Hillary Doubled Down on Egypt 'Apology'

 

For the second time in as many weeks, the State Department has contradicted President Barack Obama, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton re-affirmed the apologetic stance disavowed earlier this evening by the White House in reacting to the storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo by a mob of radical Egyptian Al Qaeda sympathizers on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Clinton's statements on the day's events, released through the State Department's website and Twitter feed, condemn "in the strongest possible terms" an attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya in Benghazi that left one American dead, but offer no condemnation of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo.
Instead, Clinton reiterates an apology issued earlier today by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo--now deleted--which said: "We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." 

"The U.S. deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," Clinton said. "Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation," she added.

However, the White House has distanced itself from such apologies, according to Politico, saying that they were not "cleared by Washington."

Evidently, there is some discord in Washington.

Last week, the State Department contradicted the President when it reiterated its position that the U.S. does not consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
President Obama was reported to have intervened with the Democratic Party leadership during the Democratic National Convention to re-insert language supporting Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
However, Politico reported--and then quietly scrubbed--the fact that President Obama had likely insisted on the change, after a controversy on his administration's evolving Jerusalem policy.

Regardless, at the end of the week the State Department and the White House found themselves at odds--just as they do today over the apology to Egypt for the attack on the U.S. embassy on 9/11.

Obama Regime Throws Itself Under The Bus, Disavows Apology For Mohammed Film…

The gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Wait, can I call them a “gang” or is that racist?

Via Politico:

The White House is disavowing a statement from their own Cairo embassy that apologized for anti-Muslim activity in the United States.
“The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government,” a senior administration official told POLITICO.
The U.S. embassy in Cairo put out a statement early Tuesday that apologized for an anti-Muslim film being circulated by an Israeli-American real estate developer.
“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions,” the embassy said in a statement published online.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the film depicts the Muslim prophet Muhammed as a “womanizer, pedophile and fraud” — depiction bound to offend many Muslims.
The embassy came under widespread criticism for failing to defend free speech in the face of threats of violence. Egyptian protesters rioted anyway, breaching the embassy walls and tearing down the American flag.

So How Do Islamic Radicals Celebrate 9-11?

They attack a few U.S. embassies, of course.

As I set forth below, Islamic radicals are clearly ascendant in the Middle East. The Arab Spring has been the victory of Salafi radicals. And as I pointed out, Egypt has already taken the first big steps down the path towards a theocracy followed by Iran in 1979. So, shades of 1979, it is no surprise that our diplomatic posts in both Cairo and Libya were attacked on 9-11. The ostensible reason for the attacks was that some private U.S. citizens, Egyptian ex-pats, made a video criticizing Islam.

In Cairo:

Mainly ultraconservative protesters [read Salafi / Wahhabi Islamists and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood] climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Egypt's capital Tuesday and brought down the American flag, replacing it with a black Islamist flag to protest a U.S.-produced film attacking the Prophet Muhammad. . . .

The unrest in Cairo began when hundreds of protesters marched to the downtown embassy, gathering outside its walls and chanting against the movie and the U.S. "Say it, don't fear: Their ambassador must leave," the crowd chanted. Dozens of protesters then scaled the embassy walls, and several went into the courtyard and took down the flag from a pole. They brought it back to the crowd outside, which tried to burn it, but failing that tore it apart. The protesters on the wall then raised on the flagpole a black flag with a Muslim declaration of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet." The flag, similar to the banner used by Al Qaeda, is commonly used by ultraconservatives around the region. The crowd grew throughout the evening with thousands standing outside the embassy, chanting "Islamic, Islamic. The right of our prophet will not die." A group of women in black veils and robes that left only their eyes exposed chanted, "Worshippers of the Cross, leave the Prophet Muhammad alone." Dozens of riot police lined up along the embassy walls but did not stop protesters from climbing the wall. . . .

Instead of responding with outrage, not merely at the protests, but the failure of the new Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo to protect our embassy, the response from the Obama administration's State Department essentially 'apologized for blasphemy' by a person who has every right to free speech in the U.S.:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions,. . . Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

That is utterly disgusting in its apologetic tone and counterproductive for its failure to defend Americans' freedoms. Moreover, it completely fails to hold the Egyptian government to account for their failure to defend the Embassy.

Update: I couldn't agree more with this response from Charles Krauthammer:



 Advice to Obama: To stiffen your spine, imagine these were Tea Partiers instead of Islamic fundamentalists who hate America and all it stands for. Funny, but based all too much on reality.

Obama Campaign Forced To Respond To Dinesh D’Souza Film

If there’s one thing absolutely no one in the Obama campaign is used to, it’s scrutiny of Obama’s past and his record. They’re used to a compliant media that reports everything with positive spin while ignoring anything that might make Obama look bad.
So imagine their surprise when Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary film 2016: Obama’s America became the sleeper hit of the summer and then went on to become one of the most successful documentary films in America. One could argue that the success of D’Souza’s film is partly based on the fact that the American people know that the media has been protecting Obama for years. They want to know the truth and there is no greater threat to the myth of Obama than that.
People in the Obama campaign likely hoped that the film would be a flash in the pan and that by the time the conventions dominated the news cycle, the film would quietly go away. The fact that they’re responding to the movie after the DNC is proof positive that they were dead wrong.
The following story was published in The Hollywood Reporter today…

Filmmakers call it “the movie the White House doesn’t want you to see.” Apparently, they’re right.
Perhaps the president was hoping 2016: Obama’s America would come and go unnoticed like so many other political documentaries. But seven weeks after its opening, the film is still going strong, prompting Barack Obama to finally respond, which he has done through a lengthy entry at his campaign’s website that calls the movie “a deliberate distortion” of his “record and world view.”
The entry at BarackObama.com quotes from several negative reviews of the film and claims Dinesh D’Souza, who stars in the film based on his book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, has a “long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering and flat-out falsehoods.”
The entry is dated Sept. 5, just ahead of the weekend in which 2016: Obama’s America became the second-highest-grossing political documentary in history, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11, and the sixth-biggest documentary of any kind. The movie has earned $26 million domestically since opening July 13.

          Among the movie’s inaccuracies, according to BarackObama.com:

1. “D’Souza falsely claimed that President Obama said he didn’t believe in American Exceptionalism.”
2. “D’Souza falsely asserted that President Obama funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration even though numerous fact checkers and reporters have noted that President Obama had nothing to do with the loan.”
3. “D’Souza falsely charged that President Obama backed Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber only weeks after the Obama administration had put out a statement opposing Scotland’s decision.”
4. “D’Souza even claimed that President Obama passed the bank bailouts when the facts clearly show that it was President Bush who signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program into law in October 2008.”

The film, which its marketers dubbed, “the movie the White House doesn’t want you to see,” was in 2,017 theaters during the weekend and is expected to be on the same number this coming weekend.

For good measure, the website entry also bashes some of Obama’s harshest critics: Tea Partiers.
“It should say enough about D’Souza’s credibility that a movie catering to the Tea Party attacks someone for allegedly ‘anti-colonial’ views,” the entry reads. “His attempts to hide his lies behind pseudo-scholarly presentation and glossy production values cannot withstand basic scrutiny. The facts show that 2016: Obama’s America is nothing more than an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks.”

Notice that the four rebuttals given by the Obama campaign all begin with the filmmaker’s last name. That’s no accident, in fact it’s pure Alinsky. Since Dinesh D’Souza presents a threat to Obama, he must be attacked and discredited.
Try as they may, the Obama campaign will never get this genie back into the bottle. Their weak and late response to the film is an admission of its power.

America owes a debt of gratitude to Dinesh D’Souza. He did more real reporting in a 90 minute documentary film than the MSM has done since the run-up to the 2008 election.
BREAKING UPDATE: DINESH D’SOUZA RESPONDS TO OBAMA CAMPAIGN

BREAKING… EXCLUSIVE: Dinesh D’Souza is the conservative author of the best-seller The Roots Of Obama’s Rage which was the basis for the #2 political documentary of all time 2016 Obama’s America. He is also its co-director. He answers today’s slam on the film by the Obama-Biden campaign, which comes just as the movie is hot in battleground states and its producers are looking for a network to air it before the November election. D’Souza attacks the mainstream media for “refusing” coverage:
DEADLINE: What is your reaction to today’s Obama-Biden campaign slam of 2016 Obama’s America??
DINESH D’SOUZA: “I welcome Obama’s critique of the film. He has probably figured out that he cannot ignore it any longer. Obama’s response is a characteristic mix of name calling and false allegations. Some of the claims he makes refer to things that are not even in the film. Elsewhere Obama just gets it wrong. For example, he disputes that he funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration. In reality, Obama has given billions of dollars not only to Brazil but also to Columbia and Mexico to drill for oil. On March 19, 2011, Obama gave a speech in Brazil in which he deplored the legacy of colonialism, promised technology and support for Brazilian energy development, and concluded “when you are ready to start selling we want to be one of your best customers”. The facts in the film stand up very well to the closest scrutiny. I think people should see 2016 and make up their own minds.

Judicial Committee Holding a Hearing Wednesday on Obama’s Serial Abuses of Power

Well, wow. Some of us have been asking all year when Republicans were going to address the pressing issue of Obama’s flagrant,  extra constitutional, executive overreach.
Today is the day.

Subject: The Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power
Wednesday 9/12/2012 – 10:00 a.m.
2141 Rayburn House Office Building
Full Committee
By Direction of the Chairman
Hearing Documentation

StgNews reported:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, Senator Mike Lee, a former Constitutional lawyer and Supreme Court law clerk, will testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled “The Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power.” The hearing will highlight the numerous ways in which the Obama Administration and the Justice Department have overstepped the Constitution’s limitations on Executive power.

The abuses being examined will be:

1: Asserting the power to suspend the application of Congressionally-enacted laws
2: Evading the Senate’s Advice and Consent power
3: Repeatedly making regulations for which it lacks authority
4: Flouting Congress’s oversight function
5: Trampling individual rights under the Constitution

We’ll see if anything comes out of this.

Under Obama, 11,327 Pages of Federal Regulations Added

Over the past three years, the bound edition of the Code of Federal Regulations has increased by 11,327 pages – a 7.4 percent increase from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2011. In 2009, the increase in the number of pages was the most over the last decade – 3.4 percent or 5,359 pages.
Over the past decade, the federal government has issued almost 38,000 new final rules, according to the draft of the 2011 annual report to Congress on federal regulations by the Office of Management and Budget. That brought the total at the end of 2011 to 169,301 pages.
That is more than double the number of pages needed to publish the regulations back in 1975 when the bound edition consisted of 71,244 pages.
The figures were released on Monday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., when the business federation held its annual Labor Day briefing on the state of the economy, obstacles to job creation and the burden of regulations on the labor market.
Randy Johnson, senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, distributed a handout of a Congressional Research Service analysis of a 2008 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration that estimated the annual compliance price for all federal regulations at $1.7 trillion that year.
Seventy percent of the regulations were economic, accounting for $1.236 trillion of the annual cost. The other regulations were, in order of cost, environment regulations ($281 billion), tax compliance ($160 billion) and occupational safety and health and homeland security ($75 billion).
“I think these kinds of figures, if you put yourself in the place of a business person you’ll find them fairly mindboggling,” Johnson said.
Economists with the Chamber also analyzed the OBM’s report on the study, calculating that if every U.S. household paid an equal share of the federal regulatory burden, it would mean a $15,586 tab for each household in 2008.
Ronald Bird, economist with the USCC, told CNSNews.com that the 7.4 percent increase in pages of regulations during the first three years of the Obama administration is higher than the increase over the first three years of the George W. Bush administration (2001, 2002, and 2003) when the publication grew by 4.4 percent.