Video clip from appearance on RT TV Friday evening

I don't normally post every single video from my television appearances but I was on the panel of a particularly spirited episode of "The Big Picture" with Thom Hartmann on RT TV Friday night.

The other panelists were Dutch Martin of Project 21 and veteran labor organizer Stewart Acuff.

Patriot Larry Grathwohl, 65, Infiltrated Weather Underground, Indicted Bill Ayers

A July 24, 2013 blog post of mine from The Spectacle, American Spectator's blog:

Patriot Larry Grathwohl, 65, Infiltrated Weather Underground, Indicted Bill Ayers

By Matthew Vadum

A great American who penetrated the Weather Underground terrorist group of longtime Obama pal Bill Ayers and paid a steep price for his patriotism, has died.

Larry Grathwohl passed away suddenly at the age of 65 in Cincinnati last week. Time magazine once described Grathwohl as the only successful infiltrator of the Weather Underground. A highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, he served in a Hatchet Force unit of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Such units located and rescued servicemen in trouble and conducted search-and-destroy missions against Vietnamese communist forces.

“They were among the toughest of the tough,” according to his friend James Simpson. “Larry was an utterly fearless, dedicated patriot.”

He returned to America in 1966 and enrolled in college. Working with the FBI, he infiltrated the Weatherman collective in Cincinnati, rising quickly in the command structure. After fighting communists abroad, Grathwohl had decided he needed to fight them at home too.

After wading through the cesspool of the anti-American left for a year, Grathwohl revealed the treasonable behavior of operatives of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) who collaborated with communist Cuba and the governments of other hostile foreign nations.

Obama’s Bankrupt Economic Agenda

My article from the July 25, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama’s Bankrupt Economic Agenda

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama’s much-hyped speech about the economy yesterday was an impressive exercise in left-wing self-congratulation backed by examples of economic illiteracy and lies we’ve grown accustomed to hearing.

The banal address delivered at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, was 64 long, platitude-filled minutes of nothing. It was a speech the long-suffering American people have heard umpteen times before, endlessly promoted by the mainstream media as something novel and exciting.

It underlined the pervasive, ominous atmosphere of unreality that permeates the Obama administration.

As America continues sliding into the abyss, Obama talked about what he wanted to talk about, not about what an abject, irredeemable failure he has been on the economy. The White House website warned that the oration was the first in “a series of speeches laying out the progress we’ve made … and the work that’s left to do to rebuild an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead.”

The speech came as a shocked public is beginning to come to grips with the fact that Detroit, Michigan, once one of the greatest, wealthiest cities in the world, was pushed into bankruptcy. The devastated city, destroyed over decades by left-wing Democrats like Coleman Young, the openly racist radical mayor who drove Detroit into the ground from 1974 to 1994, while inspiring generations of corrupt politicians, is America’s model city for showcasing progressive policies.

Detroit is so messed up that vast swaths of it are now in the hands of the city’s ravenous bureaucrat class. According to the bankruptcy filing, Detroit “owns or is [in] possession of approximately 60,000 parcels of land within the City’s geographic boundaries and more than 7,000 vacant structures.” That’s 60,000 lots and 7,000-plus vacant structures in a city with a population of just 700,000 people — and presumably there are plenty of decrepit properties that the bureaucrats haven’t grabbed yet.

It is becoming obvious that Detroit is the future of all of America if Obama’s ruinous policy regime remains in place.

But at least Michelle Obama is focusing on pressing issues.

Her hair appropriately tied back in an Eva Perón-like bun, the nation’s First Scold spent the day before her husband’s non-stem-winder lecturing Latinos about proper eating habits.

Larry Grathwohl: Requiem for an American Hero

My article from the July 24, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Larry Grathwohl: Requiem for an American Hero

By Matthew Vadum

A great patriot who suffered and risked everything he had to defend the United States of America by infiltrating the Weather Underground terrorist group in the late 1960s, died suddenly last week.

Larry Grathwohl passed away at the age of 65 in his Cincinnati apartment on July 18, apparently of natural causes. Although no cause of death has been made public, he had been in poor health for some time.

Born in Cincinnati on Oct. 13, 1947, Larry David Grathwohl was a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran.

After fighting Communists abroad, he decided to fight them at home. He returned to America after serving in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division and took it upon himself to infiltrate the group, joining the Weatherman collective in Cincinnati. In his clandestine enterprise he rose quickly, aided by his perceived authenticity as a working class Vietnam vet, unlike the spoiled rich-kid draft resisters who ran the organization.

The story of Grathwohl is very much also the story of Bill Ayers.

For reasons that historians will argue about for decades to come, the revelation that socialist Barack Hussein Obama was close personal friends with unrepentant Weather Underground bombers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn failed to torpedo Obama’s presidential bid. In fact, it caused little more than a ripple at the time in the mainstream media and only came up when alleged journalist George Stephanopoulos, a longtime Bill and Hillary Clinton loyalist, raised the disturbing connection during a primary-season presidential debate to hurt Obama’s campaign.

Grathwohl’s daring venture into the bowels of the anti-American Left showed that the subversives of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), which grew out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) splinter group Weatherman, worked with Cuba and the governments of other hostile foreign nations.

WUO bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, and various other sites of national importance throughout the 1970s. One of its key leaders, trust fund baby Ayers, now portrayed by the media as an innocuous school reformer, famously said he didn’t regret what he did and he’d do it again.

Ayers claims the WUO never killed anyone. If that’s true, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Sometimes bombs failed to detonate. In a Greenwich Village townhouse, one bomb that was supposed to be planted at a well-attended dance exploded prematurely, killing several terrorists including Ayers’s girlfriend at the time.

Ayers was obsessed with violence, Grathwohl explained. Ayers spearheaded the group’s effort “to make plans to select and destroy targets that were symbols of authority. If necessary, we would kidnap government officials for ransom and assassinate others when it was politically expedient,” according to Grathwohl.

Obama's Enforcer in Egypt

My article from today's issue of FrontPage magazine:

Obama's Enforcer in Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

When Egyptians contemplate the abysmal failure of the Obama administration’s policies toward their country, they picture the face of the hapless American envoy to Egypt.

U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, who has shamefully collaborated with the theocratic totalitarians of the Muslim Brotherhood, has continued to stand by Egypt’s Islamofascists even as they bring their nation ever closer to civil war. The Brotherhood refuses to accept the military-led ouster of its leader Mohammed Morsi as that nation’s president a fortnight ago. Its supporters are spilling blood in the streets as they target members of the armed forces, police, and their political opposition in an effort to restore Israel-hating Morsi to power.

Patterson is helping the Muslim Brotherhood. A week ago she reportedly threatened Supreme Council of the Armed Forces chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The envoy demanded that the general order the release of all Brotherhood members being detained for questioning and warned that failing to do so could lead to civil war.

Al-Sisi reportedly refused to be bullied, answering, “Neither you nor your country can overcome Egypt and its people.”

Understandably, those who are delighted that Morsi’s drive to transform Egypt into the new Iran was halted earlier this month, are mightily aggravated with Patterson, now inextricably linked in their minds to Obama’s reckless, pro-Islamist foreign policy. Critics complain that as Morsi’s short-lived government became increasingly repressive, Patterson held her tongue, refusing to encourage the authorities to back off.

Patriot Larry Grathwohl, RIP

I learned today that Larry Grathwohl was found dead in his Cincinnati apartment.

No cause of death has been announced but my guess is it was natural causes. In the above 2011 photo Larry is shown at the right.

The Vietnam vet put his life on the line by infiltrating the Weather Underground Organization. He was in the inner circle of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. He told his fascinating tale in the recently reissued book, Bringing Down America.

Here is a link to  a tribute by Tina Trent. I wrote an article about Larry in 2010.

Here’s what I wrote about Larry at pp. 35-6 of my 2011 book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers:

Although in retrospect Ayers has criticized some of his past statements as foolish, his core beliefs haven’t changed. His hatred of America burns just as bright today as when his terrorist cell plotted to use dynamite to murder military officers at a dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1970. “This society is not a just and fair and decent place,” he said in 2001. “The pundits all pat themselves on the back: ‘God, what a great country.’ . . . It makes me want to puke.” In what must have been the worst case of bad timing in history, Ayers denounced the U.S. in a profile that ran in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” he said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

What exactly did Ayers mean? According to Bringing Down America author Larry Grathwohl, the Weather Underground made plans to kill the one-tenth of the U.S. population they expected would turn out to be “diehard capitalists” incapable of reeducation. Grathwohl is a Vietnam War veteran who, after fighting Communists abroad, decided to fight them at home. After returning to America having served in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, Grathwohl took it upon himself to infiltrate the group. Incredibly, very little has been written about what the Weather Underground planned to do to America if it seized power. (endnote 57) Even today Ayers refuses to disavow violent tactics. “I never denounced what we did and the reason is, because in the context of those times and what was going on I actually think that we were very restrained and I’ve always thought that and I still think it. I think the most violent force then and even more violent today is the U.S. government.

Endnote 57:

57. “Larry Grathwohl on Ayers’ Plan for American Re-education Camps and the Need to Kill Millions,” posted October 29, 2008, at (click here), accessed July 25, 2010. Grathwohl made the assertion in No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism (Part V), a 1982 documentary film directed by Dick Quincer. Grathwohl is author of Bringing Down America, an out-of-print book published by Arlington House in 1976. He infiltrated the Weather Underground and participated in internal discussions in which its leaders laid out plans to systematically liquidate those who resisted the communist revolution they aspired to create.

Possible DHS Pick Martin O’Malley: Conservatives Are Terrorists

My July 15, 2013 post from the American Spectator's blog, The Spectacle:

Possible DHS Pick Martin O’Malley: Conservatives Are Terrorists

By Matthew Vadum

Rumors are circulating that Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) may be nominated to replace outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Those like Napolitano, who think conservatives are terrorists, should be delighted by this development.

O’Malley regards reducing government spending as a terrorist act.  He said so on Feb. 8, 2005 when he was mayor of Baltimore.

I was in the room at the National Press Club when O’Malley blasted then-President George W. Bush for daring to propose cutting spending on the truly awful $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program administered by the worse-than-useless Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). (The Washington Post also reported the story at the time.)

CDBG is an out-of-control slush fund politicians use to buy votes. The Bush administration wanted to eliminate CDBG and replace it and 17 other federal community development programs with a new $3.7 billion program.

Mayor O’Malley called CDBG “one of the most effective programs to expand opportunity in our urban cores,” and likened President Bush’s call for its abolition to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores in two of our great cities and they did that because they knew that that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most,” the future governor said.

“Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States, and with a budget axe, he is attacking America’s cities, he is attacking our metropolitan core.”

When I asked the mayor during the question-and-answer session if it was appropriate to compare the president of the United States to terrorists, O’Malley looked me straight in the eye and stood by his remarks. (“Glared” might be a better verb to use here.)

O’Malley also said Bush’s argument that the nation could not afford the program because it was waging an expensive war overseas was “a lie.”  Bush proposed sacrificing the program because he wants to preserve his “tax cuts for the wealthy,” O’Malley said.

But O’Malley wasn’t finished smearing conservatives.

The CDBG overhaul “weakens America’s cities” and was “a betrayal of the basic equation of what it means to be an American,” O’Malley said at the presser hosted by various associations representing local government officials.

In other words, you’re both traitor and terrorist if you believe in fiscal responsibility.

Of course, the media has long fawned over O’Malley so his inflammatory remarks got little coverage.

O’Malley adores taxes, hates private businesses and guns, has interesting hair and well-developed biceps, plays guitar, is notoriously soft on crime, and presided over a spectacular non-revival of Baltimore as that city’s mayor.

What’s not to love there?

No Nuclear Option in the Senate

My article from the July 17, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

No Nuclear Option in the Senate

By Matthew Vadum

Organized labor scored a huge victory yesterday when Republicans who had been blocking President Obama’s radical nominees lost their nerve and reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to allow confirmation votes to proceed.

The backroom political deal preserves — at least for now– the filibuster in the Senate.

As usual, Republicans got nothing in return.

Egged on by union bosses, Reid had vowed to execute a controversial parliamentary maneuver called the nuclear option in order to allow filibustered executive branch nominations to go forward and be approved with a simple majority of senators. (Republicans called it the constitutional option when they were in the majority in the Senate.) Under longtime Senate rules, the chamber will not normally proceed to a vote on legislation unless 60 senators or more vote to end debate. If the Senate is considering a change in its rules, the threshold rises to 67.

The nuclear option procedural playbook calls for the Senate’s presiding officer, who is always going to be a Democrat as long as that party is in the majority in that chamber, to rule that instead of a supermajority only a simple majority of senators is required to cut off debate. If a majority of the senators votes to uphold the presiding officer, his or her interpretation of the rules becomes a precedent. By this means the filibuster rule could be weakened or even abolished, a development that in the current environment would make it easier for President Obama to impose his economy-killing socialist agenda on the nation.

Reid gloated after his victory. “This must be a new normal,” he lectured. “Qualified executive nominees must not be blocked on procedural supermajority votes.”

Progressive Arsonists on the March

My article from today's issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Progressive Arsonists on the March

By Matthew Vadum

Left-wing politicians and racial-grievance profiteers across America are now fanning the flames of racial discord, demanding that George Zimmerman endure a politically correct show trial at the federal level despite his acquittal.

Members of the professional Left can barely conceal their glee that Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. This means they get to retain Zimmerman as a villain they can use to foment racial hatred, cause future civil disturbances, raise money through direct mail solicitations, and get out the vote for race-baiting Democrats.

Zimmerman was acquitted by a 6-member all-female jury late Saturday. A leader of the neighborhood watch program in crime-ridden Sanford, Fla., he encountered unarmed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012. A physical confrontation followed in which Zimmerman, a Latino, shot Martin, a 17-year-old black youth, to death. Zimmerman claimed he needed to use deadly force to save his own life.

President Obama decided that the Zimmerman verdict was an opportune moment to press for gun control. “We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis,” he said after the verdict. “We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.”

Fishing for votes, Obama injected himself and racial politics into the Zimmerman case during the election cycle last year when he volunteered, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Now he’s pretending he had nothing to do with all the race-based antagonism that he stirred up.

Left-wing thought leaders across the fruited plan are doing their best to exacerbate and exploit the potentially explosive racial tensions created by Obama’s meddling and the media’s saturation coverage of the Zimmerman case.

Racial arsonist extraordinaire Al Sharpton, whose race-baiting rants have gotten people killed, blasted the verdict as an “atrocity” and “a slap in the face to those that believe in justice in this country.” Fellow MSNBC personality Chris Hayes simply tweeted, “Goddamit.”

Book Review: A Leftist's Harsh Words for the Unholy Alliance

My book review from the July 12, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

A Leftist's Harsh Words for the Unholy Alliance

By Matthew Vadum

It isn’t often that a leftist thought leader calls out her comrades for aligning themselves with the Islamist enemies of the United States but that’s exactly what Meredith Tax does in her new book.

In Double Bind: The Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left, and Universal Human Rights, published recently by the Centre for Secular Space, Tax claims that a fierce struggle is underway worldwide between Islamic fundamentalists and secularists who favor the separation of religion and the state. (Tax is U.S. Director and head writer for the Centre, which she describes as a London-based think tank “formed to oppose fundamentalism, strengthen secular voices, and promote universality in human rights.”)

If this is true, it is a fairly well-guarded secret. The secularists haven’t won many battles in recent decades. Church-state separation remains as strange and foreign a concept in the Islamic world as shareholder dividends might be in Stalinist North Korea.

Even the military ouster of Mohammed Morsi on July 3 isn’t necessarily a sign that Egyptians are embracing secular democracy. Egyptians didn’t like Morsi for a host of reasons but that doesn’t mean they won’t remain largely supportive of Islamization and the imposition of Shariah law in their country. Islamists won’t sit still while Egypt slips from their grasp.

These secularists that Tax writes of are those unicorns that in the West the mainstream media call moderate Muslims. We keep hearing about these people, and occasionally a few surface for TV cameras, but in most of the Ummah they have no real political power. Islam is not known for embracing pluralism. There may be some secularists in the Islamic world who struggle heroically for freedoms Americans and Europeans taken for granted, and we may admire their bravery and perseverance, but unfortunately in the end they count for little.

As the totalitarian Islamic juggernaut sweeps across Africa and Islamism becomes even more solidly entrenched in the Middle East (thanks in part to Obama administration policies), those who endorse Western-style notions of human rights are increasingly marginalized, terrorized, and liquidated by the powers that be.

Government-Approved Race Riots?

My article from the July 11, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Government-Approved Race Riots?

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration deployed government-paid community organizers to Sanford, Florida after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin last year in order to foment racial tensions, newly released government documents show.

The news came as the Obama administration publicly pretended to be concerned at the prospect of ugly race riots breaking out across America in the increasingly likely event that defendant George Zimmerman will be acquitted in the case. Race riots benefit the Left, and in particular the Democratic Party, by riling up its staunchest voting bloc.

The Community Relations Service (CRS), a small office within the U.S. Department of Justice, sent taxpayer-funded political agitators to Sanford after 17-year-old Martin was killed Feb. 26, 2012, during a physical confrontation with community crime watch volunteer George Zimmerman. For a month and a half after Martin’s death, local police declined to press charges against Zimmerman because they believed the criminal case against him was weak.

DOJ documents provided to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act show that in the weeks before Zimmerman was charged, CRS expended thousands of dollars to help organize marches in which participants exacerbated racial tensions and loudly demanded that he be prosecuted.

According to the documentation, CRS employees were involved in “marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain”; providing “support for protest deployment in Florida”; rendering “technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31”; and providing “technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”

Brotherhood Backers Unleash Hell in Egypt

My article from the July 9, 2013 FrontPage Magazine:

Brotherhood Backers Unleash Hell in Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

Egypt now appears to be moving closer to civil war as that nation’s Islamofascists refuse to accept last week’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi.

The theocratic totalitarians of the Muslim Brotherhood are spilling blood in the streets as they target members of the military, police, and their political opposition in an effort to restore Morsi to power.

Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie told a rally at Cairo’s Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque that that they “will not leave the streets until President Morsi is reinstated.” Badie said that they will “sacrifice our souls for him.”

The speech came as the armed forces shut down an office of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, at which they uncovered weapons and flammable liquids. The party is urging Egyptians to take up arms against the interim government created after Morsi was booted from office last week.

Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb, yesterday urged Egyptians to resist “dragging the country into civil war.”

Morsi’s Deadline

It's already been superseded by new developments, but here's my July 3, 2013 article from FrontPage Magazine:

Morsi's Deadline

By Matthew Vadum

As civil unrest grows in Egypt, that country’s Islamofascist president is refusing to bow to military pressure to step down, setting the stage for further bloody conflict.

In an impassioned televised speech late Tuesday, Mohammed Morsi vowed not to leave office. “I am prepared to sacrifice my blood for the sake of the security and stability of this homeland.”

On Monday the armed forces gave the embattled president and that country’s political parties 48 hours to devise a solution to Egypt’s political crisis. The army said it would offer a “road map” for peace if Morsi and his adversaries failed to observe “the will of the people.” The deadline is today.

Earlier on Tuesday Morsi’s office posted a statement on Twitter. “President Mohammed Morsi asserts his grasp on constitutional legitimacy and rejects any attempt to deviate from it, and calls on the armed forces to withdraw their warning and refuses to be dictated to internally or externally.”

But Morsi’s entreaties don’t seem to be working. His own cabinet has abandoned him. On its official Twitter account the cabinet condemned the speech. “The cabinet declares its rejection of Dr. Morsi’s speech and his pushing the country toward a civil war,” the statement read. “The cabinet announces [it is] taking the side of the people.”

Morsi’s refusal to resign puts him on a collision course with that nation’s armed forces, which were instrumental in removing his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

Sen. Jeff Sessions’ Heroic Stand Against Amnesty

My article from the June 28, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Sen. Jeff Sessions' Heroic Stand Against Amnesty

By Matthew Vadum

The Democrat-dominated U.S. Senate rammed through an immigration overhaul bill yesterday over the heroic objections of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) whose principled opposition to the legislative monstrosity have earned him a national following.

In a statement released after the vote, Sessions savaged the so-called comprehensive immigration reform bill.

We can create a lawful immigration system that makes us proud. But for that to happen, this bill must never become law. We must return to the drawing board and produce legislation that serves the just and legitimate interests of the nation, its people, and all who wish to call America home.

Despite months of propaganda and media hype, in the end the proposal advanced by the so-called Gang of 8, a bipartisan group of senators whose most visible member is Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), fell two votes short of the 70-vote target set by proponents Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). They had reasoned that attaining 70 “yes” votes would give the measure enough momentum to get through the other chamber. The Senate passed the legislation, 68 to 32, after a new version of the massive bill was substituted Friday. Senators had only the weekend to read the revamped bill.

“Sponsors of this legislation—despite the array of financial, establishment and special interest support—failed to hit their target of 70 votes,” Sessions said. “The more people learned about the bill the more uneasy they became. Failure to reach 70 votes is significant, and ensures the House has plenty of space to chart an opposite course and reject this fatally flawed proposal.”

The Senate-approved immigration amnesty legislation provides for a phony “border surge” that would beef up enforcement efforts — but which will never actually be carried out. The bill also perversely rewards employers for hiring illegal aliens over those legally allowed to work. Another provision would stay deportation efforts against criminal illegal aliens for two-and-a-half years to allow them to seek legal status. The legislation is also loaded with stimulus programs and political pork that has nothing to do with immigration. One provision would set aside $1.5 billion to provide low-income young people with taxpayer-funded vehicles such as cars, motorcycles, or scooters.