Something Rotten in Farmington Hills

Thomas More Law Center sends this update on the corrupt sale of the Farmington Hills Eagle Elementary School to the Islamic Cultural Association:

New Evidence of Corruption Involving Sale of Michigan Public School Property to the Islamic Cultural Association

ANN ARBOR, MI – A stunning new development has come to light surrounding allegations of public corruption over the sale of Farmington Public Schools (FPS) property to the Islamic Cultural Association (ICA). On Wednesday, August 8^th, Reverend Bruce D. Burwell, Senior Pastor of Light of the World Christian Center in West Bloomfield, read aloud a prepared statement on how the person in charge of FPS properties told him the property was not for sale when he expressed an interest in purchasing it for his church. FPS subsequently sold the vacant Eagle Elementary school property to the Islamic Cultural Association.

Pastor Burwell’s statement at Wednesday event

Pastor Burwell told the audience “how odd it was that in these bad economic times that the Farmington Hills School District would not be jumping at the chance to sell one of their buildings to an interested buyer” and “how odd it was that if they were seriously trying to sell the building, why did they not have a for sale sign up.” He concluded his remarks by saying that “there is no doubt in my mind that something is going on.”

Pastor Burwell’s prepared statement has been forwarded to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette to consider as part of the request by the Thomas More Law Center that he empanel a citizens grand jury to investigate the allegations of corruption.

Pastor Burwell’s revelations are the latest in a series of allegations that FPS engaged in a NO-BID, secret backroom transaction with the Islamic Cultural Association while at the same time it was telling interested buyers that the vacant property was not for sale. Pastor Burwell’s statement was delivered to a packed community briefing last night to discuss the basis for the allegations of corruption and the legal issues surrounding a civil lawsuit already filed against the school district.

In June 2012, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), an Ann-Arbor based national public interest law firm, submitted a 22-page Statement of Allegations against the suburban school district to the Attorney General requesting that a citizens grand jury be convened to pierce “the fog of corruption”’ that has descended upon FPS surrounding this highly irregular and controversial sale.

Click here to read the 22-page Summary of Allegations

Records submitted to the Attorney General’s office included more than 400 pages of documentation supporting the TMLC allegations that FPS disregarded the recommendations of its own legal council, a specially convened internal committee and district residents in steamrolling through the secretly negotiated no-bid, below-market sale of valuable public property.

TMLC became involved in the case when it learned that according to the real estate broker who represented ICA in the purchase of Eagle Elementary, ICA owns and operates the HUDA, an Islamic school in the Village of Franklin, Michigan. The Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan, reports that ICA shares direct ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the North American Islamic Trust, Inc. (NAIT), both of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators/joint venturers in U.S. v. Holy Land Found. For Relief & Dev. (HLF), the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history. Federal prosecutors proved that HLF worked closely with the U.S. designated terrorist organization Hamas to fund terrorist activities.

Among allegations of corruption, the TMLC filing details the district’s representations to several parties that Eagle Elementary School was not for sale and was slated for demolition. All the while, records show, the district had discriminatorily granted exclusive consideration to and protected the bid of the ICA, with whom it was negotiating for months behind closed doors.

All citizens who value public transparency and accountability should welcome an independent grand jury investigation into this public school system scandal that has cost the students and taxpayers so dearly. At a press conference yesterday, Attorney General Schuette reminded all: “Public service is not a game.” We couldn’t agree more. And nowhere is it more important to assure integrity than in our public school systems.

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What Media Bias?

Detroit Free Press columnist Ron Dzwonkowski now has scientific proof that “debunks [the] notion of liberal media bias.” Just in time for the last lap of the presidential campaign, we’re being told that Obama’s most powerful surrogate, the media, aren’t bending things his way after all. Writes Dzwonkowski:

Thirty-five major print publications, 13 TV broadcasts across five networks (basically Sunday and nightly shows) and National Public Radio. You won't believe this.

There's no liberal bias in the news media coverage of this year's presidential campaign.

Unbelievable, right? Because, as everybody knows, the media lean left and that's why we have the likes of Fox News, to keep things "fair and balanced."

And yet, from May 1 to July 15, Republicans were quoted in news reports 44% more often than Democrats, and negative coverage of President Barack Obama was 17% higher than such coverage for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

That's not from me or from either side but from a new project called 4th Estate that runs news reports from 35 publications, including the Free Press, 13 TV broadcasts across five networks and NPR through software that sorts the content in, well, all sorts of ways in search of bias. The project, an offshoot of a news media analysis company called GNI, is an apolitical effort to test conventional wisdom about news coverage. (“Ron Dzwonkowski: New venture debunks notion of liberal media bias”).

But doesn’t this contradict what every serious news consumer can see for himself?  Naw. Science proves all of that’s just an optical illusion.  

"Media bias is certainly the perception," said Michael Howe, chief technology officer for 4th Estate, "but it's based on a lot of anecdotal evidence and people talking about 'What I think ...' We hope to change the nature of the debate."

Here’s the infographic that proves it:

Dzwonkowski explains the 4th Estate methodology to Freep readers as best he can. For one thing, the news from these various outlets is put “through software that sorts the content in, well, all sorts of ways in search of bias.” That’s informative. And we know the software hasn’t been written by biased software writers because neither Howe nor any of “his fellow software developers . . . have ever worked in the political arena.”

At Dzwonkowski’s suggestion I went to the 4^th Estate’s website to find out more about their method, but it doesn’t tell much:

The 4th Estate collects data from a sampling of news stories from US national print outlets, TV broadcast and radio transcripts covering the 2012 election. These stories are contextually analyzed and broken down by influence, topic, sentiment and newsmaker. The data for this graphic includes quotes and statements from newsmakers who provide subjective insight.

Check out the hyperlink about how the stories are broken down the way I did and see if it’s still dead.

Elsewhere Howe compares their analysis of news to the way we  analyze our food to find out exactly what’s in it. Says Howe: "Now we consume all this information from so many sources; what's in it? We're using software and algorithms to see what's in it."

Should it bother me that Howe (who “has a degree in philosophy,” gushes Dzwonkowski!) attempts an analogy between the highly precise empirical analysis of the chemistry of food ingredients to the necessarily less precise analysis of news, opinion, and the sorts of coded language employed by politicos and broadcasters? Have they really come up with an algorithm that measures how much bias went into the decision by ABC, NBC, and CBS to ignore the nasty “Romney killed my wife” ad, with the same precision used to measure the amount of Polysorbate 60 in a Hostess Twinkie?

At least one liberal isn’t buying it, either.

David A. Graham, an associate editor at The Atlantic, says he’s “sceptical” of these findings, citing 3 reasons:

1. Obama has a track record as president to discuss. There's no apples-to-apples comparison between Romney, a former governor running for president, and Obama, with four years of deeds to critique. Given the state of the economy, et al, it's natural that there would be negative coverage.
2. By the same token, Obama needs less oxygen in the media. He's got the famed bully pulpit; many of the conservative pundits who appear on the air are there to respond to things the president has done or said. If the president were Republican, the ratio would likely be different. I'm sure Obama would much rather have the presidential podium than a seat at the table for a surrogate.
3. . . . . Always remember to read the fine print, kids! It's been pointed out to me that the data runs from May to July. Compared to Obama, voters are still just getting to know Romney, but the effect is much less. (“Infographic of the Day: Do the Mainstream Media Have a Conservative Bias?”).

Dzwonkowski’s in such a hot rush to debunk the “slobbering love affair” the media has with Obama that he abandons journalistic scepticism and lets himself be dazzled by twinkling computer lights and the “algorithms” that filter the news for bias “in all sorts of ways”.

He also makes it clear he’s got a serious case of nostalgia for the good old days of the media. That’s back before Rush and Fox News, when media gatekeepers like Cronkite and Brokaw protected Americans from the ill effects of the wrong kinds of facts:

The problem created by the abundance of information today is that it actually closes more minds than it opens. People used to seek information from trusted sources to make up their minds about issues. Now they turn to sources they trust to reinforce what they already believe.

What we’ve all thought was media bias has been nothing more than the objective liberal media trying to save us from too much information – or the wrong kind of information. If we just open our minds and listen, then we would learn that Romney is a wimp, that opposition to same-sex marriage is bigotry, and that all criticism of Obama is racist.

Who needs “fair and balanced”?

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You’re Mitt Romney, and It’s About F-ing Time

 

Left Rushes To Defend Huma Abedin, (or At Least TO Attack Her Critics)

After watching the sophomoric behavior of several journalists during the Q&A following Andrew McCarthy’s presentation at the National Press Club on Wednesday, I’m not surprised that the media is trying to neutralize him today.  Andrew Bostom responds to one of the hits, by Dana Milbank on the Washington Post’s blog. Here’s an excerpt from Bostom:

Yesterday, my colleague Andrew McCarthy gave a riveting presentation at The National Press Club about Muslim Brotherhood influence peddling, and national security. (The full text of Andy's prepared remarks are available here; the video of the entire press conference can be viewed at C-SPAN 3 here)

Impenetrable by fact, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has written a predictably dishonest and uninformed attack on McCarthy's briefing. Consistent with his crude pun on McCarthy's name in the title, Milbank's vicious blog just sprays defamatory charges of conspiracism at McCarthy. While Milbank's essential sin is a crude, willful omission of the voluminous evidence McCarthy adduced, the Washington Post columnist also disingenuously (and /or out of distressingly lazy ignorance) misrepresents the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (and its journal) -- a defining enterprise of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin's family .

Here is Milbank's reductio ad absurdum assessment, complete with his own sneer quotes:

Abedin's mother, brother and late father, all academics, were active in the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which McCarthy alleges was created by Abdullah Omar Naseef, "a major Muslim Brotherhood figure involved in the financing of al-Qaeda." To that, he adds the charge that "Abedin is directly connected" to Naseef because her mother, the editor of the institute's quarterly journal, listed her as an "assistant editor" between 1996 (when she was 20) and 2008. Abedin worked for the Clinton White House, Hillary Clinton's Senate office and the Clinton campaign during that time, so it's unlikely that she was doing much editing. It's also difficult to see how affiliation with the journal -- which publishes articles such as "The North African Heritage of the Hui Chinese" and "Muslim Mudejar Women in Thirteenth-Century Spain" -- gives Abedin conflicted loyalties.

Dana Milbank needs to read more than the table of contents when he evaluates a scholarly journal.

Please read the entire article at American Thinker:(“Educating Dana Milbank About the Abedin Family Journal”).

In his blog post Milbank also claims McCarthy “had difficulty when Mother Jones reporter Adam Serwer challenged him to explain how Obama was advancing sharia at the same time he was supporting same-sex marriage.”   McCarthy did have some difficulty with that “challenge,” as it was a total non sequitur bearing no relation to the subject-matter of McCarthy’s talk.   There isn’t always a logical response when one is confronted with an adolescent diversion.  McCarthy had no trouble at all explaining the decades-old (and well-documented) working relationship leftists and Islamists share based on their common enmity to American freedom.  

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McCarthy on Huma Abedin

Andrew McCarthy gave the following remarks about the Obama Administration's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin at National Press Club on August 8, 2012.

McCarthy on Muslim Brotherhood

From Our ‘Judges Aren’t All the Same’ Department

If you’re any kind of court watcher there’s something to be learned from last week’s Michigan Supreme Court ruling that ordered a petition for the November ballot to repeal the emergency-manager law be certified (“Stand Up for Democracy vs. Board of State Canvassers, et al.”). The opinion shows the clear distinction between the reasoning of conservative judges who adhere to the rule of law on the one hand, and activist judges on the other who reduce their judicial duties to further a political ideology. The ruling also contradicts the media myth that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices are little more than tools of the Republican Party and the powerful corporate interests.

This is the way Karen Bouffard at the Detroit News, who is sold out to the myth, explains the opinion:

In a ruling that surprised many on both sides of the issue, [Michigan Supreme Court Justice Mary Beth] Kelly sided with the panel's three Democrats in voting to place petitions on the ballot to repeal a law that was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature at the bidding of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. (“Republican-backed justice decided emergency manager case”).

Two things: First, Kelly did not side with the three Democrats. They sided with her on one of the opinion’s two holdings; as can be seen from their concurring opinion, they couldn’t have cared less what Kelly’s reasoning was, as they were just happy that the ruling gave a victory to their side in the dispute.  Second, Bouffard shares the one-dimensional view of all liberals that all three branches of government are strictly political.  In her version, a Republican governor got a Republican legislature to pass the EM law, and so naturally it was unexpected when a “Republican” justice ruled partly in favor of the plaintiff in the case.  It’s more accurate that it would only have been surprising to Democrats who can’t imagine a judge sworn to uphold the rule of law who might actually apply that rule in spite of some perceived political disadvantage to his party.

The media’s cartoon version of this case is that the petition to place the repeal of the emergency-manager law on the November ballot was rejected by the Board of Canvassers on the phony “technicality” that it failed to comply with the statutory requirement that the all petitions shall have a “heading . . . ‘printed in capital letters in 14-point boldfaced type . . . .’”  Supporters of repeal yelped that thwarting the will of “the people” (i.e., the people who signed the petition) over a few stupid fractions of an inch was, pure and simple,a direct attack on democracy and on “the people’s right to vote.”

Notably, on the standard of “substantial compliance,” which Kelly and the conservative majority reversed, the court’s three Democrats, Michael Cavanagh, Marilyn Kelly, and Diane Hathaway, didn’t side with Kelly at all.

Observe the contrast in the opening sentences of Justice Kelly’s opinion for the majority, and the overheated squawk of Justices Cavanagh, (Marilyn) Kelly, and Hathaway’s partial dissent. Justice Kelly:

Although we colloquially call ourselves a “democracy,” we are not. We are a constitutional republic in which we, as Michigan citizens, elect our representatives to local and state legislative bodies to enact our laws. This republican form of government is guaranteed to us in the United States Constitution.

In Michigan, we have enacted into our State Constitution an exception: The right of the people by initiative or referendum directly to enact laws or to repeal those validly enacted by our Legislature. Thus, as plaintiff seeks here, it is possible for a small minority of citizens to suspend a validly enacted law and require that that law be voted on in a general election. This case well demonstrates that tension between constitutional interests: the right to a republican form of government versus a constitutional process that allows a small minority to suspend the enactments of that government.

In the very constitutional provision creating this right of petition by initiative and referendum, the Legislature is required to prescribe the rules by which such petitions may validly be made. It has done so, and one such provision is the mandatory 14-point boldfaced-type requirement that is challenged here.

It would be hard to improve on that with any comment I might make.  But now see if you can find all the clichés and buzzwords in Cavanagh, Kelly, and Hathaway’s partial dissent:

[The majority’s] decision to depart from 30 years of precedent by abandoning the substantial-compliance doctrine throws Michigan’s electoral process into chaos and disenfranchises citizens from one of the most basic rights of democracy: the right to vote.

The holding of these justices that a mere clerical technicality—which has not and cannot be shown to create any harm whatsoever—could have prevented a referendum vote from taking place, in the face of more than 200,000 citizens who signed the petition to place the referendum on the ballot, is unprecedented and highly disturbing.

The majority opinion is rooted in the Constitution and the rule of law. Even if you don’t agree with Kelly on how type size should be measured, there’s no doubt she’s working quite hard to do her job and come up with the right decision. Even the partial dissents of fellow conservatives Robert Young, Brian Zahra, and Steven Markman are notable for their probity and logic.  Can anything like that be said for Cavanagh’s partial dissent, which shows the lazy bias of jurists who bring nothing to each case but a stubborn purpose to force the law to comply with their ideology?

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We’re Here, We’re Queer, and . . . Saaay! Doesn’t Anyone Care?

Friday’s threatened subversion of Chick-fil-A restaurants by homosexual activists flopped so bad it broke the Great Commandment of Gay: don’t be boring. Even committed progressive editors holding precious space open for Friday’s event – hoping to counteract the unexpected success of Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day -- had to face the fact that images of boys kissing boys hasn’t been newsworthy to Americans since, oh, maybe 1990?

It’s their own fault. For the past 20 years Hollywood’s been donating hours of weekly airtime to make gay celebrities and gay TV characters ubiquitous: audiences were meant to become desensitized to the point that they’re just as comfortable with another queen in the cast as with George Costanza or Brian Seacrest. It’s worked. Americans are no longer shocked by the behavior of flames: or at least not by the  narrow stereotype of innocuous behaviors the gay lobby chooses to reveal to the straight world.  But that still doesn’t mean Americans embrace homosexuality as equal to healthy sexuality, no matter how much we fib to pollsters or leave unchallenged outspoken guests at parties for the sake of peace. It takes more to get us riled than the sight of two funny boys smooching on cue.

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Wished Into the Cornfield, Chick-fil-A Stays Put *UPDATED*

The “purposeful”-feeling Adam Smith, whose namesake explained the invisible hand of the marketplace, has been visibly bitch-slapped himself by the hand of his now-former employer for making himself feel superior at the expense of a captive Chick-fil-A employee.

Adam Smith, who posted an online video of himself going through a Chick-fil-A drive-thru and ordering only the free water, was canned from his gig as chief financial officer of Vante, a Tucson medical manufacturing company, after the video made the rounds.  (“Viral video of man picking on Chick-fil-A worker gets him fired”).

Smith is obviously a bully. Only a bully would confront a restaurant employee, who is clearly in no position to defend herself, with the kind of self-righteous twaddle Smith unleashed on this young lady, and then brag about how much holier the whole experience has made him. For that matter, Mayors Rahm Emanuel, Thomas Menino, and Edwin Lee are bullies, too, as are the myriad homosexual alliances that threaten same-sex “kiss-ins” at Chick-fil-A restaurants. Sally Quinn, the Washington Post’s religion columnist, advises homosexuals to

Make the restaurants the gay hangouts of the community. Gay partners and Married gays could begin taking their children there. They could start having birthday parties for their kids. They could have Gay pride events there. (They have an events manager – just call) They could even have gay weddings there.

In other words, apply the same bullying tactics Marlon Brando and his fellow biker used to take over the cafe in The Wild One. 
Face it: America is weak on homosexuality these days. That’s the result of 300 million people being intimidated into silence by a few thousand homosexual activists who’ve usurped the moral high ground with their threats to slander all opponents with horrible labels like “bigot” and “homophobe.” The truth is that most Americans still don’t view homosexual relationships as normal – and never will. Most Americans, even liberals in their few unguarded moments, view the homosexual life as tragic at worst, and at best, humorous – but not normal. It isn’t possible to make it normal, and one doesn’t need to be a Bible student to see that.
The steady drumbeat in the media, the arts, and in leftist politics that there is a growing national consensus in favor of homosexual normalcy and queer marriage is only a reflection of how effectively the silence of opposing voices is being enforced. It’s true Americans express increasing support for gay marriage. But that support has the stiff and forced quality of those terrified townsfolk forced to look favorably on every mean trick Billy Mumy could come up with in the Twilight Zone’s “It’s a Good Life,” out of fear at being wished away into the cornfield.

“Dan Cathy, You’re a very bad man!”

Fortunately, Americans still dislike bullies, which explains the success of “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” on Wednesday. Some commentators said it wasn’t about opposition to gay marriage, it was about free speech, or freedom of religion, or some such. I don’t think that’s quite it, either. It was about Americans being sick and tired of a handful of vocal homosexuals and their Democrat enablers daring to lay down the law for the rest of the nation about what we are and aren’t allowed to think.
As for Adam Smith, he should take Quinn’s advice and apply for work at Chick-fil-A.

AUGUST 5, 2012 UPDATE: A video has surfaced depicting a mob of homosexual bullies at Friday’s Love and Tolerance Kiss-In at a Chicago Chick-fil-A, harassing a black man reading his Bible .   The hero in the plaid shirt admits he hates God.  Now if he'll just admit he hates his father, too.

   
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Qaradawi: Now This Is a Guy With Chicago Values!

Reported July 28 in the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report:

EXCLUSIVE: Obama OIC Envoy Meets With Qaradawi Associate In Mauritania; Abdallah Bin Bayyah Part Of Antisemitic Religious Body

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has announced that Rashad Hussain, President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has attended a meeting in Mauritania that was hosted by Abdallah bin Bayyah, an associate of Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi. According to the ISNA report, the subject of the meeting was “challenges faced by religious minorities in Muslim-majority communities” and participants included:

The meeting last week was hosted by Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah, Vice Chair of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, in his new Global Centre for Renewal and Guidance in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Participants included Dr. Nourredine al-Khademi, Tunisian Minister of Religious Affairs; Dr. Ahmed Toufiq, Moroccan Minister of Islamic Affairs and Endowment; Mr. Rashad Hussain, President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; Dr. Ahmed Ould Neini, Mauritanian Minister of Islamic Affairs; Dr. Abderrazak Juessoum, President of the Algerian Muslim Scholars Association; and other prominent scholars. The scholars also met with President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania to brief him on the purpose of their visit to Mauritania and the goal of their project. The President was very supportive and offered the scholars his assistance facilitating the development of solutions to this enormous challenge.”

Abdallah Bin Bayyah, last known to be living in Saudia Arabia, is a well known global Muslim Brotherhood figure also from Mauritania. According to an on-line biography, Sheikh Bin Bayyah was born in Eastern Mauritania and was the son of “one of the greatest scholars of his time.” According to this source, Sheikh Bin Bayyah was taught Islamic subjects by his father and in his early 20’s, was sent by the Mauritanian government to Tunis to study Islamic jurisprudence. Upon his return to Mauritania, he became a judge in the Ministry of Justice. He was also chosen to be the head of the Shariah section of the court of appeals and later to “High Authority for Religious Affairs.” Sheikh Bin Bayyah held numerous government posts including Vice-President, Prime Minister, and Permanent Secretary of the People’s Party of Mauritania. Sheikh Bin Bayyah is a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the theological body headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi and affiliated with the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, essentially comprising the European Muslim Brotherhood.

The ECFR meets annually and a Wall Street Journal reporter who attended a 2004 meeting described the extremism and antisemitism that took place:

“…members, speaking in Arabic, explained how European Muslim family life was under attack. ‘Extremist fundamentalist powers based on aggression on the part of the Crusader and Zionist alliance in the West are now preparing their cultural strategy according to a new wave of secular tendencies,’ said Ahmed Ali Al- Imam, a Sudanese religious figure who advocates the implementation of sharia in his religiously divided country. Other papers accepted traditional norms that directly contradict Western law and society, especially regarding women and marriage. Women should only cut their hair with their husbands’ permission, and “any woman who would marry without a male guardian’s consent, her wedding is invalid,” declared Muhammad Hawari, a Germany-based member of the group. Sometimes the group’s advice seems aimed at Muslims from another era. ‘Children should eat clean food and use clean water. They should not urinate in water wells,’ Mr. Hawari wrote in a paper. Adoption, he added, was forbidden, because a woman might be seen in a state of undress by a child other than her biological offspring. And if a child is adopted, Mr. Hawari said they should not be given equal rights to biological children.”

The same reporter also wrote that a Council member cited “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious anti-Semitic forgery written in czarist Russia, in a position paper on how Muslim families are under threat in Europe. “The Protocols, the speaker said, was evidence of a Jewish plot to undermine Muslim moral values through sexual permissiveness.” Qaradawi himself is a virulent anti-Semite is often referred to here as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement.

For a short time, Rashad Hussain was embroiled in controversy after the GMBDR reported both his associations with the US Muslim Brotherhood and remarks that he had made in 2004 about the prosecution of convicted terrorist Sami Al-Arian that were later deleted from the publication that reported them. Mr. Hussain at first denied remembering that he had made the remarks calling the prosecution “politically motivated persecution” but later, after an audio tape surfaced documenting the remarks, he acknowledged the comments but said that they had been “ill advised.” Mr. Hussain also admitted that he had complained to the publication about being misrepresented after the remarks were first reported but that the publication had deleted them on their own volition. The remarks did not appear to have been deleted until after Mr. Hussain had been appointed White House Counsel. (for an analysis of these events, go here). Since that time, Mr. Hussain has appeared at numerous events sponsored by the US Muslim Brotherhood including those held by the Center for the Study of Islamic and Democracy (CSID), the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, the Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals (CAMP), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). A Hudson Institute report identifies both the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as elements of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Previous posts have discussed the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood ties of the other organizations.

In May, a post reported that ISNA held a symposium together with the Georgetown University’s Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) which featured prominent members of the global Brotherhood including Abdallah Bin Bayyah and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leader Jamal Badawi.

A report by the Hudson Institute has identified ISNA as a major part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The organization has a long history of fundamentalism, anti-semitism, and support for terrorism and during the recent Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, ISNA was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Although recently ISNA has issued condemnations of terrorism which for the first time identify Hamas and Hezbollah by name, there is no indication that the organization has ever addressed or acknowledged its history.

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How I’m Spending My Summer Vacation

The pressures of a difficult year got worse in early July when the medicos told me I was overdue for another coronary bypass surgery, (my second).  I’m still not quite all back from that yet, but I’m getting there. I stay home from work, take walks when the temperature is below 80, take a lot of naps with the dog, and feel guilty about how little blogging I do these days.

Meanwhile our long national nightmare has still not ended, and threatens to repeat itself – but this time even worse -- in November.