GUEST POSTS

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

USA FLAGS AMERICANS PATRIOTIC STRONG

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.

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.

romney_ 2016

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.

#NeverTrumpers offer only “corruption as usual”

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.

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.

—

An open letter to Brent Bozell’s open letter

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

cruz _ trump 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.

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.

Family Security Matters

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

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

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD February 11, 2016

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 “.

The 2016 election for dummies – Part 2

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD February 6, 2016

On August 5, 2015, I wrote:

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.

Those words still ring true and any candidate addressing those issues directly could capture the majority of voters on both sides of the political center.

To maintain control, both Democrats and Republicans have fostered a culture of dependency. Democrats create dependency by expanding federal mandates and increasing entitlements. Republicans promote dependency by limiting voter choice and co-opting or crushing independent candidates and grass roots political movements.

To sustain itself, the corrupt political-media establishment has the power to suppress the truth or interfere with honest inquiry by false authoritative pronouncements or by manipulating the news through the release of misleading information.

On January 2, 2014, I called for a “political insurgency” because there are no untainted elections, there is no rule of law, there is no means to petition elected officials or the courts for the redress of grievances and there is no independent press to challenge governmental abuse. In other words, all the traditional avenues to fight the corrupt practices of political expediency and crony capitalism have been blocked.

Democrat pollster Pat Caddell recently noted that the 2016 election “is not about ideology, not about issues, it’s about insurgency… The system is on the verge of coming apart…The politicians in Washington aren’t going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.”

According to Caddell, such conditions are largely responsible for the rise of non-political-consultant-class candidates like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders as well as the weakness of those considered establishment candidates.

The political insurgency feature of the 2016 campaign would also explain the fragmentation of the conservative moment.

Like the Republican Party in general, American conservatism appears to be fully and openly untethered from any principles. Like the Constitution, conservatism is now whatever you want it to be, and for most but not all, whatever is politically expedient in the pure pursuit of power.

The internal conflicts within the conservative movement have widened the already existing fissures, roughly dividing it into three groups: status quo, zealots and anti-establishment nationalists.

Status quo conservatives are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican establishment. They are the inhabitants of the House of Representatives Freedom Caucus, who provide a convenient venting mechanism as a substitute for meaningful political reform or opposition to Democrat legislation. They are the political pundits ensconced in the hallways of the National Review, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, who, during every election cycle, help dress up Republican establishment candidates in appropriate conservative clothing.

Conservative zealots tend to espouse a multitude of widely varying conservative “values,” but, in practice, often consider Constitutional principles as optional and disposable components, when political expediency requires it. In an effort to resurrect Ronald Reagan, the zealots tend to produce candidates that more resemble Frankenstein.

A growing constituency of the fragmented conservative movement is the anti-establishment nationalists, which comprises the largest fraction of Donald Trump supporters. These voters are more insurgents than conservatives and are unlikely to respond to classical conservative or establishment Republican arguments. It is this constituency that is most likely to attract disaffected Democrats and has the greatest potential for disruptive political innovation.

Stay tuned.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-2016-election-for-dummies-part-2?f=must_reads
election 4 dummies 2016

Is the Fort Hood shooter a “natural born citizen” and eligible for the Presidency?

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD January 12, 2016

If Nidal Hasan had not committed his heinous crime, could he have been President?

Yes, according to conventional political wisdom.

For the sake of argument, let’s make a hypothetical comparison between Nidal Hasan and Marco Rubio, who are of similar age and backgrounds in terms of Presidential eligibility.

Nidal Malik Hasan was born on September 8, 1970 in Arlington, Virginia. According to the New York Times, Hasan’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from a small town near Jerusalem, were presumed to be Jordanian citizens, became permanent U.S. residents and, before their deaths, became U.S. Citizens.

On November 5, 2009, Hasan reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” (or “God is Great”) and opened fire in the Soldier Readiness Center of Fort Hood, located in Killeen, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding over 30 others in the worst shooting ever to take place on an American military base.

Senator Marco Antonio Rubio (R-FL) was born on May 28, 1971 in Miami, Florida. His parents, Mario and Oriales, emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba in 1956, were both permanent U.S. residents when Senator Rubio was born and became U.S. citizens in 1975.

Senator Rubio is now a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination.

What is the difference between Nidal Hasan and Marco Rubio in terms of Presidential eligibility according to the conventional political wisdom?

None. They are both considered “natural born citizens” and both are eligible for the Presidency.

Article II Section I Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which proscribed Presidential eligibility 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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

What was the original public meaning of the phrase “natural born citizen” that establishes the eligibility for the office of President of the United States?

“There is general agreement on the core of its meaning. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a ‘natural born citizen.'”

What is then the difference between Nidal Hasan and Marco Rubio in terms of Presidential eligibility according to an originalist interpretation of the Constitution?

None. Neither are “natural born citizens” and neither are eligible for the Presidency.

To understand who is a “natural born citizen” according to the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution, one needs to refer to the republican principles expressed in Emer Vattel’s, “Law of Nations,” with which the Framers were intimately familiar.

Pundits of the conventional political wisdom often mistakenly refer to “natural born subjects” in English common law as the source of the concept of “natural born citizen.” There is a difference between English common law, from which the American colonists broke away, and the republican principles espoused in Vattel’s “Law of Nations”, that is, monarchies have subjects, republics are formed by citizens. Natural-born subjects are born within the dominions of the crown of England and subject to the king, whereas, our Constitution created a federal government which was subject to us, the citizens of the republic.

Vattel says in “Law of Nations”, Book I, Ch. XIX:

§ 212: Natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.

The republican concept of “natural born citizen” is radically different from the feudal notion of “natural born subject.” Under English common law merely being born in the domains of the King made one by birth a “natural born subject”. In Vattel’s model and in our constitutional republic, citizens are “natural born” only if they are born of citizens.

In addition, having just separated from Great Britain and fearing foreign influence on the President and Commander in Chief of the American military, the future first U.S. Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, on July 25, 1787, asked the convention presiding officer George Washington to strengthen the requirements for the Presidency:

“Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”

It is important to note that pundits of the conventional political wisdom make two other errors when attempting to define “natural born citizen:” (1) the “one-parent” argument for “natural born citizen” only began in 2008 to accommodate the eligibility of Barack Obama and (2) statutory law, that is, laws passed by Congress may only define the manner in which one becomes a citizen, per Article I Section VIII of the Constitution; not the concept of “natural born citizen,” which can only be changed by Constitutional Amendment.

Senator Ted Cruz, for example, claims to be a “natural born citizen” because he was a “citizen at birth” through his one-parent US citizen mother.

If the Framers of the Constitution meant the eligibility requirement to be “citizen at birth,” why didn’t they write it that way?

In a letter written to James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton had suggested that “born a citizen” be used:

“No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.”

Such phrasing was known at the time of the writing of the Constitution and it was rejected.

It appears that our corrupt political-media establishment does not wish the American people to understand to true intent of the Framers of the Constitution, when they created the eligibility requirements for President of the United States.

The Difference Between a U.S. Citizen and a Natural Born Citizen

Family Security Matters
The Difference Between a U.S. Citizen and a Natural Born Citizen

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD January 7, 2016

Many members of the political-media establishment are either deliberately misrepresenting facts for political reasons or they are simply ignorant of those facts, that is, the manner in which one becomes a citizen as opposed to the concept of natural born citizenship.

Those who equate “citizen” with “natural born citizen” often misinterpret Constitutional law and statute law, the latter meaning that Congress may pass laws only defining the manner in which one becomes a citizen, either citizen by birth or a naturalized citizen, not the Constitutional concept of natural born citizenship.

In addition, many people mistakenly cite English Common Law as the origin of the natural born citizen concept, which, in that regard, the Founders rejected; rather than its true origin, the codification of natural law described by Emerich de Vattel in his 1758 book “The Law of Nations.”

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 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; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Recognizing the Constitutional nature of the natural born citizen concept, there have been numerous attempts, in recent years, both by Democrats and Republicans, to amend the Article II “natural born citizen” clause, including:

January 14, 1975 – Democrat House Rep. Jonathon B. Bingham, [NY-22] introduced a constitutional amendment under H.J.R. 33: which called for the outright removal of the natural-born requirement for president found in Article II of the U.S. Constitution – “Provides that a citizen of the United States otherwise eligible to hold the Office of President shall not be ineligible because such citizen is not a natural born citizen.”

June 11, 2003 – Democrat House member Vic Snyder [AR-2] introduced H.J.R 59: in the 108th Congress – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 35 years and who has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years eligible to hold the office of President or Vice President.”

September 3, 2003 – Democrat Rep. John Conyers [MI] introduced H.J.R. 67: – “Constitutional Amendment – Makes a person who has been a citizen of the United States for at least 20 years eligible to hold the office of President.”

September 15, 2004 – Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher [CA-46] introduced H.J.R. 104: – “Constitutional Amendment – “Makes eligible for the Office of the President non-native born persons who have held U.S. citizenship for at least 20 years and who are otherwise eligible to hold such Office.”

According to Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the U. S. Constitution, a candidate for the Presidency must be a “natural born citizen,” that is, a second generation American, a U.S. citizen, whose parents were also U.S. citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth.

That there is a difference between “citizen” and “natural born citizen” has been clear since the writing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787 and its ratification on June 21, 1788.

A first draft of what would become Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, submitted by Alexander Hamilton to the Constitutional Convention on June 18, 1787 stated:

“No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.”

Fearing foreign influence on the President and Commander in Chief of the American military, the future first U.S. Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, on July 25, 1787, asked the convention presiding officer George Washington to strengthen the requirements for the Presidency:

The term “or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” referred to loyal Americans who lived in the thirteen colonies at the time of the Revolutionary War, thus establishing the first generation of United States “citizens,” upon which future “natural born” citizens would be created. The Founders, under Article II, allowed these original U.S. citizens to be eligible for the Presidency.

As understood by the Founders and as applied to the U.S. Constitution, the term “natural born citizen” derived its meaning less from English Common Law, than from Vattel’s “The Law of Nations.”

They knew from reading Vattel that a “natural born citizen” had a different standard from just “citizen,” for he or she was a child born in the country to two citizen parents (Vattel, Section 212 in original French and English translation).

That is the definition of a “natural born citizen,” as recognized by numerous U.S. Supreme Court and lower court decisions (The Venus, 12U.S. 253(1814), Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 242 (1830), Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) , Ex parte Reynolds, 20 F. Cas. 582 (C.C.W.D. Ark 1879), United States v. Ward, 42 F. 320 (1890); Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), Ludlam, Excutrix, & c., v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356 (1863) and more) and the framers of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment, the Naturalization Act of 1795, 1798, 1802, 1885, and our modern 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401.

There are historical arguments too numerous to include in a short article, which explain why the definition of “natural born subject,” as found in the English Common Law, was not used as the basis of “natural born citizen” in the U.S. Constitution because Great Britain was a monarchy and the new nation was a constitutional republic.

Legal precedent and interpretation leave no doubt regarding the meaning of “natural born citizen.”

The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)

“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.”

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)

“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

John Bingham, father of the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to American slaves after the Civil War, stated on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862:

“All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens.”

In 1866, Bingham also stated on the House floor:

“Every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.”

Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)

“The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

“At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”

As recently as September 2008, in a Michigan Law Review article entitled “Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause,” Lawrence B. Solum, then John E. Cribbet Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, wrote:

“What was the original public meaning of the phrase that establishes the eligibility for the office of President of the United States? There is general agreement on the core of its meaning. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a natural born citizen.”

Citizen parents, plural.

Just as the Presidential oath of office is unique “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” the eligibility requirements for President are equally unique, to ensure allegiance and prevent foreign influence at the highest levels of government.

I think the Founders had anticipated the mess in which we find ourselves today.