appear in the first place as if the Office of Strategic Influence was ever going to do what needed to be done: pose Western society and values as a positive alternative to Sharia.

Now your question was, how does that relate to Iraq, Iraq ... I mean, we did not view Saddam Hussein as, you know, as... pushing that ideology - the Baathist ideology was quite different, but what we were concerned about was that Saddam was the kind of guy who, for the other reasons, would likely be fighting us in the future as he had fought us in the past, and that he might, in a future fight with us, use his connections with various terrorist groups, some of whom were jihadist extremists, use them to hurt us. So we were concerned about that, but, uh, obviously the Saddam Hussein regime didn't have the same ideology as, for example, the Taliban regime had, which was much more in line with the jihadist ideology of Al Qaeda.

It's worse than I thought. State department brochures to fight the jihad.. It took so little to derail any real understanding of the enemy that means us dead or subjugated.

I guess that was when we lost the war.

Rumsfeld got it. Right after 911 Rumsfeld got it. But we had already been infiltrated.

He goes on. Read it all over at Atlas Shrugs, where there is also audio of the whole interview.

Obama Picks Another "Tax Dodger"

(Compiler's note: Has anyone noticed that these people are paying back taxes ONLY after their pick for public office?)

.... Following a weekend of revelations about taxes and potential ethical conflicts, Daschle expressed remorse to the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that will decide his fate, saying he was "deeply embarrassed and disappointed" about failing to pay more than $120,000 in back taxes. ....

American Hostage Taken In Pakistan

from Founding Bloggers

Yesterday in Pakistan, Jihadis kidnapped an American.

QUETTA, Pakistan — Gunmen kidnapped an American UN official and killed his driver in southwest Pakistan on Monday, police said, underscoring the security threat in a country wracked by Al Qaeda violence and rising criminality.

The abduction occurred as the man was heading to his job as the head of the U.N. refugee office in the main southwest city of Quetta, senior police official Khalid Masood said.

Masood identified the kidnapped official as John Solecki, and said he was from the United States.

Judging by the near total lack of media coverage, either nobody cares, or nobody in the media wants to make this an issue. If the news of Muslims taking Americans hostage became a big issue, perhaps President Barack Hussein Obama might have to risk his reputation defending an American against the Islamists. For the media who lionized President Obama, he’s too big to fail, so they have to be sure not to put him in a position of challenge when avoidable.

Too bad for John Solecki. If he had been taken hostage during the term of President Evil McChimpy, his name and cause would be plastered all over each and every MSM outlet, with the implicit moral that it is all Bush’s fault.

Gazans detail being used as human shields

Testimonies decry 'monstrous' use of women, children, ambulances

U.S. partner, not Hamas, firing rockets into Israel

By Aaron Klein

While terrorists promise cease-fire, American 'allies' provoke violence

HERZLIYA, Israel – With Hamas signaling it is willing to enter a cease-fire with Israel, it was the U.S.-backed Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas whose so-called military wing took responsibility for a barrage of rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip today.

Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades called WND and also released an official pamphlet to take credit for firing at least five rockets and four mortars today, lightly wounding two Israeli soldiers and one civilian. Also taking responsibility was a cell claiming it was working on behalf of the Iranian-backed, Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. ....

Obama demands 10% defense cuts

By Jerome R. Corsi

Budgets $55 billion less on military, $314 billion more on social projects

The Obama administration asked the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2010 by $55 billion, more than 10 percent of last year's $512 defense budget.

The announcement came late Friday, following a meeting at the White House between President Obama and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. Jim Jones, chairman of the National Security Council, according to a Fox News report.

The White House website appears to have no published notice of the Obama directive, nor was there any explanation from the White House how the proposed cuts might affect our military in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan. ....

Obama's secret nuke talks with Iran exposed

Even before election, president began 'open fist' negotiations

The Obama administration has quietly initiated previously undisclosed back-channel negotiations with both Iran and Syria, according to an Agence France-Presse report.

Even before winning the November 4 election, Obama initiated "two track" discussions with Iran and Syria, using top-level experts to begin talks, according to Jeffrey Boutwell, the executive director for the U.S. branch of the Pugwash Group, an international organization of scientists who champion international nuclear disarmament. ....

Bill creates detention camps in U.S. for 'emergencies'

By Jerome R. Corsi

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.

Heed the warning of a former Hitler Youth who sees America on the same path as pre-Nazi Germany in "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie" from WND Books!

The bill also appears to expand the president's emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that – as WND reported – gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.

As WND also reported, DHS has awarded a $385 million contract to Houston-based KBR, Halliburton's former engineering and construction subsidiary, to build temporary detention centers on an "as-needed" basis in national emergency situations.

According to the text of the proposed bill, the purpose of the National Emergency Centers is "to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster."

Three additional purposes are specified in the text of the proposed legislation:

• To provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of federal, state and local first responders;


• To provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private, not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations;


• To meet other appropriate needs, as defined by the secretary of homeland security.

The broad specifications of the bill's language, however, contribute to concern that the "national emergency" purpose could be utilized by the secretary of homeland security to include any kind of situation the government wants to contain or otherwise control.

Rep. Hastings created controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign with his provocative comments concerning Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Hastings said, as reported by ABC News. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

H.R. 645, which seeks to allocate $360 million for developing the emergency centers, has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

and to the Committee on Armed Services.

Five Truths about the Banking Crisis

(Compiler's note: Remembering that economic security is basic to our national security, this is a must read and consider article.)

from by Tristan Yates

Because people just don’t want you to understand it.

The first truth to understand about the banking crisis is that people don’t want you to understand it. You are supposed to trust in the judgments of the experts and give them whatever they are asking for, no matter what the cost or consequences. Just ignore the fact that many of these people are the same experts that failed to foresee or to prevent the problem in the first place.

Henry Paulson, the former treasury secretary, is one such expert. Throughout 2007 and most of 2008, he assured the public that the economy was strong, any subprime mortgage fallout was contained, the banking system was safe, and that there were no plans to recapitalize or rescue Fannie and Freddie.

Then, last September when multiple financial institutions were on the brink of collapse, he naturally took responsibility for his errors in judgment and inaction and resigned, right? Well, no. Actually he requested $700B more with virtually unlimited authority.

Of course it wasn’t exactly a request. Give me $700B right now or you get a massive financial collapse and the Second Great Depression. It almost sounds like a scheme cooked up by Dr. Evil. Did Paulson have some kind of doomsday device that he was ready to activate? Was the country really facing a financial meltdown?

We will answer that shortly and the answer may surprise you. Lets move on to Truth #2. This entire crisis was caused by widespread mismanagement throughout the financial industry.

Banks that loan money to borrowers who can’t repay don’t stay in business for very long — or at least they’re not supposed to. The same is true for investment managers that exchange good money for bad paper.

This may seem obvious, but there are still far too many weakly written articles that blame the financial failures on the bad economy or the weak housing market — as if banks couldn’t possible imagine that the economy might slow at some point.

Similarly, pointing the finger at credit rating firms or government regulators or auditors also misses the mark. Yes, all of these parties should have acted earlier to help prevent the crisis. But the situation wouldn’t even exist if not for the widespread irresponsibility of the people we trust to manage the world’s money.

Once the blame is assigned correctly, the ethics of the situation become very clear. Management needs to go, and the institutions they ran into the ground deserve to fail. But we can’t have hundreds of banks and financial institutions fail, right? Wouldn’t the economy drown in a sea of bankruptcies?

Truth #3: Banks can fail without endangering the economy. In fact, over 700 lending institutions failed during the Savings & Loan crisis in the early 1990s, and the damage was minimal.

Credit the Bush administration — not W. but his father. In 1989, he signed legislation creating a framework in which S&Ls could fail quickly, be removed from the marketplace, and then be replaced with healthy institutions.

The process was simple. If a financial institution couldn’t meet its capital requirements, the regulator declared it insolvent and shut it down immediately. At that point a government custodian (the Resolution Trust Company) took over the firm’s assets, inventoried and packaged them for sale, and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, usually another healthier financial institution.

If the RTC had difficulty unloading some assets (what we would now call toxic assets), it created innovative public-private sector partnerships to manage the risks and share the future profits.

When institutions were seized quickly, many still had significant assets that could be used to cover the losses and debts. But in the end it was a bailout, and the taxpayer was responsible for the final cost.

Which brings us to Truth #4: This current crisis almost certainly isn’t a trillion dollar problem, but we can certainly make it into one.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. If one year ago, someone had told us that the U.S. taxpayer would have to ultimately spend $500B to clean up the banking system and prevent a total collapse, we would have been outraged.

At this point we would consider ourselves lucky to get by so cheaply. Only $500 billion? And no depression? What a relief! The high price tags of TARP, the economic stimulus, and the dire economic projections have conditioned us to expect a final cost in the trillions.

The S&L crisis cost taxpayers $124B, and that was primarily the difference between what it took to pay insured depositors back and what was recovered from the failed institutions by the RTC. The cost may sound reasonable by today’s standards but was actually far higher than it should have been.

What happened was that in the early stages of the crisis, the scope of the problem was not well understood by the regulators and many insolvent institutions were allowed to continue operating. Often these institutions offered high-yield accounts to attract insured deposits and then proceeded to make more bad loans and investments.

The lesson is that the more quickly regulators act, the lower the losses are. Declare a bank insolvent the day that it first fails to meet capital requirements and the cost of the failure will be minimal. Keep it operating and give it more government guaranteed money to make more bad loans, and the final cost of the cleanup will skyrocket.

Now armed with our four truths, let’s go back to Paulson and his ultimatum. Was the financial system really facing a meltdown? Yes, and it still is, but only because of his willingness to continue to provide taxpayer money and guarantees to banks and investment firms that created the current mess we’re now in.

The banking crisis could be solved today for the lowest possible cost if the Treasury would simply shut down insolvent financial institutions, auction off their assets, and repay depositors in full. There would be no damage to the economy aside from losses to investors in the financial institutions. In fact, the economy would be healthier and recover far more quickly if the banking and credit system were sound.

And there is no need for a full bailout. When AIG was taken over, its creditors received a nice Christmas present — its once precarious debt was now backed by the U.S. Treasury.

This prevented the chaos of the Lehman bankruptcy, a severe system shock followed by a legal mess that will take years to sort out, but there’s no reason that creditors in failed financial firms must receive 100 cents on the dollar for their claims. Only federally insured depositors should have that right.

Did Paulson know these four truths? Does Geithner? Perhaps they’re surrounded by too many Wall Street executives who are pleading for just a little more time and money to fix the mess that they created. Or perhaps they know that a financial crisis is the ideal environment for a dramatic expansion of the role of government in the economy.

One person who does know these truths is William Seidman. He was the chairman of the FDIC and RTC during the Savings & Loan crisis. At the age of 87 he is appearing in television interviews and writing editorials telling everyone that will listen that insolvent banks need to fail so that the system will survive.

My guess is that Seidman also understands Truth #5: Not all financial crises are created equal. When borrowers can’t pay their debts, you get a banking crisis, and as we’ve seen those are painful. But when governments can’t pay their debts you get a currency crisis, which is far worse. During Argentina’s recent currency crisis, the GDP fell by 10% in a single year, the unemployment rate jumped to 25%, and inflation hit 10% a month at one point.

We are nowhere near a currency crisis now. But the quickest way to get there is to borrow trillions of dollars and spend it on dubious financial rescue programs and stimulus packages that are unlikely to either rescue the financial sector or stimulate the overall economy.

Note: Jim Boswell contributed his expertise to this article. Jim is a former director of Price Waterhouse Coopers and a veteran of the S&L crisis. He and his team of analysts managed risk for the $400B Ginnie Mae portfolio amid the financial wreckage and received a Vice Presidential Hammer award for their accomplishments. I was lucky enough to be one of those analysts. His Wharton MBA and mid-western values and sensibilities are an invaluable resource for those looking to separate fact from fiction in these times.

Islamic association preparing a Koran for Americans instructing them "how to deal with Islam"

from Dhimmi Watch

As well as providing "explanations of the Holy verses." "Islamic association seeks to teach Americans about the Quran," from the Yemen Observer, January 31:

An Islamic Association in Oklahoma has presented an impressive idea for non-Muslims in America to learn more about the faith.

The organization began in 2003 after the unfortunate treatment by American soldiers of the Holy Koran in the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.

The association decided to teach Americans about Islam and Muslims, and they recently decided to print the Holy Quran in English.

Almost sounds as if there are no English translations of the Quran. There are, of course; this one, however, appears to be written with an infidel audience in mind:

This English language version will come with explanations of the Holy verses, an introduction to Islam, the fundamental of Islam, and how to deal with Islam. This idea has yielded considerable success, and the organization has raised a lot of contributions from Muslims and non-Muslim Americans. The organization has said they have received many requests from non-Muslim Americans for a copy of the Holy Quran.

Congressman Tom Tancredo: The Perversity of DiversityTi

(Compiler's note: A must read - must hear talk.)

from Young American Foundation

Colorado Congressman and former U.S. Presidential Candidate Tom Tancredo discusses the problems of illegal immigration and multiculturalism run-amok. This speech took place at Young America’s Foundation’s Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California.

The Afghanistan Question and Force Restructuring

by Douglas Farah

The Toronto Globe and Mail has an interesting look at how increasingly complex the Taliban’s attacks in Afghanistan are, belying the notion that the group is somehow in retreat there.

This is, of course, due in no small measure to the Taliban’s enormous revenue stream from opium and heroin, a pipeline that insures the groups is not only well armed, but able to expand its arsenal, training and capabilities. It is also due, in part, to the Afghan government’s dismal performance in corruption and development, giving people little reason NOT to side with the rebel forces.

At the same time, the Obama administration is carefully considering how to define victory in Afghanistan in a way that will make it more attainable.

“One of the concepts we embraced in Iraq was recognition that you can’t kill or capture your way out of a complex, industrial-strength insurgency,” Petraeus said in an interview this month with Foreign Policy magazine. “The challenge in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq, is to figure out how to reduce substantially the numbers of those who have to be killed or captured.”

This debate is closely tied to the debate over the future of the military as we know it – that is, what kind of military do we need to fight the wars of the future?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting column by Mackubin Thomas Owens looking at this question. While the answer he gives is the most obvious – one equipped to fight several different kinds of war, both conventional and small wars and insurgencies – he does remind us of some of the basic questions that need to be asked by advocates of the different camps.

As he points out, the idea that our technological advantages will allow us to fight wars remotely and at low human cost has been largely discredited by Iraq and Afghanistan.

Clearly, small, irregular wars do have a direct security importance to the United States (every major terrorist attack by Islamists-the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, the 2000 Cole attack, and 9/11) were carried out by non-state actors operating out of stateless areas or failed states.

Yet, as Owens notes, others “fear that the Long War school’s focus on small wars and insurgencies will transform the Army into a constabulary force, whose enhanced capability for conducting stability operations and nation-building would be purchased at a high cost: the ability to conduct large-scale conventional war.”

The Obama administration will have to grapple with this balance, and Afghanistan will be a key forging ground that will have repercussions far into the future.

How deeply do U.S. forces get involved in counter-drug operations, given that the funds directly fund the enemy? How much responsible is the military for development projects and other non-traditional roles, when carrying them out will weaken the Taliban? Or do such activities lessen the military’s ability to carry out its core mission?

The Cold War has been over for almost two decades. We have had time to see the results of myriad conflicts, both conventional (Iraq I) and non-conventional. The world is what it is, not what we wish or imagine it is.

Our future rides on getting this right, and we have had time to learn. The threats are multi-faceted. The turns Russia has taken clearly show that state actors can increase their threat posture. But Afghanistan and Iraq show how important the asymmetrical threat remains. It can never be an either/or proposition.

The Biggest 2 Lies About E-Verify (arguments to keep hiring illegal aliens)

By Roy Beck

Senators are being pounded from seemingly every direction to keep E-Verify out of their Stimulus bill next week (after the House this week put strong E-Verify requirements in their bill to make sure illegal aliens don't get jobs created by the Stimulus).

The anti-E-Verify folks are relying on enough Senators believing arguments that are demonstrable lies.

You need to be armed to destroy these lies when you write letters to the editor, send faxes, call in to talk radio shows, visit with your friends or phone your Senators' offices this coming week.

AND THE 2 BIGGEST LIES ARE ........

LIE NO. 1: AMERICANS WILL LOSE THEIR JOBS DUE TO FAULTY DATABASE

The most outlandish claim by the anti-E-Verify forces has been that using E-Verify will actually lead to more unemployment among Americans.

NumbersUSA's claim, of course, is that the universal use of E-Verify would result in employing millions MORE Americans because that many otherwise employed illegal aliens would not be able to get a job, opening the way for American workers.

Which is it?

The anti-E-Verify forces claim that Americans will lose their jobs if companies are required to use E-Verify because the databases supposedly are full of so many errors. Typical is this quote in the paper today:

Sonia Ramirez, legislative representative for the AFL-CIO, said the program misclassified many U.S. citizens and legal workers. The program, which is used on a limited basis, is not "ready for prime time," Ramirez said.

-- Los Angeles Times, 31JAN09

Rosemary Jenks, the lawyer who heads up NumbersUSA's Capitol Hill Team, has repeatedly and publicly issued a challenge to the media and open-borders advocates to produce even one example of an American losing a job because the E-Verify system wrongly ordered it.

If it turned out that of millions of transactions a year, there were 10 or 20 mistakes, we would be concerned but also find that to be an understandably tiny problem.

But, to date, opponents have NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND an example of even ONE AMERICAN who lost a job due to problems with E-Verify.

A government investigation of E-Verify in 2007 found:

• 93% of employees queried through the system were verified within 5 seconds!

• another 1.2% were verified within 24 hours with no additional action required of either the employee or the employer

• Most of the 5.8% who received a tentative non-confirmation requiring more time turned out to be illegal aliens

• only 0.5% were U.S. citizens or authorized foreign workers who had to contact the Social Security Administration because of errors in the database

And let's be clear about that 0.5%. Many of the errors were ones that the workers themselves had made, such as a woman not notifying SSA of a change in last name after a marriage. And even if the error was the government's fault, going through E-Verify was a positive experience for most because they needed to know the error existed so they could clean it up before it caused problems down the line.

The 2007 study found that the accuracy rate of E-Verify was 99.5%.

Can any government program anywhere claim such a record?

And what the critics miss is that the system is set up so that when there is an error, nobody loses a job or is temporarily suspended from a job. The rules require that an employee who gets a tentative non-confirmation will continue to be employed until clearing up the discrepancy. (The illegal aliens, however, typically just don't show up for work after getting the first non-confirmation.)

An independent study between April and June of 2008 by Westat found:

• 96% of employees were verified instantly

• 0.4% had to contact the government to resolve record errors

• 3.5% received final non-confirmations, meaning they were illegal aliens not having the legal right to work

Nearly every reporter in the mainstream media allows open-borders leaders to be quoted saying the E-Verify databases are full of errors that lead to all kinds of mishandling of employees, but the reporters don't allow the statistics above to show up in their stories. The claims about errors are lies, pure and simple.

LIE NO. 2: MANDATING E-VERIFY WILL DELAY STIMULUS MONEY CREATING JOBS

Requiring businesses to enroll in E-Verify could only slow the influx of money and jobs into the economy, said Tyler Moran of the National Immigration Law Center. "It is going to delay the stimulus," she said. "It doesn't belong here."

-- Los Angeles Times, 31JAN09

How many lies are in that lie? Let me count the ways:

1. Even if a company happens to hire one of the around 5% of people who don't get an immediate confirmation, they not only are allowed to keep that person on the job, they are required to do so until E-Verify gives a final decision several days later. The flow of Stimulus money into the pockets of a worker is not slowed.

2. The main argument seems to be that companies and governments getting Stimulus money won't have time to get enrolled in E-Verify and will delay taking the Stimulus money because of that. But they don't have to wait until this bill passes. They can get on-line right now and get the enrollment finished long before any money will be flowing.

3. Furthermore, the enrollment process at most takes one staff person a couple of hours to complete. That is only once per company.

4. If a company or organization just feels hamstrung by the simple enrollment, they can pay a third-party company to handle the E-Verify process for them on all of their hires.

5. The Department of Homeland Security last year stated that it would have no trouble handling a doubling or tripling of enrollees and activity over a short time.

6. DHS had no trouble handling the growth from 3.27 million verification queries in FY2007 to 6.6 million in FY2008 and more than 2 million queries just through the first quarter of FY2009.

7. Throughout this rapid expansion, E-Verify has become more accurate, more user-friendly and faster.

Friends, a sign of the power of special interests to still dominate in Washington is that the two big lies about E-Verify continue to be the most common thing you see about the system in the nation's newspapers and from the mouths of the leaders of business, labor, religious and ethnic-identity organizations.

Only through the willingness of hundreds of thousands of you to carry the truth to the U.S. Senate this coming week will American workers have a chance to move ahead of illegal aliens to get any jobs that might be created if the Stimulus bill passes.

The Radical Muslims of Germany

by Dr. Sami Alabraa

"Jews are the enemy of Allah," declared Ismael Gharaballi during a service in a mosque in Bielefeld, Germany. "This is not only my belief, but also Allah's conviction," the Palestinian imam and Hamas activist declared, waving his Koran in the air. The congregation of about 200 thundered, "Allahu Akbar!"

Then Gharaballi turned to another page in the Koran and read,

"… and kill them [he explained this to mean unbelievers, especially the Jews] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you" (Surah 2, verse 191). "What are you waiting for?" he cried. "Allah Himself is telling us kill them. No peace can be made with the Jews."

After the prayers, I approached Gharaballi in the cafeteria of the mosque and asked him if he was serious about what he had preached. "Of course, I am. This is not any book. This is the word of Allah." Then I asked if he would kill a Jew here in Germany. He answered: "Yes, especially those Israelis who are occupying Arab land." I reminded him that this would be murder and for that he would land up behind bars. Ismael retorted angrily: "I don't care. The Koran is our law and constitution and anything else is just rubbish." Referring to Hitler, Ismael told me: "The man was a hero, almost a Muslim. I'm one of his fans."

Gharaballi is not unique in Germany's 3 million-strong Muslim community. Ibrahim el-Zayat, the head of an extremist Munich-based organization called The Islamic Community of Germany, told a meeting of fellow Muslims last month: "It is still premature to strike against the Jews and infidels in this country. However, at the lecture at a community center in Neukoeln, Berlin, which I attended, but where no media reporters were allowed access, he went on to assert: "But sooner or later we will strike against the enemies of Allah and Islam. We have to wait. Many Germans are converting to Islam, especially friends from the NPD [a neo-Nazi party]." When I asked a German reporter to verify this by calling el-Zayat, the latter denied having ever said such a thing.

El-Zayat was born in 1968 in Marburg, Germany, to an Egyptian imam and a German mother. He owns a construction company and receives huge sums of money from the Saudis to build mosques in Germany and in other European countries. He is an aggressive Muslim fundamentalist and has connections to various Islamists and terrorist organizations across the world. He is currently being prosecuted in Germany for supporting radical organizations.

El-Zayat is typical of most Muslim activists in Germany. In their schools and community centers, Muslim organizations incite hatred and violence against Jews and Christians. In public, however, and before the media, they deny preaching violence. El-Zayat, Gharaballi and the majority of radical Islamist imams, and officials of Muslim organizations receive big honorariums from the Saudis.

According to a study by Bielefeld University, over 30% of the Muslims living in Germany are radicalized. They reject the German Constitution and hope to establish Sharia Islamic law.

Many German politicians, in particular in the Green Party, often attribute radicalism among Muslims to social problems and lack of integration in German society. For all these problems they blame the German side. Former foreign minister Joschka Fischer stated, in an interview with German radio station WDR earlier this year that Muslims should be left alone to believe and act the way they please. "Other religions are not more liberal than Islam."

The German Home Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has met with heads of Muslim organizations and Islam experts several times over the last two years. I attended all these meetings. The heads of Muslim umbrella organizations tell the German government that they and their members accept the German Constitution. Back in their communities they preach hatred and violence. In mid-April 2008, the German police raided the properties of a dozen Muslim extremists and arrested nine of them. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The German media and the public appear to be wary of antagonizing Muslim radicals. Very few media reproduced the Mohammad cartoons published in Denmark and they downplayed the recent anti-Islam Fitna film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

Radical Islam inculcates in impressionable young minds verses from the Koran that are incompatible with modern values and human rights, such as inciting hatred towards Jews and Christians. Dalal, a 15-year-old girl who attends a Muslim school in Ulm, was proud to tell me that her teacher told her not to greet non-Muslims. It is haram (forbidden), she said. The radical Muslims also emphasize those passages that discriminate against women and incite violence against those who practice freedom of religion and speech.

Christianity and Judaism

also have passages in their holy scripts that are incompatible with human rights. But most Christians and Jews simply ignore these passages, consider them archaic, and instead apply more humane and rational ones. Most Muslims ignore the more liberal passages that do exist in the Koran.

The majority of Muslims in Germany are peaceful people. Radical Muslims are a minority. But this minority dominates. They are in key positions in the community and control mosques and organizations. There is no hate-crime law in Germany. The German government should enact such a law, like the one against Holocaust denial, making it an offense to incite to hatred and the violation of human rights.

Iran says Obama's offer to talk shows US failure

from BreitBart.com

US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.

"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

"Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added.

After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist".

In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama.

Iranian politicians frequently refer to the US administration as the "global arrogance", "domineering power" and "Great Satan".

Tensions with the United States have soared over Iran's nuclear drive and Ahmadinejad's vitriolic verbal attacks against Washington's close regional ally Israel.

Former US president George W. Bush refused to hold talks with the Islamic republic -- which he dubbed part of an "axis of evil" -- unless it suspended uranium enrichment, and never took a military option to thwart Tehran's atomic drive off the table.

The new administration of Obama has also refused to rule out any options -- including military strikes -- to stop Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies any plans to build the bomb and insists its nuclear programme is solely aimed at peaceful ends.

Auckland Muslim Women: Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide…

(Compiler's note: Coming to a town near you.)

from Winds of Jihad

Women refuse refuge because of nearby mosque

The Qur’an sanctions the beating of disobedient women (4:34). In one New Zealand town, those who want to escape this abuse are afraid to do so because a mosque is next door to the shelter, and they could be recognized. Don’t these battered Muslim women know that Islam teaches peace and tolerance?

“Women refuse refuge because of nearby mosque,” by Esther Harward for the Sunday Star Times, via DW

Muslim women are staying away from a domesitc violence crisis centre since a mosque opened next door.

The Auckland Shakti Asian Women’s Centre in Onehunga helps women escape violent domestic situations but women are too scared to go because they may be recognised by their husbands or relatives attending the mosque.

The centre has an alternative premises but cannot move in because Auckland City Council has held back planning permission for more than a year.

Meanwhile, Housing New Zealand Corporation is paying $310 a week $4030 so far for security guards to keep vandals away from the empty building that the women could move into.

Centre spokesperson Shila Nair said victims were “really afraid” to go to the centre in Church St, Onehunga in case they were recognised by men worshipping at the Onehunga Islamic Mosque, which is over a boundary fence.

Women who visited the centre usually did so without telling their husbands, she said. “If their husbands, in-laws or any other family members or friends were to know that they have visited Shakti, life for them would be even more difficult. We have had instances of women who visited our Women’s Centre later accessing our refuge.”

Most were from Middle Eastern, Africa and Asian countries that don’t legislate against domestic violence. Staff tell them what their rights are under New Zealand law.

The crisis centre took 4800 phone calls last year on a 24 hour nationwide helpline of which 90% were about family violence. Of the calls, half of the women were recommended to visit for counselling, legal advice or training.

The housing corporation renovated another building for the women to move to after the mosque bought a building next door from the Jehovah’s Witness church. The women have been waiting for 18 months for the council to grant resource consent for them to use the house. Council resource consents team leader Ian Smallburn said the consent was “on hold” because of concerns about the impact of parking on neighbours, trees and stormwater. It was not known when the issues would be resolved.

The centre opened a decade ago and is the busiest of Shakti’s five branches in Auckland, Tauranga and Christchurch, which together they help 6000 women a year escape domestic abuse.

Bio-terrorism - Al-Qaida and the Plague

from National Terror Alert Response Center

In the not too distant past, this story would have been front page news.

In the middle of the massive coverage of U.S. President Barack Obama’s inauguration, a rather troublesome news story emerged. Unfortunately, it failed to get the coverage it deserves. If confirmed, it deserves the full attention of the Obama administration: the story has to do with bio-terrorism.

The story began with a Jan. 6 report in the Algerian newspaper Echorouk that a number of terrorists had died of the plague in one of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb AQIM training camps in Tizi Ouzou. Another Algerian newspaper En-Nahar, affirmed that 50 terrorists have been diagnosed with the plague, 40 of whom have already died.

Now some analysts dismissed outright this story saying it was totally fallacious. But a few observations at this point give credibility to this story, even though one cannot be sure of the provenance of the plague. Consider the following:

1. Algerian authorities have been totally silent. Reliable sources usually willing to share information declined to comment on this report. As can be expected, Algerians authorities were not too pleased that the story was confirmed by American sources. Indeed the Washington Times confirmed through a senior U.S. intelligence official that an incident had taken place at an AQIM training camp that had to be shut down as a result.

2. Coincidence or not: 60 terrorists from AQIM from Tizi Ouzou the same region where the incident allegedly occurred decided to surrender to the authorities. It is very rare that such a large number of AQIM operatives defect at the same time. That could mean that they possibly got really scared by what had taken place in the training camp and did not want to get involved in biological weapon experimentation that could likely result in their deaths.

3. Over a year ago, Pakistani terrorists came to train in AQIM training camps and may have one way or another contributed to the production of that biological agent. Interestingly, the Washington Times mentions an intercepted communication between AQIM leaders and AQ Central in Pakistan relating the mishap.

4. Al-Qaida operatives in Europe had tried to develop biological weapons in the recent past. In France, Menad Benchelalli, a terrorist specialized in poisons had produced small amounts of ricin and Botulinum toxin that he intended to release in France. He was arrested in 2002.
Then in 2003, British authorities arrested seven individuals accused of also producing ricin.

5. AQIM was “hired” by AQ central mostly because of their extensive network in Europe that could allow them to strike Europe at some point. AQIM’s leadership has been under intense pressure to attack European targets in order to maintain its credibility. In fact, by not using a “conventional” weapon, AQIM would prove its value to AQ Central. If the group was indeed developing a biological weapon, it was surely destined for delivery in Europe, and most likely in France.

via Al-Qaida and the Plague - Middle East Times.

Congress warned: 'Beware of CAIR'

Warning: Do not meet with representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a "Dear Colleague" letter sent yesterday to every U.S. House member says.

The three-page letter, a copy of which was obtained by WND, warns legislators to "think twice" about meeting with CAIR officials due to mounting evidence the group is tied to terrorists.....

Congress sued to remove prez from White House

(Compiler's note: This is eventually going to see the light of day and be settled in a way that everyone can see. The American people still rule and we do so through the U.S. Constitution.)

from WorldNetDaily

A new lawsuit is challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, and this one targets Congress as a defendant for its "failure" to uphold the constitutional demand to make sure Obama qualified before approving the Electoral College vote that actually designated him as the occupant of the Oval Office.

The new case raises many of the same arguments as dozens of other cases that have flooded into courtrooms around the nation since the November election.

It is being brought on behalf of Charles F. Kerchner Jr., Lowell T. Patterson, Darrell James Lenormand and Donald H. Nelson Jr. and names as defendants Barack Hussein Obama II, the U.S., Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives and former Vice President Dick Cheney along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 193,000 others and sign up now!

As WND has reported, dozens of lawsuits have been filed over Obama's eligibility to assume the office of the president. Many have been dismissed while others remain pending.

The cases, in various ways, have alleged Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the legal challenges have alleged Obama was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Several details of Obama's past have added twists to the question of his eligibility and citizenship, including his family's move to Indonesia when he was a child, his travel to Pakistan in the '80s when such travel was forbidden to American citizens and conflicting reports from Obama's family about his place of birth.

Perhaps the most perplexing detail, however, has been Obama's refusal to allow the public release of a signed "vault" copy of his original birth certificate.

The new case was launched in New Jersey, and focuses on the alleged failure in Congress to follow the Constitution.

That document

, the lawsuit states, "provides that Congress must fully qualify the candidate 'elected' by the Electoral College Electors."

In provides, the lawsuit said, "If the president-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the vice president elect shall act as president until a president shall have qualified."

"There existed significant public doubt and grievances from plaintiffs and other concerned Americans regarding Obama's eligibility to be president and defendants had the sworn duty to protect and preserve the Constitution and specifically under the 20th Amendment, Section 3, a Constitutional obligation to confirm whether Obama, once the electors elected him, was qualified."

"Congress is the elected representative of the American people and the people speak and act through them," the lawsuit said.

The defendants "violated" the 20th Amendment by failing to assure that Obama meets the eligibility requirements," the lawsuit said.

In the Russian publication Pravda, commentator Mark S. McGrew addressed the subject:

"The United States Congress is required, under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, to count the Electoral College votes for president and vice president, ask if any member of Congress objects to the count and hear that Congressman's objection. This is under Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 15, 'Upon such reading of any such certificate of paper, the president of the Senate shall call for objections, if any,'" he wrote.

Several of the cases – including those brought by Orly Taitz, Cort Wrotnowski, Leo Donofrio and Philip Berg, already have been heard in conference at the U.S. Supreme Court, which has failed to have a hearing on any of the merits involved.

Taitz, in fact, is requesting information from the Supreme Court about a meeting eight of its justices held with Obama, a defendant in her case, before the justices reviewed the issues of the case in a private conference.

Several of the cases not scheduled for hearings at the Supreme Court still remain active at lower court levels, from which emergency requests to the high court were launched.

"I know that Mr. Obama is not a constitutionally qualified natural born citizen and is ineligible to assume the office of president of the United States," Berg said in a statement on his ObamaCrimes.com website.

"Obama knows he is not 'natural born' as he knows where he was born and he knows he was adopted in Indonesia; Obama is an attorney, Harvard Law grad who taught Constitutional law; Obama knows his candidacy is the largest 'hoax' attempted on the citizens of the United States in over 200 years; Obama places our Constitution in a 'crisis' situation; and Obama is in a situation where he can be blackmailed by leaders around the world who know Obama is not qualified," Berg's statement continued.

A partial listing and status update for several of the cases surrounding Obama's eligibility to serve as president is below:

• Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the courts verify Obama's original birth certificate and other documents proving his American citizenship. Berg's latest appeal, requesting an injunction to stop the Electoral College from selecting the 44th president, was denied.
  


• Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.


• Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.


• Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case is pending, and lawyers are seeking the public's support.


• Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.
  
  
• Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.
  
  
• In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.
  
  
• In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.
  
  
• In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.


• California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.
  
  

Private investigator Douglas Hagmann of HomelandSecurityUS.com reported earlier he found 13 cases challenging Obama's eligibility still active or semi-active.

In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama's eligibility include:

• In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.
  
  
• In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.
  
  
• In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.
  
  
• In Washington, L. Charles vs. Obama.
  
  
• In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.

WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi had gone to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.

The biggest question was why, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, Obama hasn't simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject. A one point a Kenyan ambassador said Obama's birth place in Kenya already was recognized and honored.

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Previous stories:

More challenges fail in Supreme Court

Supreme Court refuses 2nd challenge to eligibility

Status report: The eligibility issue

Supremes turn down request to stop Electoral vote

Join exploding demand for citizenship documentation

Electors challenged to investigate birth dispute

Last few hours to FedEx Electoral College voters

Supremes turn down request to stop Electoral vote

Eligibility question? FedEx Electoral College members

Not even Supreme Court can kill citizenship dispute

Supreme Court denies citizenship challenge

More than 60,000 letters sent to U.S. Supreme Court

Petition to see the birth certificate

Will Supremes review citizenship arguments?

Imaging guru: 'Certification' of birth time, location is fake

Chasm dividing Americans over birth certificate widens

WND launches new forum on Obama's eligibility

Supremes to review citizenship arguments

'Constitutional crisis' looming over Obama's birth location

Obama camp: Lawsuits by citizens are 'garbage'

Will Supreme Court have say in presidency?

Where Nations Go to Die

by Mark Steyn bailout

.... In a media age, politics is a battle of language, and “stimulus” is too good a word to cede to porked-up statist hacks. “Stimulus” has to stimulate—i.e., it’s short-term, like, say, an immediate cut in payroll taxes that will put real actual money in your pocket in next month’s paycheck. That way, you don’t need to wait for ACORN: You can start “stabilizing” your own “neighborhood” right now.

But, if this fraudulent “stimulus” does pass, it will, in fact, de-stimulate, and much more than the disastrous protectionist measures of the Thirties did: Back then, America was dealing with a far less globalized economy, and with far fewer competitors. “In the long run, we are all dead,” Lord Keynes, the newly fashionable economist, famously said. But, if this bill passes, in the medium term, we’re all dead. It’s a massive expansion of the state in the same direction that has brought sclerosis to Europe. A report issued last week in London found that government spending now accounts for 49 percent of the UK economy—and in the Celtic corners of the kingdom the state’s share of the economy is way higher, from 71.6 percent in Wales to 77.6 percent in Northern Ireland. In the western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever-higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as super-landlord. Big government is where nations go to die—not in Keynes’ “long run,” but sooner than you think.