Articles from Alan Jones

James Comey makes the government safe for corruption

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD July 6, 2016

It is times like this that words almost fail me, but, thinking about FBI Director James Comey, “coward,” “disgrace” and “cheap political hack” come to mind.

Other words like “hypocrite” and “double standard” are, in this case, equally appropriate.

The FBI investigated Hillary Clinton for alleged violations of U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, subsection (f):

“Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer- Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

On national television, Comey, describing his reasons for not charging Hillary Clinton with a crime, said:

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. ”

First and foremost, U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 subsection (f) says nothing about “intent” as a requirement for indictment.

Secondly, recalling my days in the US Army Reserve for which I had a security clearance, the classified computer system (SIPRNet) was neither connected to nor interactive with non-classified systems. Moving information from SIPRNet to a non-classified computer system was both a violation of U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 and could only be done physically and intentionally using a portable storage device like a thumb drive.

Somebody had to move that classified information, physically and intentionally, from the State Department’s classified system for delivery to Hillary Clinton’s non-classified account.

Will anyone be prosecuted or does everything surrounding this case get swept under the rug?

And what is the difference between the “extreme carelessness” that Comey claims Hillary Clinton demonstrated and the “gross negligence” described in U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 subsection (f)?

And why didn’t Comey let the “prosecutors” in the Department of Justice decide not to indict rather than FBI, which really isn’t its role in the legal system?

Comey followed his appalling excuse for inaction with what one could consider an outright lie, stating:

“In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

There was just such a similar case less than a year ago.

On its own website, dated July 29, 2015, the FBI boasts about the conviction of a Folsom California Naval Reservist, who was convicted and sentenced after pleading guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials:

“According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.”

Does that not sound like, in substance, what Hillary Clinton and her subordinates did?

Comey’s decision was nothing less than politically-motivated malfeasance, that is, the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.

Thanks to Comey, it should now be clear to all thoughtful Americans that the US Government, as an institution, is hopelessly corrupt, unaccountable to the people and unconstrained by the rule of law.

Comey obviously concurs with and has aptly demonstrated that the political elite are immune from prosecution regardless of the damage done to our national security and the Constitution, specifically the concept of equal justice under the law.

James Comey has secured his place in US History.

America has a new Benedict Arnold.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Advice for SecDef Ashton Carter’s cyber warfare recruitment program
by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD June 26, 2016

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In order to quickly address urgent issues facing the military, you sometimes have to be willing to rock the boat, bend the rules and push the envelope; but more importantly, you must have the ability to identify innovative solutions and the practical means to implement them.

In my civilian career with IBM, I learned that innovation is the intersection of inspiration and invention, that is, ideas coupled with action.

As one part of his “Force of the Future” initiative, most of which I do not endorse, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has asked Congress for changes in existing laws to facilitate the Pentagon’s quest for talent in specialized areas such as cyber warfare, including:

– Let cyber and other technical experts join the military at higher ranks than fresh-faced second lieutenants right out of ROTC, something only doctors can do today;

– Let DoD hire talented graduates as Pentagon civilians fresh out of school, without going through the usual civil service rigmarole of USAjobs.gov;

– Let military officers take non-standard assignments, such as going to graduate school, without being penalized for it when they’re up for promotion;

– Let Carter and future secretaries waive provisions of the landmark Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) to address shortages in crucial skills.

Although none of these ideas is new, they all face an uphill battle against bureaucracy, tradition, and long-established statute.

The effort may have merit as long as the program is used to recruit genuine specialists and not merely provide an alternative means of employing political hacks.

Perhaps a personal anecdote might provide some comfort to Secretary Carter in his effort to upgrade the military personnel system.

When I assumed command of the US Army Reserve Medical Support Unit (MSU) in Heidelberg, Germany in June 2006, I was faced with a similar problem, albeit on a smaller scale.

The MSU was in a virtual permanent non-mobilization, non-deployable state because, among other deficiencies, the unit could never recruit enough doctors to fill its required number of allocated positions. And the prospects for even finding available American military physicians in Europe remained bleak.

The innovative solution we identified was to recruit Army Reserve physicians from the continental United States, “attaching” them to the MSU, rather than assigning them.

The key to the recruitment process, however, was offering the physicians and other medical personnel, opportunities for unique and professionally-rewarding training experiences.

That second component proved to be the most challenging aspect of the recruitment process because we were met with enormous bureaucratic resistance throughout the chain of command, which ultimately required us to rock the boat, bend the rules and push the envelope; all of which created considerable consternation within the bureaucracy, and, as the MSU commander, made me something of a pariah at the general officer level.

Nevertheless, we succeeded in attracting a wide variety of medical personnel, even a veterinarian, an expertise we found to be critical to our efforts in Africa.

Beginning from the Summer of 2006, the MSU participated in three missions to Africa (Benin, Mali and Niger), one multinational exercise in Germany (December 2007) and one joint, multinational exercise in the Republic of Georgia (Immediate Response 2008, July – August 2008). The mission to Mali in August-September 2007 was a joint (US Air Force, US Army Reserve) medical, dental and veterinarian humanitarian deployment with Special Operations Command Europe.

In addition, the MSU provided Combat Life-Saver Training throughout Europe to over 3,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine personnel.

Word quickly spread that the MSU was offering meaningful real-world training opportunities and between 2006 and 2008 the unit increased its strength from 60% to over 150%, improving both its recruitment and retention, and was for the first time in its recent history fully manned and deployable.

Secretary Carter may be buoyed by our experience and what became the MSU motto – “The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.”

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Obama’s support of radical Islam and the rise of ISIS

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD June 18, 2016

The foreign policy for dealing with radical Islam pursued by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can best be described as the intersection of ideology and incompetence.

Obama’s “amore” for radical Islam began in 2009, soon after his inauguration, when he ordered his administration not to support the Iranian Green Revolution after thousands of brave Iranian democracy protesters rose up against the brutal Khamenei regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “Obama administration officials at the time were working behind the scenes with the Sultan of Oman to open a channel to Tehran. The potential for talks with Iran-and with Mr. Khamenei as the ultimate arbiter of any nuclear agreement,” one that would prove to be a national security disaster for the US. As it turned out, Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement only strengthen the hard-liners; since completion of the agreement, Tehran has stepped up arrests of political opponents.

In 2010, Obama ordered his advisors to produce a secret report, later known as Presidential Study Directive-11 (PSD-11), which concluded that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting stable but authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa to one backing, what Obama Administration officials considered groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish AK Party, now led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as a so-called “moderate” alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a Sunni Islamist religious, political and social movement, whose fundamental goal remains Islam’s global domination and the implementation of Sharia. Although the Muslim Brotherhood uses political instruments more than violence, its radical goals are no different from al-Qaeda and ISIS.

It has long been suspected that Obama, not only supports the Muslim Brotherhood, but that his administration is infiltrated by the Brotherhood, including Hillary Clinton’s long-serving assistant, Huma Abedin, who has enjoyed an intensely close relationship with the Islamist organization for decades.

Therein rests the motivation for the policies formulated and actions taken by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Egypt, Libya and Syria, all of which led to the growth of radical Islam in North Africa and the Middle East.

The Tunisian revolution in December 2010 and the rise of the Islamist Ennahda Movement in that country was quickly followed by the Cairo protests that began on January 25, 2011 under the direction of Egypt’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. The protests and associated violence led to the resignation on February 11, 2011 of long-time US ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. There are now a number of reports indicating the US cooperated with and attempted to sustain the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, including an alleged Brotherhood agent inside the US Embassy in Cairo.

Violent regime change in support of radical Islam began in earnest on February 15, 2011, when a rebellion broke out in Benghazi, Libya against the authoritarian regime of Muammar Qaddafi. Toppling Qaddafi had long been a goal of Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the local Libyan al-Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a key player in the anti-Qaddafi rebellion.

Within a few weeks of the outbreak of fighting in eastern Libya, Obama has signed a secret order authorizing a covert CIA operation to support Islamist rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Both inside and outside the Obama administration, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among the most vocal early proponents of using U.S. military force to unseat Qaddafi. Seven months and thousands of more unnecessary deaths later, in October 2011, after an extended military campaign with sustained Western support, Islamist rebel forces conquered the country and shot Qaddafi dead. Many will recall Hillary Clinton, on October 20, 2011, cackling to a TV news reporter over the death of Qaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Since then, Libya has been in a constant state of chaos, with factional infighting, no uniting leader and has provided a haven for ISIS and other Islamic terrorists; culminating in the September 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi and the death of four Americans.

In released, but redacted emails, Hillary Clinton expressed interest in arming Libyan opposition groups using private security contractors. In an April 8, 2011 email to her then-deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, Clinton wrote: “FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered.” It now appears probable that, in 2011, at Clinton’s urging, Obama secretly approved the arming of rebels in Libya and, later Syria by the same method, via a third party, likely Qatar, who had brokered the sale of more than $100 million in crude oil from rebel-held areas.

The rise of ISIS can be directly linked to the power vacuum left after the premature withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in December 2011 and fueled by American abdication of a foreign policy in Syria, where we sub-contracted our interests to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Not surprisingly, those countries pursued their own interests; the Saudis supporting radical Islamic Salafists, while the Turks and Qataris backed the Muslim Brotherhood.

By the summer of 2012, Turkey, together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, had constructed a fully operational secret command and control center to facilitate communications and the movement of weapons to the Syrian rebel groups. The center in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 100 km (60 miles) from the Syrian border, was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it. Adana is home to Incirlik, a large Turkish/U.S. air force base which Washington has used in the past for reconnaissance and military logistics operations. Adana is in close proximity to the Turkish port of Iskenderun, a major transit point for arms destined for the Syrian rebels.

It is important to note that Obama’s friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a Sunni Islamist, a vehement opponent of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and a fervent supporter of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

Assad has placed emphasis on controlling northwest Syria, which safeguards his Shia-Alawite home region and his base of support, as well as securing the strategically critical coastal area containing the Latakia airbase used by Russian forces and the important port of Tartus – a situation that has largely left eastern Syria along the Iraq border open for Islamist exploitation.

A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report sent to Hillary Clinton and other administration officials in August 2012 and declassified in May 2015, stated that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (Al- Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and being supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.”

The report goes into detail about how the West was actively helping those opposition groups control the eastern border of Syria near the Iraqi province of Anbar and the strategic city of Mosul, both of which eventually came under control of ISIS.

The stupidity of Obama’s ideological and Muslim Brotherhood-centric policy in dealing with radical Islam is only exceeded by the galactic incompetence in which it was carried out, and has left us living in a more dangerous world.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Orlando and radical Islam: How you defeat an ideology

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD June 14, 2016

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In order to lessen the likelihood of terrorist attacks like Orlando, San Bernardino and the Boston Marathon and eliminate radical Islam as an existential threat to the United States, we must, first and foremost, defeat the prevailing Islamo-Marxist ideology within our own government and the willing accomplices who sustain it by willful blindness to the danger we face.

If you are still asking the question: how can Orlando happen?

Ask no more.

Stated simply, it is a sad truth that there are people in national leadership positions, who don’t want America to win or who don’t care much if we lose, as long as they can somehow preserve their own personal power and profit.

It is not a question of politics. It is an issue of patriotism.

The United States faces an assault by a global conspiracy, a marriage of convenience between two totalitarian ideologies, radical Islam and the political left. They have been brought together by the traits they share; their hatred of Western civilization and a commitment to the destruction of capitalistic, Judeo-Christian-based democracy.

In part, Orlando happens because the federal government practices Sharia, deliberately downplaying the menace of radical Islam and intentionally stripping law enforcement of its ability to directly counter the threat.

Kerry Picket of the Daily Caller asks: could the FBI’s purge of training material relating to Islamic terrorism have led to the agency dropping the ball on Florida nightclub shooter Omar Mateen?

The FBI’s training on handling possible Islamic terror suspects was turned upside down five years ago, when the Obama administration began a purge of training material that would remove references to Islam that Muslim subject matter experts, hired by the Justice Department, found offensive.

It is also fair question to ask, whether the conditions for and the handling of the Orlando attack were affected by the Obama Administration’s relentless attacks on the nation’s police officers and criminal-justice system, routinely and repeatedly charging that cops and the courts are awash in racial bias and Islamophobia?

The Islamic terrorist and registered Democrat Mateen was a US citizen of Afghan decent, who pledged his allegiance to ISIS and between 2011 and 2012 traveled to Saudi Arabia for Umrah, a

Muslim religious pilgrimage. He was investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 for inflammatory statements and his link to Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an American radical who traveled to Syria and committed a suicide bombing.

Yet, according to recent reports, Mateen was a repeat visitor at Orlando gay nightclub before his killing spree, occasionally got drunk, may have been gay and used the gay dating and chat application Jack’d.

In the apple not falling far from the tree department, Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of the mass murderer, is a supporter of the Afghan Taliban with his own internet program, where he made radical anti-LGBT statements.

Was the murderer Mateen’s motive religious or political or both? Does it matter? I don’t think so.

In part, Orlando happens because radical Islam thinks it is winning. How many ISIS recruits would there be if they were doing the dying instead of us?

Practically speaking, the religious extremism and brutality of ISIS is not unlike that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.

At the onset of World War II, the ordinary American Marine and soldier were unprepared for the fanaticism and cruelty of the Japanese Army.

Eugene B. Sledge, in his celebrated memoir “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa,” describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths.

An ideology is a system of ideas, but ideas don’t kill people, Islamists kill people.

You may not be able to eradicate an ideology, but you can certainly exterminate those who violently wield that ideology against you.

Like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the ideology of radical Islam has little chance to thrive, if there are few left eager to practice it.

It also obviates the need for winning any hearts and minds.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Family Security Matters

Help us Obi Wan Romney, you’re our only hope

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD June 9, 2016

Jay Cost, a writer for the Weekly “NeverTrump” Standard, penned an article begging Mitt Romney to run for president as an independent candidate in 2016.

According to Mr. Cost, at this critical juncture in our nation’s history, the country needs not a Washington, Jefferson or a Lincoln, but – brace yourself – a Martin van Buren.

Well, if it is a Martin van Buren you are seeking, then I guess Mitt Romney is your guy; a man who lost the Republican nomination to John McCain in 2008 and, after securing the nomination in 2012, proceeded to lose an eminently winnable election against a feeble Barack Obama, only by exceeding that feebleness, running a campaign of monumental timidity.

If Donald Trump describes himself as a counter-puncher, Romney can aptly be labeled as the Democrat Party designated punching bag.

Mr. Cost defines America as not bound by a shared nationality, religion, or even geography, but a commitment to certain ideals-that all people are created equal, endowed by God with inalienable rights, and that government is instituted to secure these blessings.

He says that Neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton is committed to the republican tradition of government of the people, by the people, and for all the people.

Well, Mr. Cost, neither has our de facto one-party government, to which you seem devoted, recommending the problem as the solution.

As elegantly expressed by Angelo Codevilla, country club Republicans have joined the Democrat Party ruling class to form an oligarchy, a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; the Democrat and Republican establishments, the media and their financiers, who every four years hire a President.

The United States already has a bona fide ruling class that transcends government, sees itself as distinct from the rest of society and as the only element that may act on its behalf. The ruling class considers those who resist it as having no moral or intellectual right, and, only reluctantly, any civil right to do so.

Republican leaders neither contest that view nor vilify their Democrat counterparts because they do not want to challenge the ruling class, they want to join it. The GOP leadership has gradually solidified its choice to no longer represent what had been its constituency, but to adopt the identity of junior partners in the ruling class. By repeatedly passing bills that contradict the views of Republican voters, the leadership has made political orphans of millions of Americans, while Republican leaders increasingly represent only themselves.

The differences between the Bushes, Clintons, Obamas and, yes, Mitt Romney are of degree, not kind.

What our elected representatives and their appointees have conveniently forgotten is that the federal government is entirely a creature of the Constitution. It is a government of delegated powers, possessing no authority not expressly or by implication granted to it by the instrument that created it (Albert H. Putney. “United States Constitution, State Constitutions, Statutory Law.” 1910).

The efficiency and effectiveness of government, therefore, are directly dependent upon the trustworthiness of government officials as representatives and executors of the views and desires of the people.

In other words, whenever the interests of government officials divert from or are in conflict with those of the people, tyranny ensues.

Today the federal government has become an entity unto itself operating outside of Constitutional constraints and unaccountable to the American people.

Both parties have used campaign deception, practiced political expediency, engaged in crony capitalism and, when necessary, promoted voter fraud to sustain the corrupt status quo.

The 2016 election is not a contest between Democrat and Republican candidates or liberals and conservatives, but a battle between the entrenched power of a bipartisan political-media establishment versus the rights and liberties of the American people.

Revealing the extent and depth of the endemic corruption in Washington, D.C. is the first, essential step toward restoring the Constitution and the rule of law.

Perhaps that is the “intemperance” the establishment really fears.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

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This article is not meant to, or intended to be interpreted as a political endorsement, or lack thereof, of any political candidate. Family Security Matters takes no political point of view whatsoever.

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD May 31, 2016

Charles Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the National Review, says that Donald Trump “is unfit to be president in ways that apply to no other candidate of the two major political parties throughout American history.”

Wow. I wonder if Murray has been in a vegetative state for the last eight years.

And just who are these Republican establishment “angels” Mr. Murray prefers to Trump?

He doesn’t say, but he seems to favor the hopelessly corrupt Hillary Clinton as a reasonable alternative, who, according to Murray, tells lies within “normal parameters.”

I suppose those “normal parameter” lies include Benghazi, “Clinton Cash,” the potentially felonious email scandal or her Avogadro’s number of other lies.

Since January 20, 2009, the executive branch of the federal government has been composed of people who do not believe that United States should be a strong, sovereign, capitalistic- and Judeo-Christian-based constitutional republic.

If Barack Obama was the perpetrator, the two major political parties have been his willing accomplices, facilitating the most divisive, destructive and deceitful administration in American history.

Both the Democrat and Republican parties comprise what can now only be described as an anti-American establishment, both of whom have fostered policies pernicious to the well-being of the country, one in the pursuit of totalitarianism, the other to become beneficiaries of globalist greed.

If the Democrat Party has adopted an Islamo-Marxist agenda, the Republican Party has eagerly become a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate lobbyists and international financial interests.

The Democrat Party is controlled by the radical left and Islamic sympathizers, whose messianic goals can only be achieved by attacking the basis of Western Judeo-Christian civilization, which emphasizes the uniqueness and sacredness of the individual. While Islamic radicals seek to impose Sharia by purging the world of heresies and of the infidels who practice them, leftist radicals seek to purge society of the vices allegedly spawned by capitalism — those being racism, sexism, imperialism, and income inequality.

The Republican establishment, by contrast, is simply willing to sell-out the country to the highest international bidder and considers American workers as little more than farm animals.

To maintain control of a timid citizenry, both Democrats and Republicans foster a culture of dependency. Democrats create dependency by expanding federal mandates and increasing entitlements. Republicans promote dependency by limiting voter choice, as Murray recommends.

There is already a long history of Republican collaboration with the Obama Administration, but the political degeneration has reached new depths of absurdity.

Here is the list of 43 Republican members of the US House of Representatives who supported Obama’s transgender edicts and are willing to mandate by law that grown men should be permitted to share dressing rooms, locker rooms, or bathrooms with little girls:

Amash (Mich., third congressional district), Brooks, S. (Ind., 5), Coffman (Colo., 6), Costello (Penn., 6), Curbelo (Fla., ), Davis, R. (Ill., 13), Denham (Calif., 10), Dent (Penn., 15), Diaz-Balart (Fla., 25), Dold (Ill., 10), Donovan (N.Y., 11), Emmer (Minn., 6), Fitzpatrick (Penn., 8), Frelinghuysen (N.J., 11), Gibson (N.Y., 19), Heck (Nev., 3), Hurd (Texas, 23), Issa (Calif., 49), Jolly (Fla., 13), Katko (N.Y., 24), Kinzinger (Ill., 16), Lance (N.J., 7), LoBiondo (N.J., 2), MacArthur (N.J., 3), McSally (Ariz., 2), Meehan (Penn., 7), Messer (Ind., 6), Paulsen (Minn., 3), Poliquin (Maine, 2), Reed, (N.Y., 23), Reichert (Wash., 8), Renacci (Ohio, 16), Rooney (Fla., 17), Ros-Lehtinen (Fla., 27), Shimkus (Ill., 15), Stefanik (N.Y., 21), Upton (Mich., 6), Valadao (Calif., 21), Walden (Ore., 2), Walters (Calif., 45), Young, D. (Iowa, 3), Young, T. (Ind., 9), Zeldin (N.Y., 1).

Those Republican members of Congress, who are apparently eager to disregard privacy, decency, women’s equal protection and even public safety, actively sided with Obama and the Democrats to promote transgenderism.

In essence, the Republican Party thinks it is sensible for transgenders, who are arguably mentally disturbed and representing a miniscule 0.3% of the US population, to determine social policy for the other 97.7% of us.

Unlike the #NeverTrumpers, the American people seem to have concluded, like Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Family Security Matters

Petraeus’ profoundly silly Islamophobia article

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD May 14, 2016

Retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus wrote an article entitled “David Petraeus: Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists.”

Thank you, sir, for the clarification. Up until now, I had believed Barack Obama; that Islamic terrorism was caused by climate change.

Petraeus’ premise is that “inflammatory political discourse…against Muslims and Islam…including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion… will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens… directly undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.”

Let us first dispel a universal myth and the fundamental flaw in Petraeus’ argument. There is no such thing as gratitude in foreign policy; only interests.

In every one of the “alliance” cases Petraeus cites: Sunni Muslims in al Anbar province, the Iraqi Shiite government, the Afghan Northern Alliance, the nation of Indonesia – all of them worked with the United States because of mutual interest, not happy talk.

NATO exists and operates on the basis of mutual interest and even after a decade of vitriol and their mutually exclusive ideologies, Hitler and Stalin still concluded the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Petraeus is concerned that political rhetoric will inhibit our ability to root out entrenched terrorist, like in Libya, which would not have become entrenched with terrorists except for the foreign policy malpractice of the Obama Administration and CIA Director Petraeus, arguably compounding “the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens.”

The Islamic State, ISIS, has made no secret of its intention to infiltrate Europe and the United States through “refugee” migration or other means for the purpose of carrying out terrorist acts.

In his Congressional testimony, FBI Director James Comey admitted that there is no way to screen the tens of thousands of Muslim refugees the Obama administration plans to accept into the US.

Yet Petraeus considers any effort to halt uncontrolled Muslim immigration as “blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion,” “demonizing a religious faith” or “toying with anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Petraeus employs all the familiar false propositions made popular by Democrat Party operatives, the liberal media, and, more recently, by the Republican establishment as a not-so-well-disguised repudiation of potential courses of action outlined by Donald Trump.

It reads less like a valuable contribution to the foreign policy literature than a left-wing academic polemic or an audition for a cabinet position in the Administration of Hillary Clinton.

Petraeus equates prudent self-defense measures to hate-speech and considers potential ISIS infiltration an acceptable risk in order for “moderate” Muslims to feel good about themselves.

And just exactly who are these “moderate” Muslims Petraeus wishes to appease?

Is it the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, Muslim Brotherhood Qatar, or Sunni Islamist Turkish President Erdogan to whom, collectively, the Obama Administration has recklessly outsourced our Middle East policy?

Petraeus knows full well that it is not an issue of religion, but recognition of the potentially deadly consequences of thousands of violent migrants from a volatile region entering the US en masse.

In the end, the Petraeus argument provides little more than the tired clichés of Islamophobia, that Muslim hostility to the West is caused by verbal slights or other affronts to Islam.

No one is advocating gratuitous insults, but unwarranted appeasement or other emotionally satisfying liberal gestures are, in reality, construed by Muslim leaders as a weakness to be exploited.

In the world of realpolitik, it is preferable to be liked. It is advantageous to be respected. In the absence of those, fear will do.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

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An open letter to Brent Bozell’s open letter
by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD April 27, 2016

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This article is a statement of the facts, and is not meant to, or intended to, be interpreted as a political endorsement, or lack thereof, of any political candidate. Family Security Matters takes no political point of view whatsoever.

On April 26, 2016 Breitbart published Brent Bozell’s open letter asking Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Phyllis Schlafly and other conservatives to withdraw their endorsements of Donald Trump.

Mr. Bozell, you ask “Does Donald Trump mean a word he says?”

Well, Mr. Bozell, we already know that the Republican Party doesn’t mean a word that it says.

For example, prior to the 2014 mid-term elections, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking about Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, said: “We will do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen: Defunding, going to court, injunction. You name it. It’s wrong. It’s illegal. And for so many reasons, and just the basic fabric of this country, we can’t allow it to happen and we won’t let it happen. I don’t know how to be any stronger than that. I’m telling you, everything we can do to stop it we will.”

After the 2014 election, when voters gave his party control of Congress, the Republicans “rewarded” their constituents by enthusiastically facilitating the funding and implementation of Obama’s “illegal” executive amnesty.

According an article in the left-wing outlet Politico and reported by Breitbart, Republican House Speaker John Boehner held secret negotiations with Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, leading up to his decision to flip-flop and fund Obama’s executive amnesty; including a pre-hashed out deal to use the hoopla around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3, 2015 address to Congress over Iran’s nuclear ambitions as political cover to sneak in the extraordinarily controversial vote.

As part of this effort, the former chiefs of staff to House Speaker John Boehner and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, through a group called the American Action Network, spent $400,000 for advertisements aimed at pressuring House conservatives to support Obama’s executive amnesty and fund it in its entirety through the end of the fiscal year.

On the same day as Netanyahu’s speech, the Republican-led House of Representatives caved to the demands of Democrats and passed a “clean” Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill by 257-167 with a majority of Democratic votes. Seventy-five Republicans voted to pass the clean bill, 167 voted against passage. The measure provided full funding of the DHS through September 30th, the end of the federal fiscal year, leaving Obama’s executive amnesty untouched.

In essence, the seventy-five Republicans, who joined all House Democrats to fund Obama’s executive amnesty, aided and abetted the shredding of the Constitution by giving Obama the funding and future permission to rewrite federal law as he sees fit.

And what about Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, Mr. Bozell?

Is it not Ted Cruz, who has joined the Republican establishment to thwart the will of the American people by back-room manipulation of the electoral process? Is that what you endorse, Mr. Bozell?

Was it not Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, who voted in favor of the Corker/Cardin Amendment, which essentially “pre-approved” the Iran nuclear deal by turning the treaty provision of the Constitution on its head, changing ratification from the constitutionally-mandated 67-vote for approval to a 67-vote for denial?

Was it not Ted Cruz, the candidate you endorsed, who penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed with House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) endorsing Obama’s trade agenda -describing the TPP as an “historic” agreement that “would mean greater access to a billion customers for American manufacturers, farmers and ranchers?”

Like many in the Washington DC chattering class, Mr. Bozell, you just don’t get it.

The November 2014 election was not an endorsement of the Republican Party, but a repudiation of Obama’s dramatic expansion of government power. The voters demanded that Congress stop his fundamental transformation of America, restoring the Constitutional balance of power and ending the Executive Branch abuses against the citizenry. Yet, the Republican leadership and its toadies in Congress undercut that vote and became complicit in the enactment of Obama’s unconstitutional policies.

And you speak about “sanity,” Mr. Bozell? To paraphrase Albert Einstein, again trusting the Republican establishment and expecting different results would be insane.

Many Americans now believe that we are no longer citizens of a republic, but subjects of a reigning oligarchy composed of a self-absorbed permanent political class, which services the interests of wealthy financiers at the expense of the wider population. They maintain their authority by an ever-expanding and increasingly intrusive government and use a compliant media to manipulate public perception and opinion in order to maintain the illusion of democracy.

The two most important issues of the 2016 election are non-partisan.

(1) The federal government and the media are, as institutions, hopelessly corrupt.

(2) The United States has elections, but we no longer have representative government.

None of the problems facing the country can be solved effectively without first confronting those two issues. Any candidate addressing them directly will capture the majority of voters on both sides of the political center.

But let’s be honest for a moment, Mr. Bozell. It is really not Donald Trump’s words that the establishment fears, and it is not only the loss of political power, but they fear the revelations of past government conduct that might emerge, and the potential for investigation and prosecution.

Perhaps it is you, Mr. Bozell, who should do the “courageous thing,” and stand with the American people and not with the corrupt political-media establishment.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.

Family Security Matters

Family Security Matters
Did Ted Cruz enter the U.S. illegally in 1974?

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD February 11, 2016

This article is a statement of the facts, and is not meant to, or intended to, be interpreted as a political endorsement, or lack thereof, of any political candidate. Family Security Matters takes no political point of view whatsoever.

Exactly how and when did Ted Cruz obtain U.S. citizenship?

The fact that it is still an open question at this stage of the Presidential campaign is a testament either to the galactic ignorance of our political-media elite or their willingness to place political expediency ahead of the Constitution and the law.

There is no third alternative.

Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970 and remained a Canadian citizen until he officially renounced it on May 14, 2014, eighteen months after taking the oath of office as a U.S. Senator. At the time of his birth, Cruz’s father was a citizen of Canada and his mother was a U.S. citizen.

Legally, Cruz could have obtained US citizenship through his mother consistent with Public Law 414, June 27, 1952, An Act: To revise the laws relating to immigration, naturalization, and nationality and for other purposes [H.R. 5678], Title III Nationality and Naturalization, Chapter 1 – Nationality at Birth and by Collective naturalization; Nationals and citizens of the United States at birth; the relevant section being 301 (a) (7):

“a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States by such citizen parent may be included in computing the physical presence requirements of this paragraph.”

In that case, Cruz’s mother should have filed a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA) with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate after the birth to document that the child was a U.S. citizen.

According to Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s mother did register his birth with the U.S. consulate and Cruz received a U.S. passport in 1986 ahead of a high school trip to England.

There are two apparent contradictions regarding how and when Ted Cruz obtained US citizenship.

First, according to the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1946, also referred to as the “Act of 1947,” Canada did not allow dual citizenship in 1970. The parents would have had to choose at that time between U.S. and Canadian citizenship. Ted Cruz did not renounce his Canadian citizenship until 2014. Was that the choice originally made?

Second, no CRBA has been released that would verify that Ted Cruz was registered as a U.S. citizen at birth.

It has been reported that the then nearly four-year-old Ted Cruz flew to the U.S. from Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1974.

Ted Cruz could not have entered the U.S. legally without a CRBA or a U.S. passport, the latter of which was not obtained until 1986.

If Ted Cruz was registered as a U.S. citizen at birth, as his spokeswoman claims, then the CRBA must be released. Otherwise, one could conclude that Cruz came to the U.S. as a Canadian citizen, perhaps on a tourist visa or, possibly, remained in the U.S. as an illegal immigrant.

It is the responsibility of the candidate for the Presidency, not ordinary citizens, to prove that he or she is eligible for the highest office in the land. Voters deserve clarification.

Even assuming a CRBA was filed, the weight of the legal evidence indicates that Ted Cruz is a naturalized U.S. citizen because he was born outside of the jurisdiction of the U.S. and obtained U.S. citizenship by an Act of Congress (Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution). As a naturalized citizen, he is not eligible for the Presidency (Article 2 Section 1 Clause 5 of the Constitution).

It is disturbing to this writer that, Ted Cruz, a man who claims to be a “principled conservative” and a staunch supporter of the Constitution, should be so opaque about his personal history and unwilling to release his records.

Does that sound familiar?
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “.