Clinton Aide Gets Life in Prison

My article in the April 29, 2015 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Clinton Aide Gets Life in Prison

By Matthew Vadum

^[1]An Islamic terrorist leader who jumped straight from his job at the Clinton Foundation to a post with Egypt’s jihadist Muslim Brotherhood has received a life sentence back home for seditious activities.

It provides yet more damning proof of the ties of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to totalitarian Muslims while throwing more light on the shady goings-on of the terrorist-friendly international cash-for-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. (The endlessly corrupt foundation, which has taken oceans of cash from Islamic regimes that persecute women and religious dissenters, was profiled at length ^[2] by this writer last week in FrontPage).

Professional propagandist Gehad el-Haddad, who worked for the Clinton Foundation for five years, was one of more than 35 other Islamofascist defendants in the case to receive life imprisonment for anti-government activities from judge Mohammed Nagi Shehata earlier this month. The court also confirmed death sentences for another dozen or so defendants. (Fun fact: Gehad is the Egyptian version of the Arabic word jihad.)

According to the New York Times, the defendants “were reportedly accused of joining a command center” during an Aug. 14, 2013 Islamist sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square “that sought to spread chaos across Egypt in defiance of the government.” The Muslim Brotherhood-led protest was in support of President Obama’s Islamist ally, the now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Morsi, whose rhetorical repertoire seems limited to calling Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs,” himself received a 20-year prison sentence this month and his Muslim Brotherhood organization is now officially banned in the Arab republic.

Gehad el-Haddad was the lead English-language spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood. He is the son of Essam el-Haddad, who was foreign affairs adviser to then-President Morsi. Gehad’s brother, Abdullah el-Haddad, serves as spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in London, England.

Hillary Clinton, of course, headed the U.S. Department of State during the “Egyptian Revolution of 2011″ that ousted longtime U.S. ally and anti-Islamist Hosni Mubarak and cleared the way for Obama pal Mohamed Morsi.

Baltimore Burns While Obama Plots

My article from the April 28, 2015 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Baltimore Burns While Obama Plots

By Matthew Vadum

^[1]Baltimore is burning because community organizers and various thugs are tearing the city apart in the aftermath of the strange death of a young black man who was in the custody of police — and President Obama is trying to make things worse.

In an incredible non-coincidence the rioting follows a weekend rally by the Occupy Wall Street-like Baltimore Peoples Assembly. There also was a first wave of rioting over the weekend. Outside activists have been flooding into Baltimore, according to reports. Police and civilians have been injured. A CVS store was looted and set on fire. Rioters chopped up fire hoses to prevent firefighters from doing their job. Criminal gangs have declared open season on cops. Rioters have been throwing cinder blocks, bricks, and other objects at police. And there aren’t enough cops to go around. Baltimore police are begging police officers in other states to come to Baltimore to help out. Schools are closed Tuesday.

Baltimore is now a war zone. Understandably, the Baltimore Orioles announced on Twitter at 6:20 last night that the game with the Chicago White Sox scheduled for 7:05 had been postponed. After Democrats dawdled, Maryland’s new Republican Gov. Larry Hogan acted last night, activating the Maryland National Guard in an attempt to restore order. Sensing things were getting out of hand fast, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), said Monday that as of Tuesday evening she will impose a one-week curfew lasting from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It’s not clear why the curfew wasn’t to take effect last night while parts of the city were burning.

The Clinton Cash-for-Favors Program

My long, authoritative article in today's FrontPage magazine:

The Clinton Cash-for-Favors Program

By Matthew Vadum

Professional leftists are going berserk over a yet-to-be-released book documenting the breathtaking graft and anticipatory bribes that foreign governments and mega-multinationals gave the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s years at the State Department.

This progressive apoplexy is being generated by a bombshell of a book that won’t even hit the bookstands for another 10 days. The opus terrifying left-wingers isClinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, by acclaimed best-selling author Peter Schweizer.

The most disturbing allegation to emerge thus far from the book is that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her blessing to a financial transaction that handed partial control of America’s strategically important uranium resources to Vladimir Putin’s Russia after investors paid off her husband and gave huge donations to the Clinton Foundation.

“While the United States gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20 percent of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves,” the New York Times reports, citing Marin Katusa, chief energy investment strategist for Casey Research.

The newspaper’s report on the shady Canadian company Uranium One, which controls some U.S. uranium facilities, “is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States.” The newspaper acknowledges that “[s]ome of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer … [who] provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.”

From 2005 through 2011 investors in Uranium One reportedly donated to the Clinton Foundation. In 2010 Bill Clinton took $500,000 from an investment bank to give a speech in Russia. The bank had a “buy” rating on Uranium One stock and connections to the Russian government. Eventually the Kremlin gained 100 percent control over Uranium One through a subsidiary of Rosatom, a corporation owned by the Russian government.

Secretary Clinton was supposed to disclose the millions of dollars that the chairman of Uranium One gave to her foundation through his family foundation while various agencies within the Obama administration were reviewing the deal.

So now the expansionist successor nation to the Soviet Union, which seeks to revive its old empire, controls a large swath of American uranium that is needed to produce nuclear weapons. Multiple federal agencies apart from the State Department signed off on the deal, so it is inconceivable that President Obama did not know about the circumstances that led to the Russian takeover of Uranium One. And remember that Obama, who is now working hard to help the Islamic Republic of Iran get nuclear weapons, was caught on a hot mike at a nuclear summit in March 2012 assuring then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, “After my election I have more flexibility.”

Because this scandal involves the energy sector, “this is Teapot Dometimes 10,” radio host Mark Levin said yesterday, alluding to the infamous 1920s corruption saga involving the secret leasing of federal oil reserves that unfolded during the administration of Warren G. Harding. Although President Harding, a Republican, is not thought to have participated in the unlawful activities, senior administration officials were involved. The scandal took a great toll on the president’s well-being and he died before all the facts came out.

The Feminist Fantasy of Women in Combat

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

The Feminist Fantasy of Women in Combat

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama seems hellbent on forcing the women of the U.S. military into direct combat units at great potential risk both to themselves and their fellow soldiers.

Obama supplicants in the military have been cowed by radical feminist ideology. They are promoting change for the sake of of ideology, not because it is actually needed.

Two years ago the current Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey called for a “critical mass” or “significant cohort” of women to be placed in combat. Standards in excess of what female soldiers can achieve should be questioned, he said. The so-called “Dempsey Rule” holds that if something is too difficult for women, the standards will eventually have to be ratcheted down to “equal but lower” levels.

Under Obama’s leadership the Pentagon is committed to what former Joint Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen dubbed “diversity as a strategic imperative.”

“Diversity,” of course, is perhaps the preeminent shibboleth of the Left today and it has a growing body count.

Diversity and the corresponding fear of making members of particular social groups feel uncomfortable, probably contributed to the enemy’s success in attacking the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. Leading up to 9/11, some government officials noticed Muslim visitors to America behaving suspiciously but they were afraid of connecting the dots. Doing so might have reinforced negative stereotypes about Arabs, which in addition to not being nice, would have constituted a crime against diversity.

Then there was the case of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American of Palestinian ancestry who openly described himself as a soldier of Allah on business cards. Hasan was convicted of fatally shooting 13 people and attempting to murder another 32 in his attack at Fort Hood in 2009. Officials were aware of his loud opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his Muslim proselytizing, and his connections to dangerous Islamists. But they decided not to make waves by connecting the dots because doing so might have hurt somebody’s feelings. Move along; nothing to see here.

After the Fort Hood massacre, the clueless now-retired U.S. Army Gen. George Casey continued to stand by diversity as some kind of magical tool that makes America a nicer, better place.

“Our diversity, not only in our army, but in our country, is a strength,” Casey said. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Clinton Campaign Chaos

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Clinton Campaign Chaos

By Matthew Vadum

Democrat dowager Hillary Clinton has had a rough few days since she launched her inevitable presidential campaign Sunday with a vapid, vacuous, class warfare-oriented video on YouTube that pushed all the right politically correct buttons.

Charles Krauthammer mocked ^[1] Mrs. Clinton and her ongoing tour of flyover country. She wants to get the big money out of politics, he said, but she is aiming to generate an unprecedented campaign war chest of $2.5 billion.

“She has been taking in money ever since she took the silverware from the White House when they left in 2001,” Krauthammer said. “I mean, it really is a stretch. I just find this rather amusing. This is her Marie Antoinette cake tour.”

“The problem with her is the inauthenticity has reached a point where nothing you see is believable,” the conservative columnist said. “Even if she were sincere about anything you wouldn’t be able to tell it.”

The disastrous campaign rollout ought to embolden other potential Democratic challengers such as former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). It sends a message that no matter how ruthless and determined Mrs. Clinton may be, she’ll never be ready for prime time.

Of course, this is as it should be.

The launch video echoes the chaotic craziness of Clinton’s term as secretary of state in which the Obama administration set the Middle East and North Africa on fire, encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, linked arms with Iran’s murderous mullahs, gave a boost to authoritarian left-wing states in Latin America, and alienated allies from London to Tokyo while freeing dangerous Islamic militants so they can kill more Americans.

With its sense of unreality and air that things really aren’t so bad in Obama’s America, it also foreshadows the moral darkness, statist mediocrity, and irreversible decay that will be America’s fate should the more collectivist of the Clintons return to the White House.

Taking Cuba Off State Sponsor of Terrorism List

My FrontPage magazine article today:

Taking Cuba Off State Sponsor of Terrorism List

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama wielded his pen yesterday to begin the process of removing the longstanding U.S. designation of Communist Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that pushes the U.S. closer to restoring full diplomatic ties with the brutal Caribbean dictatorship.

Obama’s action comes as watchdog group Judicial Watch yesterday claimed ^[1] that America has a terrorist problem closer to home than Cuba which is 90 miles away from the U.S. coast in Florida.

The group says the Muslim terrorists of Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) are operating a camp about eight miles from the U.S. border near El Paso, Texas. The base is located in an area called Anapra which is west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another Islamic State cell is located in Puerto Palomas and is targeting Columbus and Deming, N.M., for easy access to the U.S. Sources for the information include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector, according to Judicial Watch.

It is unclear what, if anything, the Obama administration is doing about this.

Meanwhile, in a written message to Congress, Obama formally certified, as required under federal law, that “the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period,” and “has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

This is, of course, at odds with reality.

Cuba is a longtime state sponsor of terrorism and has meddled militarily and otherwise in the affairs of its neighbors and in faraway countries such as the African nation of Angola. The State Department labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982, citing “Fidel Castro’s training and arming of communist rebels in Africa and Latin America.” President Reagan ordered an invasion of Grenada after its Marxist dictatorship grew too close to Cuba and he struggled heroically to aid the anticommunist contras in their war against the Cuban-backed Communist regime in Nicaragua.

More recently Cuba has provided support to the Marxist narco-trafficking terrorists of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and has aided Venezuela’s communist dictators. FARC, in turn, reportedly has ties to al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The State Department acknowledged last year that Cuba has long been a haven for members of FARC and the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA).

Clinton Campaign Kicks Off as Huma Abedin Probe Begins

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Clinton Campaign Kicks Off as Huma Abedin Probe Begins

By Matthew Vadum

At long last the Department of State is investigating why a top Hillary Clinton aide with generational ties to Islamic terrorism was allowed to work in a sensitive government position while simultaneously working for a Clinton-connected private sector consulting firm.

Hillary Clinton and the senior aide, Huma Abedin, apparently conspired to keep the sweetheart working arrangement that the Muslim Brotherhood-linked employee had at Foggy Bottom a secret. Because it involves a Clinton, the story is, of necessity, complex and convoluted. And it’s classic Hillary as she tiptoes through a minefield of ethics violations, conflicts of interests, and potential national security-related breaches.

News of the probe came two days before the Benghazi bungler finally launched her long-awaited coronation parade campaign Sunday on YouTube ^[1].

“I’m running for president,” Mrs. Clinton said in the video. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times. But the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.”

Yes, Clinton is a champion — of Islamic expansionism. She let four Americans die in 2012 so President Obama, in the midst of his reelection fight, wouldn’t have to reconcile the terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya with his dishonest boast that al-Qaeda was on the run under his leadership. That she hired someone of questionable loyalty to the United States shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Until Sunday the Clinton Foundation had served as a de facto campaign headquarters and international shakedown machine for Mrs. Clinton. With her campaign now officially on, the foundation will probably continue functioning as what the Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberly Strassel calls “The Clinton Foundation Super PAC.”

Murderers’ Row at Columbia

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Terrorist and convicted murderer Kathy Boudin and her
biological son, radical academic Chesa Boudin.

Murderers’ Row at Columbia

By Matthew Vadum

Weather Underground terrorist and convicted cop killer Kathy Boudin is now surrounded by fellow felons on the staff of the Columbia University School of Social Work where she crusades against the supposedly systemic racism of the justice system.

The septuagenarian Boudin is assistant adjunct professor and director of the school’s “Criminal Justice Initiative: Supporting Children, Families and Communities” (CJI), which appears to be focused ^[1] on keeping criminals like her out of prison by abolishing imprisonment as a punishment. As her official bio states, the initiative, which she co-founded, “is dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration and retribution and advancing solutions.”

The school, which calls “mass incarceration” a “central social crisis of our time,” is little more than an indoctrination mill that churns out radical left-wing propaganda largely at taxpayer expense.

“There are approximately 1.6 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails and 7 million American children with a parent who is either incarcerated, on parole, or on probation,” according to the school. “The Criminal Justice Initiative focuses on how the social work profession can best address the educational and human needs of individuals, children, families and communities affected by incarceration.”

Boudin served 22 years in prison for her role in an assault on an armored-car in Nyack, N.Y. in which two police officers and a Brinks security guard died. Boudin was paroled in 2003 after telling officials that she took part in the $1.6 million robbery because she felt guilty for being white. Security guard Peter Paige and police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady died in the 1981 attack. Nine children subsequently grew up without their fathers.

Boudin is no stranger to irony.

This past Dec. 4 in a year in which two black men — Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y. — were killed by police in incidents that received national media attention, Boudin put her name ^[2] on an online mini-manifesto titled, “BLACK LIVES MATTER: Statement from the Columbia School of Social Work Community.”

The document states that there is “systemic racism and oppression in our country overall and our justice system in particular.”

“We are outraged by the decision [not to indict Ferguson cop Darren Wilson] and call for immediate and sustained action to examine, analyze and redress the harmful and pervasive effects of racism.”

The document ends with “Michael Brown matters. Eric Garner matters. Black lives matter.”

The late Nyack, N.Y. police officer Waverly Brown.
Kathy Boudin was convicted of murdering him.

But not all black lives matter to Kathy Boudin.

Obama’s Pro-Iranian Nukes Propaganda Barrage

My article from the April 9, 2015 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Obama’s Pro-Iranian Nukes Propaganda Barrage

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama and his media minions are trying hard to sell the public on the administration’s egregiously awful nuclear arms deal that will empower an Islamofascist country whose leaders have never stopped chanting “death to America.”

Under the preliminary so-called framework for an arms control agreement that Western powers reached last week with Iran’s murderous mullahs, the pariah nation reportedly accepted limits on its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the repeal of international sanctions that have hurt its economy. Negotiators have until June 30 to arrive at a final agreement. The speed at which sanctions will be repealed and the scope of inspections have yet to be worked out.

This means the relentless stream of pro-framework propaganda from the administration is just beginning.

Tellingly, the fact that Iran long ago signed a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which makes any attempt to obtain nuclear weapons a grave violation of international law, has never been an obstacle to that country’s ongoing efforts to build nuclear bombs.

How does Obama know the notorious treaty-breakers of Iran are sincere? And if Iran’s nuclear program were truly peaceful, why would the Iranians put their facilities deep underground where Israel bombs cannot reach them?

The short answer to both questions is that he doesn’t. Obama simply doesn’t care.

Obama has sent envoys to Congress to try to frighten lawmakers out of passing legislation to rein in his Iranian adventures in nuclear nonproliferation and his allies are speaking out in the media and churning out superficially reasonable op-eds that praise the diplomatic effort and its goals.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said essentially that Congress should abdicate its constitutional responsibility and let President Obama do whatever he wants.

Hillary to Testify?

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Hillary to Testify?

By Matthew Vadum

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will have to give evidence in federal court because she clearly knew her surreptitious private email scheme violated U.S. law, legal experts say.

The bungler of Benghazi deliberately sought to do an end-run around the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) by establishing a private email server to handle her government email while serving at Foggy Bottom, they added.

Clinton’s use of her own personal server for her official State Department electronic correspondence “has stopped the clock on accountability,” Joseph diGenova, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia said during a Judicial Watch panel discussion.

“The basic facts cry out for a formal investigation by the Justice Department,” he said.

“Clinton is going to have to testify in a federal court,” said diGenova. “She has admitted that she has destroyed, theoretically, government documents under subpoena by the House of Representatives and under subpoena in civil litigation.”

“There are going to have to be affidavits filed under oath” by many government officials, including Clinton, he said.

It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of Clinton’s bad behavior in an office of such power and importance, DiGenova said.

“This is the secretary of state,” he said. “This is not somebody over at EPA, who is working in a bureau, trying to figure out carbon dioxide problems.”