Wednesday, July 23, 2014
From: Gary L. Bauer
Good vs. Evil
Earlier this week, Barack Obama stood on the White House lawn and addressed the conflict between Israel and Hamas. While he paid lip service to Israel’s right to self-defense, Obama then went on to express his “serious concerns about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths.”
Obama announced that Secretary of State John Kerry had been dispatched to the Middle East in order to “do everything he can to help facilitate a cessation to hostilities. We don’t want to see any more civilians getting killed.” The implication of Obama’s comments is that Israel is unjustly killing civilians.
But it didn’t stop there. Taking advantage of Hamas’ violence and concerns raised by the downing of the Malaysian passenger jet in Ukraine, the FAA announced yesterday that it was banning flights to Tel Aviv after a Hamas rocket landed near Ben Gurion Airport. The European Union and other international airlines quickly joined the ban.
The insider consensus in Washington, and among my contacts in Israel, is that this was nothing more than the Obama White House tightening the screws on Israel. Kerry is in Middle East now pushing a misguided ceasefire plan. Tourism is a huge industry in Israel, and the administration appears to be holding it hostage.
Several commentators have noted that the FAA decision was the biggest victory Hamas has scored in this latest conflict. Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz said, “They have given a prize to terror.” The problem is not Israeli security. The problem is Hamas.
As Israeli President Shimon Peres said, “The real answer is not to stop the flights but to stop the rockets.” That means stopping Hamas.
By the way, officials discovered Hamas rockets in a second U.N.-sponsored school yesterday. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israelis turned out today for the funeral of Sgt. Max Steinberg, the second American citizen, lone soldier killed in the Gaza conflict.
Hamas is an Islamofascist organization. Israel is a pro-American democracy. In a war between good and evil, why are we pressuring good to stop fighting evil?
The Continued Assault On Religious Liberty
On Monday President Obama signed an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of “gender identity,” extending new legal protections to transgendered federal workers.
This order was the result of Obama’s “pen and phone” strategy of governing. The so-called “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” (ENDA) was a key demand of the radical homosexual rights movement. It passed the Senate last year, but is stalled in the House of Representatives. So Obama decided to act on his own.
This is a very sweeping order. As CBS News noted, “The executive order … impacts an estimated 28 million workers, or one-fifth of the U.S. workforce.”
Moreover, many federal contractors are in fact religious charities and faith-based organizations performing social services for the government. And despite pleas from religious leaders, Obama refused to include any exemptions for religious groups. Thanks to this new order, they will now be forced to accommodate transgendered and “transitioning” employees.
Just three weeks ago, the Supreme Court in its Hobby Lobby decision, made it clear that the government had to respect the religious liberty rights guaranteed in the First Amendment. The editors of National Review Online noted that Senate Democrats included a religious exemption in their ENDA bill. Why would the president not do the same?
Scandal Update
News broke last night that IRS information technology specialists have informed congressional investigators that Lois Lerner’s hard drive was not as damaged as we have been led to believe. It was merely “scratched.”
In fact, IRS IT workers requested help from outside experts to make sure the information was recovered. But IRS managers refused their request.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp said this latest revelation only “raises more questions about potential criminal wrong doing at the IRS.”
But wait…there’s more.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was back on Capitol Hill again this morning. Koskinen told members of Congress that the IRS Inspector General’s office has discovered some old backup tapes, which, evidently, were not recycled as we had been told. The tapes are being reviewed to determine what, if anything, is on them.
Meanwhile, a new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that Obamacare’s security features are woefully inadequate, leading to concerns that the program could be rife with fraud.
According to the GAO, undercover investigators using false names, fake Social Security numbers and made up income figures were able to secure taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidies in 60% of their attempts.
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