We’re having tea with the Mad Hatter.

If you look a little closer at the debate over the Obama administration’s betrayal of the Catholic Church, you’ll see that we’ve already lost.  Obama and his media allies have effectively shifted the argument away from the grounds upon which it should take place and on to grounds we never thought possible. Rather than debating the outrageous overreach of the government demanding insurance companies pay for birth control, we’re instead debating whether the Catholic Church should be required to do so. 

It’s all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it? We’re so busy arguing over the outrage of the White House forcing Catholic-run schools and social service outlets to provide birth control and the morning-after pills to their employees, that the very idea of forcing  private insurance companies to do the same, sounds perfectly reasonable. It’s a genius sleight-of-hand meant to have us look over there instead of over here.

Moreover, if you’ve watched the MSM coverage, you can see that the Constitution and Bill of Rights means nothing to our media overlords. Here we have the federal government violating the fundamental right upon which this country was founded — Freedom of Religion — and yet the media is taking seriously that a valid counter-argument is a woman’s non-existent right to free birth control.

Do you see the words “birth” or “control” anywhere in here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And yet, all day I’ve had to read and listen to the media take seriously access to free birth control as some sort of competing right.  

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While CAP seems to have taken the charges to heart, and is seeking to change its ways, the Obama/Soros-”firsters” at MMFA are digging in their heels.

This dual-loyalty charge, like most anti-Semitic claims, is even more abhorrent because it directly contradicts Jewish Law:

Seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you and pray for it to the Lord, for in its peace you shall have peace. -Jeremiah Chapter 29:7

And it is nothing new: the dual-loyalty charge made by these progressive groups have been around since biblical times, it was what caused enslavement of the Israelites by Egypt.

A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are. Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land.” – Exodus Chapter 1:8-10

Jewish sources from all over the political spectrum have denounced the CAP and MMFA use of Antisemitism in their political writing.  Not many people were surprised when the Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the use of the dual loyalty term, but when the very progressive magazine, The Tablet condemned CAP and MMFA for its use, eyebrows were raised.

The root of this problem is not a twenty-something blogger writing something stupid on the Internet. Rather, it is that anti-Semitic rhetoric and logic are being protected and justified by those who are supposed to be gatekeepers. These people, often in the service of their larger political aims, are willing to apologize for or ignore what is obviously Jew-baiting and Jew-hatred…..

…This isn’t how the world works. Americans’ sensitivity to racist language directed at African-Americans has not made Americans insensitive to “real” anti-black racism. Rather it has made us scrupulous about our language, and subsequently our beliefs and practices have come to reflect, if not wholly fulfill, the promises embodied in this country’s founding documents.

What makes people insensitive to racism is when American political and intellectual elites refuse to confront racist language. The use of phrases like “Israel Firster” and “dual loyalist” that are based on anti-Semitic tropes is anti-Semitic. So is the belief that Jews fan the flames of hatred for discussing the opinions of those who hate them

CAP has denounced the term and instituted “oversight” changes — while the staffer who used “Israel firster” on his Twitter account apologized, deleted the tweets and has since left CAP for another group. The Wiesenthal Center has applauded CAP for making the changes.

The Anti-Defamation League also said in a written statement that the Center for American Progress “took the matter seriously and understood the anti-Semitic nature of raising dual-loyalty canards.” The ADL praised CAP for taking “concrete steps” to address the problem.

But as for Media Matters and its “Israel-firster” user, MJ Rosenberg, the talons are out.  These pages have provided many examples over the years how Rosenberg accuses American Jews of dual loyalty with the term Israel-firsters), or how he claims the  “evil Zionist lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy.

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Can a Christian be a libertarian? A column with some questionable logic that prevents the piece from being truly thought-provoking. A few things:

Libertarians talk a lot about economics, and rightfully so. Money is central to a healthy economy. Christians are also concerned about money; in fact God talks frequently about money in the Bible.

Actually, money is mentioned more in the Bible than anything else. I’ve written previously of this here. Scriptures tell us that money is a tool with which evil can control man. The Bible obviously doesn’t give political doctrine specific to the Fed, but rather as Christians we are taught to use our access to money as a way of evangelism through deed. This is something libertarianism leaves out, the God part. Are libertarians conservatives without God? That’s a question friends and I have discussed.

It is truly unfortunate that modern American churches seem to think the state’s means of “spreading democracy” through aggressive war is more important than spreading the peaceful message of the Gospel of Christ. Jesus came to bring “peace on earth, good will to men,” and by extension the Christian’s goal ought to be the same.

This passage presupposes that every conflict in which the United States has ever engaged is due to the United States’s frat boy aggression and need to sow its seed of democracy by force. Furthermore, it’s odd to me that a follower of limited government would advocate for a state-endorsed religion as a way of nation building, supplanting the previous logical fallacy. This author quotes Paul more than the Bible, which tells me everything I need to know about this piece. Ron Paul is not God. What is truly unfortunate is that by making the universal straw man that “modern American churches seem to think,” i.e. all churches, the author betrays a (conscious or subconscious) prejudice against churches based on his own presupposition.

Horn misses a huge part of Christ’s work, exemplified in Matthew 10:34:

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

I get that Horn wants to promote his stylized version of Biblical interpretation, but he should realize that Ron Paul’s words carry no weight compared to Christ’s, and he perhaps should study the Word of God more than Paul’s words, especially those newsletters.

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It is inconceivable to me that on issues not involving the fairly declarative Ten Commandments, anyone would skew the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament into something that fits their partisan political point of view. And as far as the Ten Commandments go, there’s more than a little of the old coveting in the subtext of this latest nonsense from the utterly shameless Washington Post:

Christmas means the redistribution of wealth …

The concept of society’s structural sin that is suggested in Pauline teaching was crystallized in the theology of liberation when it appeared among Latin American theologians after the II Vatican Council. Based on a socio-economic secular analysis of history in secular academia, theologians like Father Gustavo Gutierrez spoke of structural sin. Upholding an unjust political and economic system would only perpetuate injustice, they argued. Good people could be trapped into a web of doing bad things because society fostered a way of acting that normalized immoral behavior.

Detractors have caricatured Liberation Theology as advocating violent revolution against White capitalists. In contrast, based on the Just War Theory, theology restricted violence to a response against violent attack, reasoning that self-defense is legitimate when measured by the countervailing force trying to take away human life and liberty. (The Declaration of Independence was founded on that same principle: armed revolution in defense of God-given rights is “as American as apple pie.”)

A-hem:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s.

I must’ve missed the asterisk in the tenth commandment and the small print at the bottom the of the tablet that reads:

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The American Spectator does a nice job of deconstructing this ridiculous piece from a progressive blogger over at the Progressive Christian Alliance. The gist of the piece is this: Jesus was an illegal immigrant baby, thus if you are against illegal immigration, you are against Jesus and the entire story of the nativity is one big political story.

AS responds:

Faith dictates that churches offer their ministry and message of redemption, embodied in the Nativity story, to all people, including illegal immigrants. But there is no covert message within the Christmas narrative offering specific policy guidance on U.S. immigration law. The temptation to extract politics out of the Nativity account should be resisted. Perhaps the most infamous example was the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1992 Democratic Convention speech comparing Vice President Dan Quayle to murderous King Herod. The birth of Baby Jesus was significant enough by itself that it needs no political sloganeering to amplify its importance.

This religious outfit dilutes God’s word with its hippified humanism. Their “about” section reads like a vague intro to a self-help book. The emphasis is based on inclusion (Jesus Himself said He did not come to bring peace, but a sword Matthew 10:34) and accepting people as they are, regardless whether or not God’s law is followed. They are situational Christians: they love the Bible when they think they can cherry pick the Word and support leftist beliefs but are suspiciously silent on Scripture where it concerns life, marriage, law, and worship.

The Bible is quite clear on following the law where it does not conflict with faith:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.  - Romans 13:1-3

If you’re going to condescend to preach to the flock, you must preach all the Bible for consistency, as even the Devil can quote Scripture. A warning from Scripture to these so-called “progressive Christians” and their perversion of His Word:

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Media Matters for America’s Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg has become infamous for accusing any American Jews who support Israel of dual loyalty (he calls them Israel-firsters). He also has claimed the evil Israel lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy. He also uses the term “neo-con” as a slang pejorative term for Jews who are politically conservative.  Rosenberg is not the only Jew-Basher at Media Matters, just the most vocal.

Rosenberg and his fellow progressives at MMFA and Center for American Progress have finally picked on the wrong Jews: The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Formed by the famous Nazi-hunter, the SWC’s only purpose is to preach tolerance. Unlike groups such as the ADL and the AJC, which often lean left, the Wiesenthal Center is non-political. Also unlike those groups, the Center will criticize and/or praise people on either side of the political aisle.

Last week, Politico published a piece about how the Progressive MMFA and CAP were fighting with the more mainstream Democrats about Israel.  They want to change the party to the Anti-Israel Party.  The article reported that the battle was being led by several bloggers at Media Matters and the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress blog.

The piece highlighted several controversial comments that were made on Twitter by MJ Rosenberg and other MMFA and ThinkProgress bloggers calling groups that did not share their anti-Israel positions “Israel firsters” essentially repeating the antisemitic meme of dual loyalty.

In response to the progressive attacks sent to the Wapo’s Jennifer Rubin, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked “progressive” antisemitism:

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult in this country to take a position sympathetic to the Jewish state and in favor of the continuation of America’s historic strong alliance with Israel without being called “an Israel Firster” and charged with “dual loyalties.” (more…)

Only Media Matters can bury the lede of their latest Christian-bashing missive five graphs down into a story. After starting one story on Tim Tebow, the article plunges headfirst off the cliff into insanity by switching gears and blaming poverty in America on … Christians:

… but as the network exaggerates the threat to Christianity in America, it simultaneously downplays — even mocks — the very real plight facing those whom Christian teachings demand be shown compassion: the poor.

Poverty in the U.S. is on the rise. Incomes are decreasing. According to the Census Bureau, right now there are over 46 million Americans in poverty, more than there have been at any time since they started publishing poverty estimates. Fifteen percent of U.S. households are “food insecure,” meaning they lack money to properly feed themselves on a daily basis. They face a host of problems, both quantifiable and not: lack of access to health care, chronic underemployment, disrupted family life, and so on.

But to hear Fox News tell it, the poor don’t have it so bad. Earlier this year, the conservative Heritage Foundation released a report on how the ownership of household appliances demonstrates that “most of the persons whom the government defines as ‘in poverty’ are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term.” Seizing on Heritage’s laughably superficial assessment of poverty, Bill O’Reilly asked: “How can you be so poor and have all this stuff?”

I love when progressives pause their Bible-bashing long enough to pose as sudden experts on Scripture. Oh please, let’s do this. (You’ll see my reason why at the end.)

1) “Poverty in the U.S. is on the rise. Incomes are decreasing. According to the Census Bureau, right now there are over 46 million Americans in poverty, more than there have been at any time since they started publishing poverty estimates.”

And  when did this start exactly? The answer: with this administration. Remember when Newt Gingrich called Obama the “food stamp president?” While the Dixified minds of dog whistle progressives are certain that “food stamps” is code for “black people,” the reality is that more white Americans are on food stamps–in fact, more Americans, period, are receiving government assistance now than ever:

A record 18.3% of the nation’s total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

The income data show how fragile and government-dependent the recovery is after a recession that officially ended in June 2009.

More:

Americans on the government dole received an average of $7,427 each in benefits in 2010, up from an inflation-adjusted $4,763 in 2000 and $3,686 in 1990. Thus, benefits have more than doubled in the last 20 years! Keep in mind that the federal government pays about 90% of these benefits.

How can this be? Under the Obama administration, families have watched jobs disappear, incomes shrink, food and gas prices rise, and the economy downgraded for the first time in a century. Ace of Spades with the numbers:

All while government spending increased at a record pace:

Don’t you think this has something to do with the increased poverty rate? And while we’re waxing poetic on Scripture, what say you of this racket presented in the graph above, of the astronomical increase in non defense federal spending?

WWJD?

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**LINK FIXED**

The war on Christmas music has taken a strange turn, with the mainstream media finally up in arms at the overly PC handling of the holiday’s song lyrics.  But it isn’t the constant barrage from uber-sensitive atheists trying to eliminate every reference to Christmas from our schools and public places that has them fired up.

No, it’s an elementary teacher in Michigan that has raised their ire.

The flurry of controversy arose when the teacher, weary of hearing her students giggling every time they had to sing the words ‘gay apparel’ during their rendition of “Deck The Halls,” decided to replace the word ‘gay’ with ‘bright’.

The reception from the media, as you may have heard, was rather chilly.

What you may not have heard covered in the MSM was an essay penned by one Colin Curran, a 16-year-old high school junior from New Jersey.  Taking to the Huffington Post during this same time period, Colin told a story about a high school assignment which involved creating a music playlist for a young children’s holiday breakfast.  There was one catch – none of the songs could contain a certain set of offending words, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Jesus, God, or Santa Claus.  The reason, Colin explains, is that the “principal does not want to offend anyone with belief-specific music.”

Google Colin’s name under the news section and it reveals a single hit, having nothing to do with the student from New Jersey.  Google ‘bright apparel’ and it’s a whole different ballgame.

Here is a sampling of some of the coverage:

The Daily Mail

“Parents thought the Cherry Knoll teacher had been naughty and not so nice when the elementary instructor replaced ‘gay’ with ‘bright’ after her students wouldn’t stop laughing when they sang the word.”

MSNBC

“Use it as a teaching moment or just tell the kids to pipe down and sing the song as written.”

Dan Savage

“Someone had to straighten out that carol – can’t have children donning gay apparel.”

Huffington Post

“A Michigan music teacher’s decision to censor the word ‘gay’ from a traditional Christmas carol is being met with a frosty response.”

Fox Nation

“A traditional Christmas carol is at the center of controversy at a TCAPS elementary school.”

Of course, the school’s principal, Chris Parker, didn’t miss an opportunity to crank the PC up a notch by calling this a ‘teachable moment’ for student and teacher alike.

In a report for ABC 57 News, Parker doubles down on his overreaction saying:

“We have an anti-bullying and discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and so going forward, the teacher will be addressing ‘this is how we’re supposed to be reacting.  This is the way to be respectful about this.’”

The amount of attention being heaped upon the “Deck the Halls” nontroversy and the lack of attention being paid to the omission of Christmas altogether from a music playlist in New Jersey are striking.

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Media Research Center:

ABC, CBS and NBC were uninterested in Obama’s Rev. Wright connection, but have gotten religion and are using it to target conservative candidates.

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama’s potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion.

ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they’re letting viewers know that “Rick Perry’s gonna have to answer some questions about the people” he prays with, fretting that God “told Michele Bachmann,” to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is “a cult” or if “Mitt Romney is a Christian,” the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates’ faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn’t) candidate Obama’s 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to “black liberation theology,” or Obama’s half-Muslim heritage.

The Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field. Among CMI’s key findings:

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Tis the season for buying books for your loved ones and as always the The New York Times Sunday Book Review is here to help. And as always the Sunday Book Review is there to help us understand that anything from the right side of the aisle, especially the tea party, is to be put in the worst possible light at all times.

So, what is it this time? Book reviewer Kevin Boyle lets us all know that he thinks that the folks of the tea partymovement are somehow just like the Ku Klux Klan. Nice, huh? That’ll get the holiday season started right!

In his Sunday book review Boyle reviews a pair of books actually on the KKK — meaning that for the first time bringing up the KKK in a New York Times article isn’t wholly gratuitous. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

But what was totally gratuitous was the way in which Boyle opened his review, slamming by inference the entire tea party and analogizing it to a modern day KKK:

Imagine a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it.

No, not that movement. The one from the 1920s, with the sheets and the flaming crosses and the ludicrous name meant to evoke a heroic past. The Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they called it. And for a few years it burned across the nation, a fearsome thing to behold.

Yeah, because today’s era and the tea party are so dang similar to the KKK and the era of the 1920s, right? What is a more natural fit, anyway? What left-winger could doubt Boyle’s hatemongering?

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How godless do you have to be to not know that “Amazing Grace” doesn’t sound anything like what Cain sang?

Pretty damn godless.

I rest my case.

The song Cain sang is called ‘He Looked Beyond my Faults‘:

Amazing grace will always be my song of praise
For it was grace that brought me liberty.
I can not know just why He came to love me so;
He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs.

I shall forever lift mine eyes to Calvary
To view the cross where Jesus died for me.
How marvelous that grace that caught my falling soul;
He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs.

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Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is the perfect example of what a conservative writer should be (if conservatives were supposed to be liberal).

Rubin is the type of writer who delights in bashing conservatives in the name of saving them, kind of the way progressives bashed the medical field during the Obamacare* debate. The progressives claimed to have the medical people’s best interests at heart as they worked on a piece of legislation that would cause them all to leave the field.

* Please Note: the word Obamacare used in the above paragraph has been declared obscene by Congressional Democrats–if anyone is offended by that harsh word, I sincerely apologize.

“Conservatives” such as Rubin spend more time bashing conservative principles than supporting them. For example Rubin bashes supporters of a balanced budget amendment as extremists; this is from her summary of the debt ceiling deal at the end of July:

The president gets a deal through 2012; the House gets its cuts; and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gets his commission. And the GOP extremists don’t get their balanced budget amendment passed and sent to the states or the satisfaction of blowing up the deal. As for the country, if it passes, the agreement will take us from the days of automatic debt-ceiling raises to the first, tentative steps toward fiscal sanity.

I supposed it didn’t matter to this “conservative” that a balanced budget amendment is a key policy pushed by most conservatives and it is supported by the majority of voters. (more…)

In his recent assessment of his year since he was unceremoniously — and illicitly in many folks’ estimation — fired by NPR, Juan Williams indulged one of those fallacious assumptions that just screams left-wing spin. It is the sort of straw man argument that casts aspersions on others — this time against Christians — while pretending to be the logical adult in the room, not to mention while pretending not to be casting aspersions. It is a logical sleight of hand that many liberals use.

First, let me say that I am 100% on Williams’ side in that his firing by NPR was a real breach of journalistic ethics: theirs. The comments he made a year ago that got him fired did not in any way harm his veracity as a journalist, nor were they racist or even incorrect. Heck, they weren’t even injudicious except when taking the brain dead political correctness that infests the left into consideration.

Though that was the discussion of a year ago and really is not something worth rehashing here, Williams did say something outrageous in his review of that year-old issue that deserves to be highlighted. In essence, Williams made an illogical argument about how we should think of radical Islam, and he did so by assuming that domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City Bombing could be considered as representative of Christianity as the Saudi 19 were of radical Islam.

Here is what Williams said [my bold for emphasis]:

… we have to keep in mind that America is a country founded on the ideal of religious liberty. We can’t stereotype any group on the basis of the behavior of extremists among them. We don’t indict all Christians because of Timothy McVeigh.

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WARNING: This Image of Hate From Occupy LA May Have Been Placed in Our Minds by GOP Mind Control Operatives

Jews across the country who were frightened by those anti-Semites at the Occupy Wall Street protests can all relax now, because the Slate’s Dave Weigel says it’s all safe. According to Weigel OWS isn’t really anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israel it’s all just a Republican plot. Although he doesn’t say it, the implications are clear. The GOP has mind control experts who have the know-how to cause Americans to see things that aren’t there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the RNC and NRCC tried their damnedest to argue that Occupiers are inhabiting anti-Semites. The crown jewel of the effort is one of those videos that makes liberal use of shaky video and pounding music.

There is a problem: The movement isn’t anti-Semitic. It started in New York. Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein. This is a movement studded with liberal Jews! Here’s one video that’s gotten less play than the one of the irate anti-Semitic dipshit with the “Nazi bankers” sign: The Kol Nidre in New York, at the Occupy camp.

Is it just totally nuts to worry about anti-Semitism here? Well, no. This is a protest against the banking industry. The chairman of the Fed is Jewish. The president of Goldman Sachs is Jewish. The Secretary of the Treasury is Jewish. If “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools,” there’s a hell of a risk that people could get foolish about this.

See? Dave Weigel who is Jewish, is so calming you wouldn’t know he is a bit off the mark on just a few key points.

• “It started in New York” What does that mean? Is that Dave’s version of Jesse Jackson’s calling the “Big Apple” Hymie Town? Sure, if it started in New York it must be pro-Jewish.  I guess Weigel forgot Al Sharpton got his start in NY, where he incited two anti-Semitic Pogroms, one in Crown Heights, the other in Harlem. “It started in NY” didn’t work in that case.

• “Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein” Oh thank God! She’s a Jew, that makes me feel so much better.  That Dave Weigel really knows how to calm people down.

Naomi Klein is the perfect person to be the OWS ideological hero, she has been attacking capitalism and corporations for her entire career.  Less known is the fact that, Klein has another ideological similarity to the OWS protests, she has been demonizing Israel for almost as long as she has been demonizing capitalism.

It’s not just that she disagrees with Israeli policy but she demonizes and tries to de-legitimize the Jewish state. She uses that age-old blood libel and invents Israeli atrocities.  “[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card.”

In her book The Shock Doctrine Klein explains that Israel is run by a vast military-industrial complex who purposely perpetuates war against the Palestinians so they can develop and more importantly sell, new weapons on the world-wide market.

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There is a certain evil hidden in semantics. One of the greatest powers the press holds is their subtle control of the way readers understand complex issues. These tiny pushes, over time, build up and corrupt the way the unsuspecting consumer pictures that story. The New York Times is a master of this insidious manipulation.

On Monday former Israeli Member of Knesset Rabbi Hanan Porat passed away after an extended illness. In its obituary of this leader of the Religious Zionist movement had this gem of a line (my emphasis):

Mr. Porat was a child of the kibbutz Kfar Etzion, which is on land that was later won by Jordan during Israel’s 1948 war of independence. He re-established the community after the 1967 Middle East war, when the land was conquered by Israel.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson:

Is there a better way to bring in the weekend than by chatting with top newsmakers over drinks? Sure, the bar talk and news commentary device has been used before, but that was just a sound stage. Today Accuracy in Media introduces our new video series, Bar Stool Confessions, which offers a closer look at those who break and shape the news.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

In a major blow to Al-Jazeera’s drive for acceptance and respectability in the West, the government of Israel says that one of the channel’s correspondents has confessed to acting as an agent of the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli government also claims to have uncovered a network of Hamas operatives using Al-Jazeera as a cover.

The U.S. State Department designates Hamas as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and states that it “was formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Hamas does not recognize Israel and its founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. The group considers Israeli settlers and civilians legitimate military targets.

Samer Allawi, a Palestinian who ran Al-Jazeera’s Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau, was released, sentenced to time served, and agreed to pay a $1,400 fine. He was arrested on August 9 and held in an Israeli prison. Various press freedom groups had clamored for his release.

Some commentators are saying that the treatment of the Al-Jazeera correspondent is evidence of a tougher policy by Israel toward Qatar, an Arab dictatorship which completely finances Al-Jazeera and selects its news and editorial personnel. A classified report prepared by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and leaked to the Israeli media in August outlined Qatar’s more radical stance in the Arab and Muslim world and noted evidence of more frequent Hamas visits to Doha, the capital, and funding by Qatar of Hamas.

A story on the Israelnationalnews.com website about the report also indicated that Israel may start restricting the activities of Al-Jazeera correspondents inside Israel. It said, “Qatar is also the home of Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera, which the Foreign Ministry considers extremely anti-Israel. As a result, the Ministry has worked in recent months to prevent reporters from the network from operating in Israel, and has stopped giving them visas. Currently, the only way for an Al-Jazeera reporter to enter Israel is using a passport from a country that has full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, but the Ministry is seeking ways to keep these individuals out of Israel as well.”

Although the emir of Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the channel, making it effectively a propaganda machine for the regime, he prohibits a free press and free elections at home. Bloggers critical of the royal family are simply taken away and tortured, while Al-Jazeera turns a blind eye and deaf ear to their fate.

But because the country hosts a U.S. military base, it enjoys a moderate and even pro-Western reputation. Qatar uses expensive public relations and lobbying firms like Barbour, Griffith & Rogers (BGR) and Brown Lloyd James.

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USA Today published a story recently by Bob Smietana of the Nashville newspaper The Tennessean attacking the integrity and work of well-known Christian First Amendment defense attorney Jay Sekulow – that is shocking for what is left out.

Sekulow is the head man of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Washington D.C.-based organization that takes on attackers of Christian’s First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, a tempting target in some corners of America’s political establishment.

In fact, writer Smietana didn’t just write one piece attacking Sekulow and the ACLJ but in the space of only a few days wrote two. In one piece Smietana accuses Sekulow and his family of making too much money from the charities they represent and in the second he claims that the ACLJ might be improperly pursuing cases not in its tax exempt charter.

In both cases Smietana employs the “some say” style of indictment by writing innuendoes backed up by little actual evidence, but the piece in USA Today is by far the worst example of the tactic. (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

A journalist for Al-Jazeera has been arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The journalist, Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, is a Palestinian. He was apprehended by Israeli authorities as he attempted to leave the West Bank.

The detention of Allawi, a major development in the media wars over the future of the Middle East, is not the first time that Israel has detained journalists from the channel. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, several Al-Jazeera journalists working in Israel were apprehended and warned about providing military information to Hezbollah, another terrorist organization. The accusation was that Al-Jazeera journalists were reporting the specific location of Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel, enabling the terrorists to more accurately aim their weapons. In total, Hezbollah rained an estimated 3,970 Katyusha rockets and longer range missiles on military and civilian targets in Israel. The rockets have no internal guidance system and needed to rely on spotters or media coverage of their strikes to increase their accuracy.

This kind of activity earned the channel a lawsuit, filed by the Israel Law Center in the U.S., accusing Al-Jazeera of facilitating the deaths of Israeli and American victims of the war. Judge Kimba Wood dismissed the suit, claiming that the victims had failed to show Al-Jazeera had the specific intention of aiding Hezbollah.

Since its inception, however, Al-Jazeera has functioned as a mouthpiece for terrorist organizations, including but not limited to al-Qaeda. Tayseer Alouni, the channel’s Afghanistan correspondent during the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended by U.S. military authorities and turned over to Spain, his native country, where he was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed as an agent of al-Qaeda. Al-Jazeera defended him and paid his legal fees.

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