A level-headed entry into the “Obama is a Muslim” controversy: “He’s not living his Christian faith as most Americans say I want to live my Christian Faith.”

The Pew Foundation released a survey yesterday stating that around 20% of Americans believe President Obama to be a Muslim. I don’t consider myself in that 20%. I don’t really feel the need either to tread down the path that Obama isn’t an American citizen (the consequences of that logic are really too deadly serious to casually entertain the thought). But I find it interesting. 20% of my fellow citizens, prior to Obama’s public celebration of Ramadan last Friday, think he is a Muslim. Is this crazy?

I don’t think it is. Obama says he is a Christian. O.k. What type of Christian is he? He’s certainly not Catholic or Orthodox; no one would call him evangelical. His sparse attendance at church makes it hard to even label him a traditional Protestant. His lack of an identifiable religious affiliation is part of a larger problem about Obama the man that has persisted since his early days of his campaign: he is largely an empty shell.

Every man has to be from somewhere. Every man has to believe something. The little we know of Obama is that his father was a muslim and he did in his early childhood have Muslim schooling. He goes to the middle east and speaks directly to the Muslim world. His State Department sponsors extensive outreach to Muslims. He publicly celebrates Ramadan. I’m not saying any of this makes him Muslim. But when there is little else to cling too, that hardly makes 20% of Americans irrational. What else are they to believe?

Fox News is reporting:

A former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons.

J. Christian Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a conservative blogger, says he and the other Justice Department lawyers working on the case were ordered to dismiss it.

More here from Fox.

Mr. Adams weighs in:

Soon after his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder labeled us a nation of cowards, a people supposedly unwilling or afraid to discuss race. Based on my experience as an attorney at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, Holder has far more to fear from that discussion than do the rest of us . . . the Obama administration doesn’t believe some civil rights laws protect every American.

Read the rest of his commentary here.

Let’s recap what’s gone on over the last several days:

• South Korea confirms that North Korea sank a military ship (submarine);
• North Korean supreme leader takes credit for it;
• South Korea begins war exercises with their allies;
• South Korea begins psychological warfare with radio blasts, etc;
• South Korea cuts off trade with North Korea;
• North Korea expels South Koreans from their country.

Call me crazy, but I think we’re going to war. Sinking ships, cutting off trade, executing war games and expelling foreign nationals all are things that are lead up to open warfare. I pray we don’t because if South Korea goes to war, we go to war. If North Korea is willing to sink a submarine and stake claim, I don’t see it a far reach for them soon to be planning to bombard the DMZ and invade the South. Yeah. It sounds crazy. But I think this situation is quickly becoming deadly serious and we’re going to be entangled right in the middle of this.

Via my other groupblog, American Creation, which deals with religion and the American Founding [and all here gathered are invited there to participate]:

Congress Becomes Madison’s “Overbearing Majority“ from The Weekly Standard.

Let’s cut to the chase. Madison:

“[M]easures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority…By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community…”

The usually worthy Volokh blog recently made a hash of “democracy” vs. “republicanism.”

What the Georgia legislature was trying to get at, I think [and they did it poorly as well], is that a “republic” implies much more than majoritarianism, which would be a strict reading of “democracy.” [The introduction in the Volokh discussion of "representative" also gummed things up.]

A republic requires and effort toward consensus, hence the Electoral College, and even moreso the Senate: the smaller states are not at the mercy of the larger ones, and indeed in the Senate have equal say.

From the official Senate website:

A key goal of the Framers was to create a Senate differently constituted from the House so it would be less subject to popular passions and impulses. “The use of the Senate,” wrote James Madison in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, “is to consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” An oft-quoted story about the “coolness” of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” asked Washington. “To cool it,” said Jefferson. “Even so,” responded Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

[Our republic also places limits on majoritarianism via the Constitution, although I doubt the Obamacare legislation will be found unconstitutional in any significant way.]

But the disposition towards consensus instead of mere majority has a long history as the American political ethos. Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Acts passed with a significant number of votes from both parties. Indeed, the American Creation blog had a behind-the-scenes controversy recently, and the “winning” side was actually the minority.

Good faith requires such things, and good faith is essential to the smooth running of a republic. This is the essential truth that was lost in the recent Congressional controversy. The parties just can’t take turns steamrolling each other—that threatens stability.

We all don’t have to agree, but agreeing to disagree only gets us halfway there.

We have to agree to agree, despite our reservations. That’s the heart of “consensus,” and of this American republic.

It’s sort of—if I may—like “love, honor, and obey” in a Christian marriage:

As a nation, we “love and honor” each other quite seldom, like how we responded to being attacked by The Axis in WWII, and even for a brief time after 9-11.

But who, in any decent marriage, doesn’t “obey” their husband or wife when push comes to shove in a Big Decision, no matter who’s “stronger” or weaker?

As citizens of a republic, we obey each other. That’s how it works. Sometimes majority rules. Sometimes the majority obeys the minority, out of respect for the other. This is good will, and good faith, because no republic, no marriage, can survive without both.

I think even the congressional Democrats realize now that they steamrolled their fellow Americans on this Obamacare thing, in pursuit of what they honestly thought is good for the country. And regret it, because it wasn’t right and it was disrespectful to the rest of us.

They didn’t get a single GOP vote. They ignored the polls. They made no effort at consensus. It was un-republican [small "r"], and it was un-American.

From yesterday’s Nationals’ broadcast, President Obama is 100% unable to name his favorite White Sox player, insults Cubs fans because they aren’t “blue collar”, and adds that his other favorite team growing up was the Oakland A’s (ok, that last one wasn’t bad, but really….the A’s????)

The first pitch:

And the 1-0 pitch…

You’re a little left there Mr. President. Could it be an omen for his next SCOTUS pick?

Call me cynical, but the disbanding of ACORN the day after the House passes the uber-historic health care reform seems. well. too. convenient. ACORN had funding problems. I’m aware. It seems pimping isn’t exactly a money-making line of community organizing these days. Still. Would it surprise anyone if the uber-historic health care reform has money for community health centers or other such activities that ultimately gets funneled to old ACORN movers and shakers? It seems these guys wouldn’t disband unless they had a nice, landing spot. Anyone heard anything about this?

Michael Ramirez on Obama’s path to recovery (HT Powerline):

After the State of the Union, a question hung out there: how would the supreme Court respond to President Obama. Well, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They shouldn’t. Though we have checks and balances, our branches are not co-equal. The President’s bully pulpit and executive authority truly is checked only by Congress. To any supreme Court decision the President may (and has in the past said…), “they have their decision, let them enforce it.” Thus the judges show deferential silence. That does not mean, however, a Justice cannot make a rather smart, off-the-cuff comment in rebuttal. Here’s what Clarence Thomas said yesterday to a group of law students concerning Citizens United: (more…)

When worst comes to worst, at least we have HUD.  That tells you something about the instincts of this group.  Putting the fate of the free world in the hands of the ultimate bureaucrat–what’s not to like?  From the AP:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton missed President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to attend a conference in London, but she was not the only absentee Cabinet member.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan was designated by the White House to ride out the speech in an undisclosed location as a precaution against the possibility of a catastrophe wiping out the rest of the government leadership.

One positive about this plan is that when the Humanoid Underground Dwellers emerge from the smoking pits, we’ll have HUD vs. HUD for control of the post-apocalypse world.

Would it be too cynical to call it State of the (dis)Union?  I’ll be taking notes.  I’m looking forward to Governor McDonnell’s response and the post-game analysis by my fellow esteemed SA bloggers who are all a lot smarter than me.  Live blog here if you wish. I’ll bring the popcorn.

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities said Monday they are considering a petition to tear down a statue of US President Barack Obama as a boy, only a month after the bronze was unveiled in Jakarta.

The statue of “Little Barry” — as Obama was known when he lived in the capital in the late 1960s — stands in central Jakarta’s Menteng Park, a short walk from the US president’s former elementary school.

HT Drudge, of course.

We’re approaching the “one year” anniversary of President Obama’s first year in office. We should all congratulate him for the growth he has helped this country achieve in his first year in office:

• A larger unemployment and underemployment rate
• Greater government spending
• Increased government ownership of private entities
• More debt than before
• An increase of military entanglements abroad
• Two terrorist attacks on American soil/airspace

As President Obama said last week, “the buck stops with me.” This is his presidency. “Cash for A Clunker” could be the title for the book of Obama’s first year in office.

Frank Beckwith has the story here, with a link to there.

Basically, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader has shot off his idiot mouth once again. Harry Reid’s subtext was actually if Obama had been too “black,” America never would have elected him.

But Commenter “Jay” agreed on the face of it, that

It surely IS true that Obama would have had a much harder time getting elected if he spoke stereotypical Ebonics, just as a white candidate who sounded like he’d come straight from a trailer park…would lose votes on that account.

as did Commenter BSK, who noted that

Obama’s looks and diction may have played a role in his presidency (something true of all candidates)…

And that should be like, duh? to any denizen of the 21st century. If you can’t articulate the English language at least as well as the twits who read the 11 O’Clock News, you can’t be president.

OK, OK, George W, Bush couldn’t quite talk that talk and Sarah Palin could, but let’s move on, and also past Barack Obama’s relative “light-skinnedness,” which actually cuts both ways.

Because there’s a far more serious issue at hand here.

Reid’s use of “Negro” is unfortunate in this day and age, but I’m a generation younger, and I remember MAD Magazine referring to the “TV Negro,” who looked black but sounded like he went to Harvard.

Which—or who—Barack Obama is.

And there’s a PC flap right now over the 2010 US census, that in addition to self-identifications of “race,” “Negro” was kept in, as well as “Black” or “African American,” since some folks from Harry Reid’s generation prefer “Negro.”

But little of this, the word “Negro,” has anything to do with what’s important.

GOPers have some room for a righteous whine here, but not much: Lott’s praise of Strom Thurmond

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.”

was substantive, not just a comment on Barack Obama’s cosmetic appeal.

Yes, it was rhetorical carelessness on Lott’s part. His retraction:

“My comments were not an endorsement of his positions of over 50 years ago, but of the man and his life.”

Yeah, yeah. But it went far deeper than that. When Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, he was deeply committed to segregation and opposed to anti-lynching laws.

So the Republican Party can enjoy a “gotcha” moment on Democrat Harry Reid and on the press giving him a relatively free ride for violating political correctness.

But it’s a hollow victory, and indeed not a victory atall. Harry Reid mouthed some thoughtless words, but Trent Lott thoughtlessly gave voice to an abominable idea, that Strom Thurmond should ever have been elected president in 1948.

All stupidities are not created equal. Sadly, it’s just more evidence that when it comes to race, today’s GOP still doesn’t get it. Yes, Republican Ike sent in the troops to Little Rock to enforce desegration of our schools. And Sen. Everett Dirksen swung the day in 1964 to win passage of the Civil Rights Act.

But in 2009, The Party of Lincoln has few other laurels to rest on. It can’t even tell the difference between Reid’s stupidity and Lott’s. This has simply got to change.

You gotta walk the walk, but as a politician, you also have to talk the talk. When you speak an alien language like Trent Lott did that night, that Strom Thurmond should ever have been our president, even in loose party talk, you’re not speaking American atall.

Over at NRO’s Planet Gore, Greg Pollowitz has a piece from the enviro-mag Grist on the President’s decision to descend on Copenhagen for the final day of the climate talks rather than stopping by earlier.   Even they see the danger here; when the environmental left is more level-headed and savvy than the White House staff, we’ve got a problem.

The first week of every COP meeting consists of posturing, speeches, protests, and NGO reports. Everything of significance to the treaty is announced late in the meetings, often on the last day, after a flurry of last-minute negotiations. Coming to Copenhagen at the climax of the talks, specifically to push negotiations “over the top,” as the White House statement says, is a risky move for Obama. He’s got skin in the game now; he’ll look foolish if he rides in at the last minute and fails to broker an agreement.

Well, it worked so well with the Olympic bid…

Much as I will enjoy the spectacle of another colossal public failure by Obama, it will unfortunately involve another public humiliation for the United States.  The man (or his advisors) simply doesn’t understand that you do not put the prestige of the office on the line unless you are certain of the outcome.

Btw, Planet Gore is a great place to sit back, mix a toddy, and enjoy the continuing fallout from Climategate.

Thinking more about President Obama’s decision to send in half the number of troops requested for the surge in Afghanistan, coupled with the time-table for withdrawal, with a dash of half-hearted rhetoric thrown in for good measure, I have reached this decision – it is time to withdraw from Afghanistan.  It is unfortunate that we have reached this point, and I think in the abstract it would be a mistake.  But the President has made it clear that he is only half-heartedly supporting the war effort.  This is an abomination, and an affront to the soldiers we are sending to the region.

Fred Thompson recently got some heat for suggesting that the war was lost, but his point was simply that the way in which we were fighting the war was leading us to defeat.  I agreed with that assessment, and I would much prefer our troops be withdrawn completely rather than be left to fight a war when they are not given the full resources to win the war.  It is unconscionable to allow our troops to keep fighting a war when we are not fully committed to victory.  Sadly, I do not sense that our President is so committed.  With regards to war, we must be all in our all out – half measures are the surest means to defeat.

That being said, I believe that the brave men and women who are fighting in Afghanistan will no doubt give it their all, and that whatever resources they are given, they will make the most of.  If we are ultimately unsuccessful in Afghanistan, it will not be their fault.

…for the life of me, I can’t think of Whom I am possibly supposed to direct my thanks towards tomorrow other than to myself. This has got to be the most lame and wishy-washy presidential “thanksgiving” I’ve ever read: (more…)

I cannot imagine the White House is pleased with this:

PRESS RELEASE
October 14th, 2009

For Immediate Release

Contact: Arnold Schoen at arnoldschoen@yahoo.com
For more info: www.nambla.org

Guilt By Association, Twice Removed

The rightwing media elements are at it again trying to discredit the current administration. One of the most recent attacks has been aimed at Kevin Jennings, the Safe Schools Czar nominee. Since it is no longer sufficient to smear someone merely by raising the specter of his homosexuality, they seek to portray him as a “pedophile” (or at least a “pedophile” sympathizer) because he praised and acknowledged inspiration from Harry Hay – who several times came to NAMBLA’s defense.

Harry was not a member of NAMBLA, but he spoke at quite a few NAMBLA events, and was vocal not merely against “banning” it from anything, but about demonstrating his understanding that man/boy love is as much as part of the homosexual heritage of Western civilization as any other form of male homosexuality. He spoke openly and lovingly of the relationships he himself initiated with older men when he was a youth struggling to understand himself and his feelings.

NAMBLA is often falsely portrayed in the media as an organization of “child molesters” in part because we have consistently and adamantly opposed age-of-consent laws. Of course, the media never seems to follow up with any questions about why we oppose them. We see age-of-consent laws operating in our society in much the same way as burquas function in fundamentalist Islamic societies – ostensibly to protect a group but ultimately to oppress it. We reject the notion that sexual love is so horrible that (in our case) men and boys must be kept firmly apart by the most dire methods.

At heart what we are talking about is the right to individual gay self-determination at whatever age. And if that means a 13-year-old boy wanting physical relations with a 29 or 92 year old man it is the boy’s choice, not a therapist’s or cop’s.
(more…)

(HT: K-Lo and NRO)

According to Kathryn Lopez at NRO this is “from the president’s chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. She goes on to blog:

Scott Johnson goes to town, in response.

Rocco Landesman, the NEA chairman, said, in part:

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

More from Landesman here. Commentary from NRO writers here and here.

(more…)

According to Lisa Schiffrin at NRO:

Some people have noted that Barack Obama has not actually achieved peace, anywhere, or diminution of hostilities, or the destruction of even one nuclear weapon, (or even any of his domestic agenda). But, as the Nobel Committee announced, this award is about a new climate of hope.

Ironically, the fact that the unborn has not achieved certain powers and abilities it may only actualize in the future, and does not actualize in the present, is employed by some bioethicists to justify abortion. (See my critique of such arguments here and here). So, Obama’s potential gets him the Nobel Peace Prize, while the unborn’s potential, unfortunately, is not enough to avoid being awarded the prize of prenatal violence.

“Are you surprised Clarke?”

“No More surprised than if I woke up this morning Eddie with my head sown to the carpet.”

Apparently, given the Olympic failure, it is no longer a metaphor for his prophetic powers but something a bit mundane and lower.

Like many of my fellow countrymen, I thought that President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen was taken, amidst all our domestic and international problems, so that he could be there when his beloved city of Chicago was awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics. Like others, I thought that the president would not fly all the way to Copenhagen just to lobby the IOC if it were not a done deal. After all, the president is a bright guy surrounded by informed and diplomacy savvy confidants and advisors. They would never permit him to be put in a position to be internationally humiliated and embarrassed, I thought. So, when the word came out of Copenhagen that Chicago had been eliminated in the first round, I cringed. And I did so for two reasons. First, I was embarrassed for both the president and our nation. Although I did not vote for him, he is my president. Second, I was afraid for what this portends about his powers, intuitions, and judgments in the realms of global diplomacy, international relations, and military strategy that truly have life and death consequences, such as the war in Afghanistan and the upcoming arms talks with Iran.

So writes Mark Tapscott on Beltway Confidential:

Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, is in hot water this week for having failed to report that a 15-year-old sophomore student in his school had told him of having sex with an older man.

But failure to report what appeared to be a case of statuatory rape of a child may be the least of Jennings’ worries. Lori Roman of Regular Folks United points to statements by Jennings a decade or more ago when he praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.

Roman provides damning details and links here. She also notes that Jennings wrote the forward “to a book called Queering Elementary Education. And another fellow you may have heard of wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket—Bill Ayers.” Ayers, of course, is the Weather Underground bomber from the 1960s who is just an “acquaintance” of Obama.

Every presidential administration ends up with scandals inspired by controversial appointees, but typically those tend to revolve around financial improprieties, conflicts of interest, or some other form of white-collar misconduct. For Obama, the scandals seem to be develping in a pattern of disclosures revolving around radical left ideology that raises questions about their fitness for any job in government.

And that in turn raises the inevitable question: Is nobody minding the White House personnel store?

How ironic is it that the surname of the woman who uncovers this information is “Roman”?