Thursday, September 18, 2014
From: Gary L. Bauer
ISIS Down Under. . .
The headlines continue to read like nightmares. Law enforcement agencies in Australia broke up a plot by ISIS jihadists to carryout beheadings.
Approximately 800 agents performed raids in Sydney, Brisbane and Logan. Fifteen Islamic State sympathizers were arrested today. They had planned to cut off the heads of random folks walking in the streets and film the beheadings for propaganda.
As horrifying as this sounds, we’ve seen this tactic before. Last year two Muslims attacked Lee Rigby, a British soldier, in broad daylight on a London street.
Two weeks ago, an 82-year-old woman was beheaded in a London suburb, again in broad daylight. Police rushed to assure the public it was unrelated to terrorism. But eventually word got out that the 25-year-old suspect is a Muslim convert.
No, nothing to see here. Move on. . .
And Here At Home
I first reported on Ali Muhammad Brown three weeks ago. Since then, the parents of Brendan Tevlin, one of Brown’s victims, have begun speaking out. Good for them. Their son was gunned down by a proud jihadist. Yet our cultural, media and political elites refuse to acknowledge it.
Last night news broke that law enforcements agencies issued a bulletin warning that U.S. service personnel “will likely be targeted in spontaneous ‘ambush’ style attacks similar to the May 2013, machete attack against British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby in the U.K.”
The bulletin also noted that ISIS was encouraging Muslims in America to track down the home addresses of U.S. soldiers and to “show up and slaughter them.”
This bulletin was issued in July. Why are we just now hearing about it?
Again, it is because our political and cultural elites are in denial.
The Islamic State is not Islamic, President Obama assures us. But what is the common thread in all of these examples: the arrests in Australia, the beheadings in London, the murder of Brendan Tevlin and the threats against our men and women in uniform here at home?
The Islamists are at war with us.
More Bad News For Obamacare
The bad news about Obamacare just keeps coming. Here is the latest batch of headlines:
- PreferredOne Health Insurance, the largest insurer with the cheapest rates in Minnesota’s state-run exchange, announced this week that it was pulling out. Company executives said it was “purely a business decision” because continued participation in the exchange “was not sustainable.”
- If you have health insurance through Obamacare, you’d better consider identity theft protection too. The Government Accountability Office warned this week that Healthcare.gov is “exposing … data and its supporting systems to significant risks of unauthorized access, use, [disclosure], modification and disruption.”Security experts warned last year that the site was so bad it should be taken down. But the administration ignored its own security procedures then and it is still ignoring them now.
- Doctors don’t like Obamacare. According to a survey of 20,000 doctors, 46% gave Obamacare a “D” or an “F,” while just 25% gave it an “A” or “B.” In fact, 39% of doctors dislike it so much that they are going to “accelerate their retirement plans due to changes in the healthcare system.”
- Taxpayers are getting ripped off. The billion-dollar website was bad enough. But adding insult to injury, it was reported this week that a company awarded a $1.2 billion contract by the Obama Administration to process paper applications has in fact processed less than 5% of the expected number of applications. At that rate, the company is billing taxpayers more than $4,400 per application.A Victory For Religious Liberty
Monday we reported on the cross controversy at Arkansas State University. Members of the football team wanted to wear cross stickers on the backs of their helmets as a tribute to a former teammate and former equipment manager who died this year. But hyper-sensitive bureaucrats caved in to the anti-religious bigotry from the folks at the left-wing Freedom From Religion Foundation and banned the crosses.
Thankfully our friends at the Liberty Institute stepped up to defend the First Amendment freedoms of free expression and religious liberty of the players. The university has reversed course. It will no longer prevent team members from wearing the cross stickers, so long as it is “totally voluntary and completely independent of university involvement.”
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