For Barack Obama, 'Defending Islam' Now Supersedes Our Constitution

Some pictures really are worth a thousand words.

The man above being taken in by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies for an 'interview' in the dead of night from his Cerritos, California home is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Egyptian Coptic Christian allegedly behind the film 'The Innocence of Muslims' that the Obama Administration is seizing on as the spontaneous cause of the riots in the Muslim World that resulted in the death of four Americans at the U.S. consulate. And never mind that even the perpetrators are denying it, and that the coordinated attacks were obviously planned in advance.

In pursuit of selling this White House narrative, something insidious has happened.

The Muslim Brotherhood governments in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Islamist voices elsewhere have been calling for legal prosecution in America of those behind making this execrable film, which consists of little more than a few amateurish YouTube segments.

In the world they live in, the police showing up on someone's doorstep in the middle of the night to take them in for questioning has an entirely different meaning and context then it does to us. To the eyes of the Muslim world, the U.S. is beginning to enforce the blasphemy laws to exempt Islam from criticism that they have been so pushing hard for in the United Nations and other international forums.

President Obama famously said both in his 2009 interview with al-Arabiya and in his speech in Cairo in front of the Muslim Brotherhood that he regarded it as one of his chief duties as president to defend Islam and "to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

This president has now gone beyond merely appeasing Islam to prosecuting its blasphemy laws for it against the infidels as a craven response to violence and murder. And that's exactly how the Muslim world will see it.

As an added bit of lagniappe, you might remember that just two months ago, Thomas Perez, the Obama Department of Justice's Assistant Attorney general refused to deny that the Obama Administration would seek to criminalize any criticism of Islam, a highly relevant question in view of some of his own remarks on the subject:



Does anyone seriously doubt that there will be an attempt to legalize enforcement of the Islamic world's blasphemy laws here in America in President Obama's second term, should he be re-elected?

Whatever the virtues or faults of this shoddily produced film, it is definitely constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. Over the years, the Supreme Court has only defined limits on free speech where it contains a direct call for violence against others ( the Qu'ran, by the way, fails this test) or when it constitutes an immediate and clear danger to others ( the famed 'shouting fire in a crowded theater' argument so loved by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes).

The Last Temptation of Christ was a mainstream movie that was far more blasphemous and angering to Christians than this collection of YouTube skits is for Muslims, yet no one even suggested having law enforcement arrest the film maker and take him in for an 'interview'. This is about appeasement and fear. And it will only up the ante next time.

President Obama has been notable in his cavalier disregard for our Constitution, but this is something new and very dangerous.

Will the American people allow it to stand? We'll see.

Why Is Obama So Quiet about the Chicago Teachers’ Strike?

Why has President Obama been so hushed about this week’s Chicago teachers’ strike? Clearly he has been distracted, what with the unspeakable tragedy of the murder of four Americans in Libya — Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, technology officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods — and the ensuing deadly chaos across the Middle East. Obama also had to jet off the day after the carnage in Benghazi for a fundraiser . . . in Las Vegas. Further campaigning followed.

All of that aside, Obama has had very good reasons for pretending that children in the Windy City are learning as much (or as little) as usual right now.

Obama is pinned between a boulder and a sword. If he sides with the teachers’ union, he will alienate regular Americans in the private sector, 93.1 percent of whom are non-union members. Many of them stay busy every morning taking their children to school. They have little sympathy for a union that is making life very inconvenient for parents who suddenly don’t know where to drop off their kids as they go to work, not to mention that their sons and daughters are learning nothing while the strike grinds on.

The teachers’ union’s demands are absurd and offensive. They were offered 4 percent raises for each of the next four years, but this was not good enough. Which employee anywhere can boast such a pay hike, when some 23 million Americans would love to get off of their sofas and earn any paychecks at all? The teachers union is thoroughly out of touch, especially in a town with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, a full 1 percentage point above the national figure. Lots of college graduates who have moved back in with their parents would love to fill those jobs, and at much lower starting salaries than the $71,000 that a typical Chicago teacher earns annually.

Rather than simply show gratitude for their very generous salaries and benefits, the striking instructors also oppose report cards for teachers. Imagine that: teachers against report cards! If teachers can judge and grade their students, why on Earth should they not be evaluated and graded, so that pupils, parents, and principals can reward and learn from the good ones, improve those who fall short, and dismiss those who cannot do their jobs? What part of this makes no sense?

If Obama stands up for the teachers’ union, however, he will seem as greedy, rigid, and insulated as they are. But if he opposes the unions, he risks alienating his Big Labor base. Obama already has angered the union bosses by failing to deliver on his promises to pass a “card check” measure that would have scuttled secret ballots in union elections. He also did bupkis to try to help the unions recall Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. That expensive effort failed, and a little help from Obama might have turned that situation around for Big Labor. A third cold shoulder from Obama could lead the unions and their millions of activists to stay home in November, rather knock on doors, man phone banks, and otherwise deliver the Democratic vote.
Obama’s uncharacteristic quietude throughout this controversy recalls the immortal words of Voltaire. At his deathbed in 1778, a priest invited him to reject Satan and embrace God. Replied Voltaire: “Now is no time to be making new enemies.”

American diplomats were warned 3 days prior to attack

CNN:

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.
Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.
He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn't good for international business.
"The situation is frightening, it scares us," Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.
Mabrouk said it was not the first time he has warned foreigners about the worsening security situation in the face of the growing presence of armed jihadist groups in the Benghazi area.

That in sharp contrast to what the White House was saying on Friday, as CNN also reports:

The White House said Friday there was no indication before the attack in Libya this week that something was in the works beforehand.
"We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said.
The comment came as a top Libyan official and some within Congress and other aspects of the U.S. government said there are signs now that the attack on the consulate that killed the ambassador and three other Americans was not a spontaneous outgrowth of a mob angered by an anti-Muslim film.

The Libyan President joins that chorus:

Libya's president says he believes al-Qaida is behind a deadly attack in eastern Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. staffers.
In an exclusive interview with NPR in Benghazi, President Mohammed el-Megarif says foreigners infiltrated Libya over the past few months, planned the attack and used Libyans to carry it out.
...
Megarif says that over the past few months, foreigners took advantage of the security vacuum and flowed into the country from Mali and Algeria. I ask if this attack was over an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent protests across the Muslim world. He shakes his head.
"The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous," he says. "We firmly believe that this was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate."
The attackers used the protesters outside the consulate as a cover, he says.
"The intention was there from the beginning, for it to take this ugly barbaric, criminal form," he says.
Megarif claims evidence shows that some elements of Ansar al-Sharia, an extremist group in eastern Benghazi, were used as tools by foreign citizens with ties to al-Qaida to attack the consulate and threaten Libya's stability.

At what point will the United States government come to the same conclusion?
And at what point will Obama's skipping nearly 50% of his intelligence briefs come into play?

Left-wing print media is bleeding out as we speak.

Via Henry Blodget's left-wing e-pub Business Insider comes this heartening news:

This chart shows inflation-adjusted newspaper advertising revenue over the past 60 years... Thanks to the precipitous decline in the last ~7 years, the industry is now back to where we it was in 1950. And it's only slightly better off when you factor in online revenue.

Journalism professor Jay Rosen of NYU observes that the peak year was the one in which blogging software first appeared.

So bloggers killed the newspaper star?

Oh, the humanity.