ICE arrests 27 illegals then gives them permits

SEATTLE — The Department of Homeland Security freed 27 illegal immigrants arrested during a workplace raid in February and offered them legal work permits, signaling a major departure from the immigration enforcement policy of the Bush administration.

The Feb. 24 raid of an auto parts plant in Bellingham, Wash., netted 28 illegal immigrants. While one was deported, the remaining workers were released from custody and given employment authorization documents, or EADs, in exchange for cooperating with an ongoing investigation of their employer, Yamato Engine Specialists.

• Click here for video.

The EAD is a temporary work permit most commonly given to people applying for green cards or citizenship. It usually lasts for one year, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) sources tell FOX News that these work permits will expire when the case against Yamato is closed.

Immigrant rights activists support the move and the new direction Secretary Janet Napolitano is taking the Homeland Security Department with her focus on penalizing employers rather than the immigrants themselves.

"She is crafting and the people in her department are crafting a strategy that could target some people who are abusive and manipulative as employers," said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of the Seattle-based immigrant aid group OneAmerica

But critics say the softened policy will increase the number of illegal immigrants entering the country.

"The signal that it sends to illegal immigrants is that if you can get here, you're pretty much home free," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The Bellingham raid was the first and only mass arrest of immigrants since President Obama took office and came as a shock to Napolitano, who ordered a review of the incident the day after.

"I didn't know about it beforehand," she told the House Homeland Security Committee the morning following the raid. "I want to get to the bottom of this as well."

The response from the Department of Homeland Security marks a major shift from the last years of the Bush administration, when workplace arrests of illegals were commonplace.

Criminal arrests of employers who hired illegal immigrants skyrocketed from 25 in 2002 to 1,103 in 2008. The number of deportations jumped from 485 to 5,184 over that same time period. The Obama administration has sought a freeze on immigrant arrests.

Enforcement advocates say Americans should be outraged by the government giving illegal immigrants a right to work when unemployment is so high for documented workers.

Unemployment in Whatcom County, home to the Yamato plant, has risen to 8.1 percent, and in the days after the Yamato raid, more than 150 people applied for the jobs made open by the arrests.

Immigrant groups say the release was a humane act that is keeping families together and allowing them to earn a decent living.

Secretary Napolitano is expected to soon formally announce new guidelines for workplace immigration enforcement.

An I.C.E source in Washington D.C. disputes the claim that this marks a new policy telling FOX News the work permits are issued as an investigative tool to get cooperation from the illegal immigrants.

US spy agencies hamstrung by turf battles: report

from AFP

US spy agencies are still hamstrung by the same turf battles and financial mismanagement that led to massive intelligence failures revealed by the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war, an internal report has found.

The report, made public on Wednesday, was the most detailed of its kind on challenges facing the 16 spy agencies.

It came four years after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was created to remedy them.

"The culture of protecting 'turf' remains a problem, and there are few, if any, consequences for failure to collaborate," said the report, which was completed by the DNI's inspector general in November, before President Barack Obama was sworn in as the new US president.

It also criticized what it called poor financial management by the DNI, saying that most of the intelligence agencies are "struggling to achieve auditable financial statements."

The US intelligence budget has seen a dramatic increase in recent years, and topped 43.5 billion dollars in fiscal 2007, which ended in September.

The report outlined the many challenges facing Obama's director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair.

The agencies have complained that the Director of National Intelligence "sends duplicative taskings and conflicting messages to the IC (intelligence community), thereby undermining the ODNI's credibility and fueling assertions that the ODNI is just an 'additional layer of bureaucracy,'" the report said.

"The lack of clear communication to the IC of the ODNI staff's authorities has encouraged some agencies to go their own way, to the detriment of the unified and integrated intelligence enterprise."

The report also found that the intelligence office had failed to present a vision for how the spy agencies should function.

Lawmakers reacted with dismay at the findings.

"We have been repeatedly disappointed by the lack of clarity in the role of the DNI," said California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, who chaired a hearing Wednesday by a House Intelligence subcommittee.

"There's still not a clear mission from ODNI, and this is one of the things that's concerned a lot of us," said Republican Congresswoman Sue Myrick.

DNI inspector general Edward Maguire told the congressional panel that the spy director's role as the top intelligence adviser to the president had hampered his management responsibilities.

"He doesn't have to do it personally every day and ... he could do this in more of an oversight type of capacity," Maguire said.

"In a way the creation of the ODNI was a little bit like, sort of like a corporate merger," Maguire explained. "When you do that, many, many mergers fail."

Government in the Red? No Pay for Congress or the White House

by Jonathan D. Strong

.... I have a bold but simple idea to help prevent the government from growing beyond the consent of the governed. This is not a cure all, but one aspect which I believe would assist in stemming the tide toward statism. If the government runs a deficit the elected representatives receive no pay.

The representatives would include members of the House of Representatives, Senators

, the President, VP, and the cabinet. Only when the government runs a surplus from year to year using the same accounting principles as the private sector will these representatives be eligible for their salary. ....

Eligibility judge backs off sanctions threat

By Bob Unruh

James Robertson

A federal judge who threw out a lawsuit by a retired military officer challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president because the subject had been "blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged" now has backed off threats to impose financial sanctions on the officer's attorney.

The attorney, John D. Hemenway, "is 82 years old and takes considerable and justified pride in his patriotic public service and his status as a Rhodes Scholar," the judge wrote, according to a report on the Family Security Matters website written by Hemenway's daughter-in-law, Margaret Calhoun Hemenway.

The judge, James Robertson, opined that John D. Hemenway is "unlikely to repeat the conduct that gave rise to this proceeding, and in his case the permissible alternative sanction of a reprimand will be sufficient," she reported.

WND reported earlier on the case's dismissal and then when Hemenway responded by ripping the judge for using blog hearsay in his decision.

Robertson rejected the case brought on behalf of Gregory S. Hollister, a retired military officer who is subject to being recalled to duty and, therefore, would need to know the legitimacy of any order coming from Obama.

In his statement, Robertson ridiculed the complaint, which never had a court hearing, ruling that the eligibility issue had been "blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged."

Hollister is represented by Philadelphia lawyer Philip Berg, who has brought several motions on the eligibility dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court that have been ignored. Hemenway acted as local counsel in filing the action on behalf of Hollister.

Robertson wrote: "The plaintiff says that he is a retired Air Force colonel who continues to owe fealty to his Commander-in-Chief (because he might possibly be recalled to duty) and who is tortured by uncertainty as to whether he would have to obey orders from Barack Obama because it has not been proven – to the colonel's satisfaction – that Mr. Obama is a native-born American citizen, qualified under the Constitution to be president.

"The issue of the president's citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America's vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama's two-year-campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court," Robertson wrote.

His dismissal ordered the attorney to respond immediately and explain why there should not be financial sanctions. Hemenway complied, correcting the judge on a series of statements.

"These are not frivolous matters, as the learned Judge Robertson has suggested. Possible illegal orders are a matter of great concern to officers in the armed forces. Undersigned counsel himself entered the Army of the United States during WWII and was promoted to Infantry Second Lieutenant preparing for the anticipated landings in Japan which were scheduled for November 1, 1945. But for President Truman’s use of nuclear weapons to end the war, this would have transpired. The legality of orders in and out of combat is of paramount importance," he wrote.

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 345,000 others and sign up now!

Hemenway continued with a "second point" Robertson raised.

That is, he said, that "the president of the United States had been properly vetted."

"This assumes facts not in evidence and was not addressed. It is clear that the constitutional qualifications of President Soetoro/Obama have not been properly vetted. Judge Robertson even cites an earlier case filed in Pennsylvania by one of the two lead attorneys in this case, in which the judge claimed candidates in the recent presidential election had never been more closely vetted. Nothing was further from the truth. Effectively, the Pennsylvania District Court judge was introducing his own hearsay and opinion into the case as if it were acceptable evidence," Hemenway wrote.

"It is sad to read this court's use of material from the Internet to imply that the issues in the numerous lawsuits filed have been resolved by the 'twittering and blogging' to determine that the litigants are invoking 'conspiracy theorists.' It suggests that the intellectual capacity of this court focused on the issues in the instant suit at a very low level, perhaps for political purposes, such as to win attention from the highest authority when a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States becomes vacant," Hemenway wrote.

In her report, his daughter-in-law said the judge, in his March 25 decision, still has trouble getting things right.

"Judge Robertson reconsidered his previous sanctions threat, possibly fearing monetary sanctions might spark a backlash and give a boost to the grassroots effort to force Mr. Obama to relinquish his records for public scrutiny," she wrote. "He errs in one key respect, alleging that Hemenway is 'unlikely to repeat the conduct that gave rise to this proceeding. …'

"Reprimand aside, Hemenway will continue to seek the truth about Obama's birthplace and citizenship, as will other patriotic citizens who believe no president and no future presidential candidate should be allowed to conceal documents that would prove that he or she is legally qualified to serve," she wrote.

"The judge errs in another respect, saying: 'Many people, perhaps as many as a couple of dozen, feel deeply about this issue, a strong indication that this judge feels he can dismiss the legal merits of the issue by pretending that there is no public interest at stake,'" she wrote.

"He must be unaware that an AOL poll, albeit admittedly unscientific, found that a majority of Americans believe Mr. Obama should release his records to determine his eligibility; that more than 345,000 U.S. citizens have signed an online petition demanding Obama's birth records be released; and that many more are blogging, calling, and writing congressional offices to ask their members of Congress to sign onto Congressman Bill Posey's bill," she wrote.

Posey's legislation would require future candidates for president to be vetted for eligibility, an admission that the last national election's screening process for candidates was substandard, she wrote.

"This is a judge who clearly is letting his skewed perception of public sentiment guide his judicial rulings. It would clearly have been judicially expedient, saving the taxpayers time and money, given the number of eligibility lawsuits filed across the country, simply to direct President Obama to produce an actual birth (or 'vault') certificate and not a COLB (Certification of Live Birth and one that lacks a doctor's signature or hospital name) that has been given to others not born on the island of Hawaii," she wrote.

John D. Hemenway also had suggested that if there were to be sanctions, court rules would allow him to require the release of Obama's birth information.

"If the court persists in pressing Rule 11 procedures against Hemenway, then Hemenway should be allowed all of the discovery pertinent to the procedures as court precedents have permitted in the past," he wrote to the judge.

"The court has referred to a number of facts outside of the record of this particular case and, therefore, the undersigned is particularly entitled to a hearing to get the truth of those matters into the record. This may require the court to authorize some discovery," Hemenway said.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "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 lawsuits question whether Obama was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, 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. Further complicating the issue are the reports he was adopted by an Indonesia man during his childhood and moved to Indonesia and attended school there. There also are questions on what nation's passport he traveled to Pakistan.

Lawyers and plaintiffs in a multitude of lawsuits also have asked why, if a birth certificate actually reflects that Obama was born in Hawaii, has he spent sums estimated by observers of up to $1 million hiring various law firms to keep concealed his birth certificate, his college records and other documentation.

John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution now working with the Foundation on Moral Law, told WND a demand for verification of Obama's eligibility appears to be legitimate.

Eidsmoe said it's clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that "he does not want the public to know."

Although Obama officials have told WND all such allegations are "garbage," here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama's eligibility:

• New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn't properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.


• Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama which is under seal at the U.S. District Court level and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, (now dismissed) brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.
  
  
• 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.

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 Cohen vs. Obama.
  
  
• In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.

N Korea warned over missile launch

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington, Mure Dickie in Tokyo and Christian Oliver in Seoul

The US and South Korea on Thursday warned North Korea not to proceed with a planned satellite launch, as Pyongyang threatened a “fiery bolt of retaliatory lightning” if Japan tried to shoot down the rocket.

North Korea says it will launch a satellite between April 4 and 8. The US, South Korea and Japan say the launch – even if the missile carries a satellite – would breach a United Nations resolution passed after North Korea tested a long-range Taepodong-2 without advance warning in 2006.

Barack Obama, US president, and Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, agreed after their G20 meeting in London on the need for a “unified” international response if Pyongyang carried out the launch. South Korea said Mr Lee wanted a “stern response”.

While North Korea says the missile – which satellite imagery shows on the launch pad at Musudan-ri – will carry a communications satellite, the US and its Asian allies see the launch as a pretext to test the Taepodong-2. When North Korea first tested the intercontinental ballistic missile, which has the ability to reach the continental US, in 2006 it failed shortly after launch.

The US has sent navy ships to the region that could be used in any attempt to shoot down the missile. In an interview with the Financial Times, Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said he was “pretty confident that this is a space shot, a satellite shot” .

“If it is a space shot – and we will know that pretty early on after launch – then there would be no need [to shoot it down],” said Mr Gates. “Our concern is principally if it does go astray, or is some kind of a failure, that looks like it is potentially a danger to Japan or to Hawaii, that we would contemplate doing something.”

Tokyo has deployed anti-missile forces created after the 1998 Taepodong “shock” when Pyongyang fired an earlier version of its missile over Japan in what it claimed was an effort to put a satellite into orbit.

Officials say Japan can legally order its military to use its naval Standard Missile 3 or Patriot Pac-3s only in the highly unlikely event that the rocket, or parts of the it, clearly heads for Japanese territory.

Even in the latter case, attempting to destroy a missile fragment would be technically difficult and could even make it more dangerous by widening the area of possible damage – but having invested huge sums on US-led missile defence systems, it would be difficult for the government not to at least try to use it to counter a threat.

South Korea’s armed forces are permanently ready for an attack from the North and are also armed with Patriot missiles in case a ballistic weapon heads south.

However, the navy last week said US and Japanese warships would take primary responsibility for any ballistic threat to Japan.

James Shinn, a former senior Pentagon official for Asia who served as the top CIA intelligence officer for Asia when North Korea first tested the Taepodong-2, said North Korea was “trying to get attention”.

“With the financial crisis, and Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, nobody has much time for Pyongyang or their antics,” said Mr Shinn. “They would like to get the new Obama team to focus on the six-party talks again. Now that [US nuclear envoy] Chris Hill is gone from that account, Pyongyang may be feeling unloved.”

Mr Shinn said North Korea was also calculating that the US tends to become “flexible” in any nuclear talks after Pyongyang has conducted a missile or nuclear test.

David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said US political leaders should be careful not to jump to conclusions if the launch is successful.

”A successful satellite launch would show that North Korea has increased its missile capabilities,” said Mr Wright. “ But it would not necessarily demonstrate that North Korea could launch a nuclear warhead to intercontinental range. North Korea may not yet have the technical ability to modify the launcher to give it long-range capability.”

Despite the relatively minor risk posed by the launch to individual Japanese, it has been given widespread coverage and local media have reported that some fisherman are too worried to put to sea.

Authorities in some prefectures have put emergency services on alert and plan to issue early warnings of any threat, with state broadcaster NHK saying on Thursday that northern Akita would deployed riot police to deal with any problems caused by falling debris.

Some residents have complained that such orders and warning alerts leave unclear what they might practically do to protect themselves if the launch creates real danger.

The Chinese foreign ministry on Thursday said ”We will call on all parties to stay calm...and contribute to peace and stability in the region.”

Additional reporting by Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Italian authorities carry out raids against "Islamist radicals" across country

from Jihad Watch

"The raids were carried out in properties around the northern cities of Vicenza, Venice, Padova, Brescia, Como, Cuneo and Trento, the central city of Florence and the southern city of Caserta."

Eurabia Alert: "Misunderstanding" of Islam breaking out all over again. "Italy: Police carry out anti-terror raids across country," from AdnKronos International, April 2:

Rome, 2 April (AKI) - Twenty-six foreigners suspected of links to international terrorism as well as aiding and abetting illegal immigration are being investigated by Italian police, after raids carried out on Thursday in various Italian cities.

The raids were carried out in properties around the northern cities of Vicenza, Venice, Padova, Brescia, Como, Cuneo and Trento, the central city of Florence and the southern city of Caserta.

The anti-terrorism and organised crime investigators in March 2007 began probing alleged Islamic fundamentalists attending the Via Dei Mille mosque in Vicenza in the northern Veneto region.

The mosque was led by a Yemeni imam, who is also being investigated for terror links.

However, most of the 26 foreigners arrested are Algerian.

Three of them, who lived in Naples, are though to be Islamist radicals sympathetic to the radical 'Takfiri' ideology.

The three radicals had already been involved in falsifying documents to aid jihadist groups.

Takfiris believe contemporary Muslim society has reverted to a state of unbelief ('kufr') and thus considers legitimate both rebellions against the state and acts of violence against Muslim citizens.

Judge Andrew Napolitano Accuses Government / Treasury Department of Extortion

Absolutely must read & watch .. Just heard on Studio B: Judge Andrew Napolitano accuses the U.S. government under president Bush and the Treasury department under Henry Paulson of extortion.

According to Napolitano, banks that did not want or need TARP funds were threatened with a ‘multi-year and very public’ audit, which would almost certainly put them out of business as the result of an already-scared public making a run on the bank.

My mind immediately went back to the IndyMac failure, which, at the time was attributed directly to the actions of NY Senator Charles Schumer. Quoting from a July 7, 2008 LA Times article:

Here’s from the press release issued by IndyMac’s regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision: “The OTS has determined that the current institution, IndyMac Bank, is unlikely to be able to meet continued depositors’ demands in the normal course of business and is therefore in an unsafe and unsound condition. The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York.

The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.

“This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” OTS Director John Reich said. “Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process.”

At the time, Schumer’s actions were considered ‘reckless and irresponsible’, but in the context of our nation’s current economic and political situation, the benefit of nine months of hindsight, and the horror of the last 72 days under the leadership of a decidedly anti-American administration, one can’t help but wonder if Schumer’s action was more calculated than reckless; designed to provide a crystal-clear example, in preparation for what was to come just two months up the road, of how quickly a financial institution could be taken down by a few simple words from government.

Conspiratorial? Perhaps, but not nearly as far-fetched as it may have seemed a few short months ago, because what we’re seeing now is the government trying to take control of these TARP-funded banks.

It needs to be said that there hasn’t been any confirmation of Napolitano’s claims yet. However, my personal opinion is that the judge’s credibility is good, and if he’s putting it out there it needs to be taken seriously.

Conservative Nation will be watching this story closely.

UPDATE: here is the video from Youtube:

-Cnation

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Shariah law in America?

from Investor's Business Daily .... must read

President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.

We have commented many times on the opinion of a number of U.S. Supreme Court justices that American jurists should include foreign law and precedent in their decisions. In several prominent cases, this has already happened.

In a speech in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the March 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, in which a 5-4 majority ruled against executing murderers who were 17 or younger, "perhaps the fullest expressions to date on the propriety and utility of looking to the 'opinions of (human)kind.' "

Koh: Man of the world.

More recently, Justice Stephen Breyer said: "We see all the time . . . how the world really . . . is growing together. The challenge (will be) whether our Constitution . . . fits into the governing documents of other nations." Whether our Constitution fits?

Agreeing with Ginsburg and Breyer is one Harold Koh, a former dean of Yale Law School who's been nominated by President Obama to be the State Department's legal adviser. He's an advocate of what he calls "transnational legal process" and argues that the distinction between U.S. and international law should vanish.

Koh believes laws of places like Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka should carry equal weight with the laws of Virginia and South Dakota, and that it's "appropriate for the Supreme Court to construe our Constitution in the light of foreign and international law" in its decisions.

He also believes foreign law trumps U.S. law on issues such as the death penalty. Echoing Ginsburg, he has said: "The evidence strongly suggests that we do not currently pay decent respect to the opinions of humankind in our administration of the death penalty. For that reason (italics added), the death penalty should, in time, be declared in violation of the Eighth Amendment."

In Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down that state's anti-sodomy laws, Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion cited a 1967 British parliamentary vote repealing laws against homosexual acts and a 1981 European Court of Human Rights decision that such laws were in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Agreeing with Kennedy, Koh himself filed an amicus brief in the case that argued that international and foreign court decisions compelled the Supreme Court to strike down the Texas law. Koh has also submitted an amicus brief to the Connecticut Supreme Court arguing that foreign precedents require recognition of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

He also values the opinions of the world's imams. A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says Koh in 2007 told the Yale Club of Greenwich that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why Shariah law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States."

Koh thinks America is the bad guy on the world stage. He blasted Operation Desert Storm as a violation of international law despite the U.N.'s blessing. He supported the Sandinista move to get the International Criminal Court to force Congress to cut off funding of the Contras in Nicaragua.

In 2004, after Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun, Koh lumped the U.S. in with North Korea as part of an "axis of disobedience" regarding international law.

Koh says the Supreme Court is now divided between "nationalist" judges who believe our Constitution is the only one that counts and "transnationalists" who believe "we the people" should be changed to "we are the world."

The next appointment will tip the balance one way or the other, Koh says. He just might be Obama's first pick to fill the next vacancy. Neil Lewis of the New York Times last year said Koh was widely regarded as a leading contender.

This is the man who'll be giving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton legal advice. This is the man who could quite possibly be the next Supreme Court justice. This is Harold Koh.

Hiding a Mountain Of Debt

(Compiler's note: Must read. And please remember that China buys most of our debt, and we then in turn fund their new weapon systems that they may yet use against us.)

By David S. Broder

With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat to America's economic future.

That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin.

The real threat is the monstrous debt resulting from the slump in revenue and the staggering sums being committed by Washington to rescuing embattled banks and homeowners -- and the absence of any serious strategy for paying it all back.

The Congressional Budget Office sketched the dimensions of the problem on March 20, and Congress reacted with shock. The CBO said that over the next 10 years, current policies would add a staggering $9.3 trillion to the national debt -- one-third more than President Obama had estimated by using much more optimistic assumptions about future economic growth.

As far as the eye could see, the CBO said, the debt would continue to grow by about $1 trillion a year because of a structural deficit between the spending rate, averaging 23 percent of gross domestic product, and federal revenue at 19 percent.

The ever-growing national debt will require ever-larger annual interest payments, with much of that money going overseas to China, Japan and other countries that have been buying our bonds.

Reacting to this scary prospect, the House and Senate budget committees took the paring knife to some of Obama's spending proposals and tax cuts last week. But many of the proposed savings look more like bookkeeping gimmicks than realistic cutbacks. The budget resolutions assume, for example, that no more money will be needed this year to bail out foundering businesses or pump up consumer demand, even though estimates of those needs start at $250 billion and go up by giant steps.

Republicans on the budget committees offered cuts that were larger and, in some but not all instances, more realistic.

But the main device the Democratic budgeteers employed was simply to shrink the budget "window" from 10 years to five. Instantly, $5 trillion in debt disappeared from view, along with the worry that long after the recession is past, the structural deficit would continue to blight the future of young working families.

The Democrats did not invent this gimmick. They borrowed it from George W. Bush, who turned to it as soon as his inherited budget surpluses withered with the tax cuts and recession of 2001-02. But Obama had promised a more honest budget and said that this meant looking at the long-term consequences of today's tax and spending decisions.

There are plenty of people in Congress for whom the CBO report was no surprise, and some of them have proposed a solution that would confront this reality. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Judd Gregg, its ranking Republican, have offered a bill to create a bipartisan commission to examine every aspect of the budget -- taxes, defense and domestic spending, and, especially, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Congress would be required to vote promptly, up or down, on its recommendations, or come up with an alternative that would achieve at least as much in savings.

In the House, Democrat Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Republican Frank Wolf of Virginia have been pressing a similar proposal but have been regularly thwarted.

The roadblock in chief is Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. She has made it clear that her main goal is to protect Social Security and Medicare from any significant reforms. Pelosi has not forgotten how Democrats benefited from the 2005-06 fight against Bush's effort to change Social Security. Her party, which had lost elections in 2000, 2002 and 2004, found its voice and its rallying cry to "Save Social Security," and Pelosi is not about to allow any bipartisan commission to take that issue away from her control.

The price for her obduracy is being paid in the rigging of the budget process. The larger price will be paid by your children and grandchildren, who will inherit a future-blighting mountain of debt.

Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan pledge military cooperation against "Islamist extremists"

from Robert Spencer

Let's see. Afghanistan's Constitution already enshrines Islamic law as the highest law of the land. Pakistan has already allowed for Sharia in the Swat valley. And Gul's party in Turkey is a known foe of that country's secular government. So evidently these three are pledging to fight against Sharia supremacists on the one hand while giving them what they want peacefully on the other.

"Terrorism: Gul, Karzai, Zardari Pledge Military Cooperation," from ANSAmed, April 1 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, APRIL 1 - Army chiefs and intelligence officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan, led by their presidents, pledged military cooperation against Islamist extremists in Turkish-sponsored talks in Ankara on Wednesday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai met his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, in a trilateral meeting hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul at Cankaya Palace in the Turkish capital. Gul, who chaired the summit, told a joint press conference that the participation of the respective chiefs of staff, land forces commanders and senior intelligence officials was "the most important" element of the talks, the third of their kind since 2007. A joint declaration said the representatives of the three countries agreed to continue contacts "in functional and comprehensive formats on various levels." Military and intelligence officials will meet once a year as part of delegations led by foreign ministers, it added. (ANSAmed).

Citizen grand jury indicts Obama

Groups in 20 more states reviewing eligibility claims

By Bob Unruh

President Obama has been named in dozens of civil lawsuits alleging he is not eligible to be president, with one man even filing a criminal complaint alleging the commander-in-chief is a fraud, and now a citizen grand jury in Georgia has indicted the sitting president.

The indictment delivered to state and federal prosecutors yesterday is one of the developments in the dispute over Obama's eligibility to be president under the U.S. Constitution's requirement that presidents be "natural born" citizens.

Orly Taitz, a California attorney working on several of the civil actions, also announced she has filed another Quo Warranto case in the District of Columbia, where, she told WND, the statutes acknowledge that procedure.

.... "If the government does not amend the error within 40 days after being shown the error, then the four members shall refer the matter to the remainder of the grand jury," it says. "The grand jury may distrain and oppress the government in every way in their power, namely, by taking the homes, lands, possessions, and any way else they can until amends shall have been made according to the sole judgment of the grand jury."....

Report: Chinese Develop Special "Kill Weapon" to Destroy U.S. Aircraft Carriers

Advanced missile poses substantial new threat for U.S. Navy

from U. S. Naval Institute

With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned.

After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.

First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.

The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.

Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate U.S. ships and then guide the weapon, enabling it to hit moving targets.

The ASBM is said to be a modified DF-21

While the ASBM has been a topic of discussion within national defense circles for quite some time, the fact that information is now coming from Chinese sources indicates that the weapon system is operational. The Chinese rarely mention weapons projects unless they are well beyond the test stages.

If operational as is believed, the system marks the first time a ballistic missile has been successfully developed to attack vessels at sea. Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.

Along with the Chinese naval build-up, U.S. Navy officials appear to view the development of the anti-ship ballistic missile as a tangible threat.

After spending the last decade placing an emphasis on building a fleet that could operate in shallow waters near coastlines, the U.S. Navy seems to have quickly changed its strategy over the past several months to focus on improving the capabilities of its deep sea fleet and developing anti-ballistic defenses.

As analyst Raymond Pritchett notes in a post on the U.S. Naval Institute blog:

"The Navy's reaction is telling, because it essentially equals a radical change in direction based on information that has created a panic inside the bubble. For a major military service to panic due to a new weapon system, clearly a mission kill weapon system, either suggests the threat is legitimate or the leadership of the Navy is legitimately unqualified. There really aren't many gray spaces in evaluating the reaction by the Navy…the data tends to support the legitimacy of the threat."

In recent years, China has been expanding its navy to presumably better exert itself in disputed maritime regions. A recent show of strength in early March led to a confrontation with an unarmed U.S. ship in international waters.

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will

by Jeffrey Goldberg

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”

But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”

Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.”

He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

Both Israeli and American intelligence officials agree that Iran is moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability. The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said earlier this month that Iran has already “crossed the technological threshold,” and that nuclear military capability could soon be a fact: “Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.”

American officials argue that Iran has not crossed the “technological threshold”; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, said recently that Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting it differently. “The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view,” he said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, recently warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would undermine stability in the Middle East and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf.

The Obama administration agrees with Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to Middle East stability, but it also wants Israel to focus on the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, for his part, promises to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians, but he made it clear in our conversation that he believes a comprehensive peace will be difficult to achieve if Iran continues to threaten Israel, and he cited Iran’s sponsorship of such Islamist groups as Hezbollah and Hamas as a stumbling block.

Taliban Chief Vows 'Amazing' Attack on Washington 'Soon'

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — The commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that would "amaze" the world.

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday's attack on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore was retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border. ....

Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary

By Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent washingtonexaminer.com

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

The legislation is expected to come before the full House for a vote this week, and, just like the AIG bill, its scope and retroactivity trouble a number of Republicans. "It's just a bad reaction to what has been going on with AIG," Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a committee member, told me. Garrett is particularly concerned with the new powers that would be given to the Treasury Secretary, who just last week proposed giving the government extensive new regulatory authority. "This is a growing concern, that the powers of the Treasury in this area, along with what Geithner was looking for last week, are mind boggling," Garrett said.

Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who wrote the bill, told me its basic message is "you should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure." Grayson expects the bill to pass the House, and as we talked, he framed the issue in a way to suggest that virtuous lawmakers will vote for it, while corrupt lawmakers will vote against it.

"This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they're willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable," Grayson said. "We'll find out who are the people who understand that the public's money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street."

After the AIG bonus tax bill was passed, some members of the House privately expressed regret for having supported it and were quietly relieved when the White House and Senate leadership sent it to an unceremonious death. But populist rage did not die with it, and now the House is preparing to do it all again.

A bill to shift cybersecurity to White House

A bill to shift cybersecurity to White HouseForthcoming legislation would wrest cybersecurity responsibilities from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and transfer them to the White House, a proposed move that likely will draw objections from industry groups and some conservatives.

CNET News has obtained a summary of a proposal from Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that would create an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, part of the Executive Office of the President. That office would receive the power to disconnect, if it believes they’re at risk of a cyberattack, “critical” computer networks from the Internet.

Newt Gingrich: A Single Nuke Could Destroy America

(Compiler's note: This must read is frightening…. One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude — to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States — would create an EMP “overlay” that triggers a continent-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation, and communications infrastructure.

The impact has been likened to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina. Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish.Some studies estimate that 90 percent of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement, and medical infrastructures collapse.)

By: Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen

A sword of Damocles hangs over our heads. It is a real threat that has been all but ignored.

On Feb. 3, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit also can drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than 45 minutes.

Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States, given our retaliatory power.

A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim: In fact, one small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a byproduct of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the Earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.

This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.

Even as the new administration plans to spend trillions on economic bailouts, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the United States’ reluctance to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?

Fifty years ago, it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit also could have served as an ICBM.

Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.

The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation . . . can now at last achieve that dream in a matter of minutes.

Those who claim that there is little to fear from Iran or North Korea because “at best” they will have only one or two nuclear weapons ignore the catastrophic level of threat we now face from just “a couple” of nuclear weapons.

Again: One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude — to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States — would create an EMP “overlay” that triggers a continent-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation, and communications infrastructure.

Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish. The impact has been likened to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina. Some studies estimate that 90 percent of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement, and medical infrastructures collapse.

We most likely would never recover from the blow.

Two things need to be done now and without delay:

1. Make clear in the strongest of terms that, if either Iran or North Korea launches a rocket on a trajectory headed toward the territory of the United States, we will shoot it down. The risk of not doing so is beyond acceptable. And if they construe this as an act of war, so be it, for they fired the first shot. The risk of sitting back for 30 minutes and praying it is not an EMP strike is beyond acceptable, beyond rational on our part.

2. Funding for EMP defense must be a top national priority. To downgrade or halt our missile defense program, which at last is becoming viable after 25 years of research, would be an action of criminal negligence.

Surely, with such a threat confronting us, a fair and open debate, with full public access and the setting aside of partisan politics, is in order. In the meantime, a policy must be stated today that we will indeed shoot down any missile aimed towards the United States that is fired by Iran or North Korea. America’s survival, your survival, and your family’s survival might very well depend on it.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. William Forstchen is the author of "One Second After," an account of a town struggling to survive after an EMP weapon is used against the United States.

Latest Gitmo releasee: Al-Qaeda operative accused of taking part in anthrax plot

from Jihad Watch

He also was accused of aiding terrorist-charities and repeatedly meeting with Osama bin Laden. All rubbish, insists his lawyer; as for his meetings with bin Laden, well, they were all merely "chance encounters."

"U.S. Decides to Release Detainee at Guantánamo," by William Glaberson for the New York Times, March 31:

The Justice Department announced Monday that the administration had decided to release a detainee at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, a Yemeni doctor who the Bush administration once claimed had taken part in an anthrax program of Al Qaeda.

The government had backed away from the anthrax accusations but had continued to hold the detainee, Dr. Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, asserting that he had worked for a charity that had terrorist ties and that he had met with Osama bin Laden.

The decision to release Dr. Batarfi came in the third case the Obama administration has reviewed under new procedures the president put in place to analyze the cases of military detainees in preparation for closing the Guantánamo prison in Cuba.[...]

Captured in Afghanistan in 2002, Dr. Batarfi has been detained for nearly seven years. The Justice Department did not say whether Dr. Batarfi, 38, who once practiced medicine in Afghanistan, would be freed, monitored or prosecuted if another country agreed to accept him.

His lawyer, William J. Murphy of Baltimore, said that under an agreement the court case could be reopened if his client objected to the conditions of his release. Mr. Murphy said that the meetings with Mr. bin Laden had been chance encounters and that the Justice Department decision had vindicated his client...

Russia backs return to Gold Standard to solve financial crisis

(Compiler's note: See if you can read between the lines on this one. Click on the title to go and see the video)

Russia has become the first major country to call for a partial restoration of the Gold Standard to uphold discipline in the world financial system.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Arkady Dvorkevich, the Kremlin's chief economic adviser, said Russia would favour the inclusion of gold bullion in the basket-weighting of a new world currency based on Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund.

Chinese and Russian leaders both plan to open debate on an SDR-based reserve currency as an alternative to the US dollar at the G20 summit in London this week, although the world may not yet be ready for such a radical proposal.

Mr Dvorkevich said it was "logical" that the new currency should include the rouble and the yuan, adding that "we could also think about more effective use of gold in this system".

The Gold Standard was the anchor of world finance in the 19th Century but began breaking down during the First World War as governments engaged in unprecedented spending. It collapsed in the 1930s when the British Empire, the US, and France all abandoned their parities.

It was revived as part of fixed dollar system until US inflation caused by the Vietnam War and "Great Society" social spending forced President Richard Nixon to close the gold window in 1971.

The world's fiat paper currencies have lacked any external anchor ever since. It is widely argued that the financial excesses and extreme debt leverage of the last quarter century would have been impossible - or less likely - under the discipline of gold.

Russia is a major gold producer with large untapped reserves of ore so it has a clear interest in promoting the idea. The Kremlin has already instructed the central bank of gradually raise the gold share of foreign reserves to 10pc.

China's government has floated a variant of this idea, suggesting a currency based on 30 commodities along the lines of the "Bancor" proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944.

Obama courts West-haters

Plans to attend conference seeking Islamic interests

By Aaron Klein

President Obama

JERUSALEM – Concern has been mounting over President Obama's scheduled participation in the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations summit in Turkey next month, with some critics painting the organization as anti-Western and advocating Iranian interests.

"The Alliance might more appropriately be called a U.N.-approved Slush Fund for Advancing Iranian and Other Islamic Interests," wrote Claudia Rosett, a Forbes contributor and journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

A separate report by the Heritage Foundation labeled the Alliance forum "well-intentioned" but with little prospect for success due to "bias and objectionable proposals to freedom of expression." The report was titled "Why President Obama should not attend the Alliance of Civilizations forum."

Obama is reportedly due at the Alliance April 7. The organization was formed in 2005 as an offshoot of the Dialogue of Civilizations, an earlier U.N. project founded by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who is still a member of the Alliance.

Other Alliance member states or participating organizations include China; the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the Arab League; Turkey; and the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific

Organization. Not on the list is Israel.

In 2006, the Alliance released a 63-page official report largely laying blame on the West for negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam. The report only mentioned Islamic terrorism once – in its recommendations section where it suggested the Western media should not use the term terrorism.

The Western media should refrain from using certain terms in reporting on Muslims and Islam, the report recommended, "including the use of terms such as 'Islamic terrorism' and 'Islamic fascism' – [which] have contributed to an alarming increase in Islamophobia which further exacerbates Muslim fears of the West."

Jorge Sampaio, U.N. High Representative for the Alliance, declared at a press conference in Iran last year that freedom of speech should be balanced with respect for religion.

"There is a balance to be found between freedom of expression and respect for religion and for religious feelings and principles," he said.

According to Iranian state-run television, Sampaio also told Supreme Islamic Revolution Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei that Iran "has an important role to play within the Alliance of Civilizations because of its unique cultural and religious makeup."

Iran's Khatami, meanwhile, has reportedly been actively involved with shaping the Alliance agenda. Also, as Rosett pointed out, Khatami entered the U.S. in 2006 for an Alliance meeting and used his U.N.-sponsored trip to stay in the country for another two weeks, During that time he embarked on a speaking tour that saw him denounce America and keynote a Washington fundraising dinner for the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

Wrote Rosett: "From U.S. soil, thanks to an Alliance entry ticket, Khatami served broadly as a prominent spokesman for Iran's interests – just as Iran was thumbing its nose at U.S. efforts, via the U.N. Security Council, to put a stop to Tehran's pursuit of nuclear bomb fuel."

Alliance hails 'anti-Israel' Arab plan

The Alliance's 2006 report, reviewed by WND, seemed to focus disproportionately on Israel. It painted a picture that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely to blame for much of the violence in the Middle East.

The report recognizes the importance of a so-called "Arab Peace Initiative," which defenders of Israel warn would leave the Jewish state with truncated, difficult-to-defend borders and could threaten Israel's Jewish character by compelling it to accept millions of foreign Arabs.

Following scores of denials he would trumpet the plan, Obama in January hailed the Arab initiative, which offers normalization of ties with the Jewish state in exchange for extreme Israeli concessions. In an interview with an Arab television network

– his first formal interview as president – Obama stated:

"Well, here's what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. ... I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace. I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The Arab Initiative, originally proposed by King Abdullah in 2002 and later adopted by the Arab League, states that Israel would receive "normal relations" with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount.

The West Bank contains important Jewish biblical sites and borders central Israeli population centers, while the Golan Heights looks down on Israeli civilian zones and was twice used by Syria to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.

The Arab plan also demands the imposition of a non-binding U.N. resolution that calls for so-called Palestinian refugees who wish to move inside Israel to be permitted to do so at the "earliest practicable date."

Palestinians have long demanded the "right of return" for millions of "refugees," a formula Israeli officials across the political spectrum warn is code for Israel's destruction by flooding the Jewish state with millions of Arabs, thereby changing its demographics.

When Arab countries attacked the Jewish state after its creation in 1948, some 725,000 Arabs living within Israel's borders fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel. Also at that time, about 820,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries or fled following rampant persecution.

While most Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel and other countries, the majority of Palestinian Arabs have been maintained in 59 U.N.-run camps that do not seek to settle the Arabs elsewhere. There are currently about 4 million Arabs who claim Palestinian refugee status with the U.N., including children and grandchildren of the original fleeing Arabs, Arabs living full-time in Jordan, and Arabs who long ago emigrated throughout the Middle East and to the West.

U.S. Threatens Bankruptcy for GM, Chrysler

(Compiler's note: And what exactly is the Constitutional authority for this action being considered by those with absolutely not business experience? We had best wake up people -- before it is too late.)

Plan Would Separate 'Bad' and 'Good' Assets of Two Companies; Historic Intervention Carries Big Political Risk for Obama