Was the Oregon mass shooting an Islamist attempt to assassinate Alek Skarlatos?

My article from the Oct. 6, 2015 issue of American Thinker:

Was the Oregon mass shooting an Islamist attempt to assassinate Alek Skarlatos?

By Matthew Vadum

Was last week's massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon a failed attempt to assassinate a Christian American hero for thwarting a Muslim terrorist train attack this summer in France?

There may simply be a series of unlikely coincidences at play, or there may be circumstantial evidence suggesting that anti-jihadist hero Alek Skarlatos was an intended target of Chris Harper-Mercer, who put several Christians to death in an Umpqua classroom on Thursday, Oct. 1 for being Christian. 

Read on and decide for yourself if Harper-Mercer may have wanted to make an example of Skarlatos for the world to see.

And although no evidence revealed thus far directly indicates Harper-Mercer was influenced by Islamic State, plenty of evidence suggests the shooter was acting in furtherance of the Islamic goal of global jihad.  Maybe the massacre was intended as a kind of jihadist payback hit.

Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) apparently claimed responsibility on Twitter for the killings Harper-Mercer carried out at Umpqua.  The tweet states, "Again #Oregon #USA #WashingtonDC #IslamicState #ISIS #USA[,]" and displays a graphic with the words “Slay Americans” in front of an image of a man in the process of being beheaded.

In August the very high-profile Skarlatos, a devout Christian, helped to disarm Ayoub El-Khazzani, a Moroccan with ties to radical Islam, on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris.  The Islamist was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, a Luger pistol, and a box cutter.  Skarlatos and his two American friends traveling with him received France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur, from French President François Hollande.  Last month they were feted at the White House and the Pentagon.  Skarlatos received the U.S. Army's Soldier's Medal.

Skarlatos has publicly acknowledged that he is currently a student at Umpqua, near Roseburg, Ore., and that he was supposed to be attending classes there on Thursday when Harper-Mercer went on a bloody rampage.

More specifically, Skarlatos said he was supposed to be present that day in Snyder Hall, the same building where Harper-Mercer carried out his massacre.

A New Global Police To Fight "Violent Extremism" In The U.S.?

My Oct. 6, 2015 article in FrontPageMag:

A New Global Police To Fight "Violent Extremism" In The U.S.?

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration plans to create a global police force that counters “violent extremism” in the United States and elsewhere.

The problem is that in Obama-speak “violent extremism” refers not only to jihadists wishing to harm Americans but also to conservatives and Tea Party activists. Just ask all the law-abiding right-of-center nonprofit groups targeted by Lois Lerner’s IRS during the Obama presidency.

Ominously, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch unveiled the Strong Cities Network last week at the United Nations.

America's chief executive, who speaks in hushed and reverent tones when discussing the Muslim faith, said the U.S. will use “all of our tools” to fight Islamic State terrorists.

"This is not an easy task," Obama said. "This is not a conventional battle. This is a long-term campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology." The United States and a coalition of 60 other countries are “pursuing a comprehensive strategy” for dealing with Islamic State, he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice teased the Strong Cities Network in a press release:

Cities are vital partners in international efforts to build social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism.  Local communities and authorities are the most credible and persuasive voices to challenge violent extremism in all of its forms and manifestations in their local contexts.  While many cities and local authorities are developing innovative responses to address this challenge, no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale.

“The Strong Cities Network will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration,” Lynch was quoted saying. “As we continue to counter a range of domestic and global terror threats, this innovative platform will enable cities to learn from one another, to develop best practices and to build social cohesion and community resilience here at home and around the world.”

The media release continues:

The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction.  The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work.  It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism …

Although the European scene is different from the American, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue doesn’t come across at first glance as a neutral observer.

Russians Tried To Hack Hillary Five Times

My article from the Oct. 5, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

Russians Tried To Hack Hillary Five Times

By Matthew Vadum

Hackers linked to Vladimir Putin's Russia tried to gain access to Hillary Clinton's insecure private email account at least five times while the Democrat presidential candidate served as U.S. secretary of state.

The disturbing revelation comes months after retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said the chances Clinton's private email account was hacked were "very high." At the time the former top Obama administration intelligence official implied Clinton should have been fired as the nation's top diplomat.

"As a military officer, if I said I was doing something for convenience's sake to the soldiers that I was leading and it was solely for my convenience instead of their, you know, their welfare, I should be relieved of duty. I would expect to be fired," Flynn said.

"You know, it's one of those things where if it doesn't feel good it probably isn't. And this one doesn't feel good to me."

"China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans," were involved in hacking Clinton's email.

Evidence of the Russian hacking attempts came in the form of Clinton emails from four years ago that were made public last week.

Clinton received the five infected emails which had been made to look like speeding tickets, over a four-hour period on Aug. 3, 2011.  The emails asked recipients to print out hard copies of the attached tickets, an act that would have let hackers take control of their computers.

As some observers have noted, foreign intelligence services pay good money to obtain a target's email address.  Although it hasn't been established that these Russian hackers worked for the Russian government, these criminals knew Hillary's email address while information-technology experts at the State Department were left in the dark about the email address by their own boss.

The United States has an AVERAGE murder rate and rampage killings are JUST ONE PERCENT of U.S. murders

There are some eye-opening statistics that bear repeating in my recent article about President Obama cynically using the Oct. 1 mass-shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon to promote gun control.

Say them over and over and over again. And then again a few more times for good measure.

Contrary to gun-grabbing hysterics, the United States of America does NOT have a high murder rate.

The U.S. has merely an "average" murder rate among the nations of the world.

According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the global average murder rate (PDF file) is 6.2 per 100,000 human beings. The UN agency defines intentional homicide as "unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person."

The U.S. (excluding Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands which are reported on individually) is near the middle of 228 "countries" profiled.

With 4.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the United States ties at 110th place with Latvia and Niger.

Number one is Honduras with a murder rate of 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. At the very bottom of the list are Liechtenstein and Monaco which reported zero murders in the time period studied. (Note: The UK Daily Mail offers a user-friendly interactive map breaking down homicide rates around the world.)

Moreover, Obama's rants about mass-shootings are garbage, unworthy of the supposed leader of the free world (if that phrase still carries any meaning).

Obama: Never Letting A Good Mass Shooting Go To Waste

My article from the Oct. 2, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

Obama: Never Letting A Good Mass Shooting Go To Waste

By Matthew Vadum

Mere hours after a young, mixed-race religion-hater fatally shot at least nine apparently Christian victims at an Oregon college, President Obama tried to harangue Americans into supporting fresh restrictions on guns, the most severely regulated consumer goods in America.

The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Police say in mid-morning they received reports of a gunman walking around Umpqua Community College (UCC) near Roseburg, Ore. As is the case in all or perhaps nearly all mass shootings at schools, UCC was a gun-free zone.

Wearing body armor, the man reportedly entered a classroom where an English and writing class was being conducted and demanded that those present state their religion.

Those who indicated they were Christian were fatally shot. Those who refused to answer were reportedly shot in the legs. Harper-Mercer apparently died during a shootout with responding police but at time of writing it was unclear if he killed himself or was shot by the officers.

Viewing every crisis as an opportunity to advance his legislative agenda, Obama placed his crosshairs squarely on the Bill of Rights. Our media-savvy, Saul Alinsky-worshipping president took to the bully pulpit to petulantly insist -- even before many facts about the massacre were known -- that last night was exactly the right time to "politicize" gun ownership rights.

“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” Obama said. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

In his televised temper tantrum, Obama scolded those opposed to a crackdown on firearms ownership, including people who say the nation needs "more guns" to prevent such mass shootings. He implored those who would gut Second Amendment protections to vote for political candidates who share their visceral contempt for a constitutionally-guaranteed right.

“Each time this happens I’m going to bring this up,” Obama said. “Each time this happens I am going to say we can actually do something about it.”

Obama's twelve-and-a-half minute oration was the fifteenth time the president has issued a statement on a mass shooting, CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller wrote on Twitter.

“Somehow this has become routine,” Obama said. “The reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine. And what becomes routine is the response from those who oppose any sort of gun control legislation."

Indeed Obama's shopworn routine has become all too familiar to Americans. Whenever there is a mass shooting Obama predictably uses it to try to disarm law-abiding gun owners.

The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For Us

My article from the Sept. 30, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For Us

By Matthew Vadum

The totalitarian mass murderers of Islamic State are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons and using them against their enemies in the West, a reporter who was embedded with the Salafi jihadist fighters in occupied Syria is warning.

German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent 10 anxious days living in Islamic State-held Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria with the jihadists, wants the world to know that the terrorist group is deadly serious about unleashing a "nuclear tsunami" on those who oppose its efforts to create an Islamic caliphate.

"This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history," he said.

The West has "no concept of the threat it faces" from Islamic State and "dramatically"  underestimates the threat posed by the group, said the former German politician who was allowed to embed with the group because of his high-profile criticism of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

"They are extremely brutal," according to Todenhöfer. "Not just head-cutting. I'm talking about the strategy of religious cleansing. That's their official philosophy. They are talking about 500 million people who have to die."

He describes his jihadist odyssey in a new book called Inside IS - Ten Days In The Islamic State. At time of writing it wasn’t clear if the author plans to release an English-language version. (The German-language book is titled Inside IS - 10 Tage im 'Islamischen Staat'.)

Todenhöfer's disturbing revelations come 20 months after President Obama sat down with David Remnick of the New Yorker and dismissively likened Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) as a "jayvee," or junior varsity, team. "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said in January last year.

Congenitally in denial about the threat that Muslim expansionism poses to free nations, Obama said last fall that "ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim."

Obama Frees 20th 9/11 Hijacker

My article from the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

Obama Frees 20th 9/11 Hijacker

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration quietly shipped Osama bin Laden's bodyguard back to the Wahhabist Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last week despite warnings that the Muslim terrorist remains a serious threat to the United States.

The newly released terrorist detainee is Abdul Shalabi, 39, who trained to be the 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Shalabi was set free even though military officials deemed him too dangerous to be unleashed on the world and too valuable as an intelligence asset to be released from U.S. custody.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said last week that the liberation of Shalabi, whom he referred to as a "dangerous detainee," is "another example of President Obama playing politics with national security and putting campaign promises ahead of U.S. national security interests." Shuttering the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has long been a goal of President Obama, going back at least to the campaign trail in 2008.

Shalabi's unshackling should have Americans wondering which bloodthirsty jihadist is next to be released by the soft-on-Islamism president of the United States. Could it be the "Blind Sheikh," a.k.a. Omar Abdel-Rahman, who orchestrated the deadly bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993? News reports that the Obama administration is working on releasing the deadly fatwa-issuing cleric linked to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat go back years. The sheikh is a hero to his followers, including deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and a spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

The process by which Shalabi won his freedom offers disturbing insights into the system that determines if a terrorist detainee should be held indefinitely in wartime as allowed under the laws of war.

In May 2008 when George W. Bush was president, Rear Admiral David M. Thomas Jr., then the commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, recommended in a since-unclassified memo that Shalabi's detention be continued.

Spelling the word high in block capitals and boldfacing it for emphasis, Thomas warned that Shalabi was "[a]HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies[,]" "[a] HIGH threat from a detention perspective[,]" and "[o]f HIGH intelligence value."

BuzzFeed and those "fake" quotations used by eeevil Mike Huckabee

BuzzFeed reports that "Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 1998 book Kids Who Kill is full of spurious quotations from leading American political figures, mostly the country’s founding fathers."

The article continues:

A number of the quotations, such as those from Washington and Jefferson, have been routinely debunked by libraries of the past presidents but still regularly find their way into books from conservative figures. Other quotes, debunked by prominent historians, seem to be used for the first time in the book.

Kids Who Kill links a mass shooting in Arkansas "to the decline in America’s moral culture," according to the article. Quotations from Founding Fathers like George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson "are often used to reinforce Huckabee’s moral viewpoint."

Huckabee, like many politicians in both major parties, has used apocryphal quotations (and lousy paraphrases) from revered American figures.

So far so good. I don't carry water for Huckabee. He's too liberal for me though he has been sounding conservative lately. Go ahead and scrutinize him (along with all the candidates). This is the time to do it.

That said, the very first example BuzzFeed provides gives me pause.

Yes, it is inaccurate but it isn't exactly breathtakingly, blood-curdingly off in terms of semantics. Sure, different words were used, and Huckabee shouldn't have done it, but the ideas represented in the first "fake quote" attributed to Jefferson, happen to accurately express thoughts that the principal author of the Declaration of Independence had in real life. My guess is the inaccurate quotation gained wide currency because it mirrors what Jefferson actually thought.

Let's look at Huckabee's Jefferson quotation. From the article:

“Thomas Jefferson asserted that the ‘chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all,’” writes Huckabee in one part of the book on abortion.

However, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “this quotation has not been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.”

(Pro tip, BuzzFeed: "writes Huckabee in one part of the book on abortion" is bad writing, and in my view, ambiguous. Is the book about abortion? Or is just one part of the book about abortion? I thought Kids Who Kill was about homicidal children.)

A statement that Jefferson actually wrote, contains different words but they still express the same idea.

According to Bartleby, a reputable resource, Jefferson wrote this [emphasis added below]: 

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

This quotation comes, according to Bartleby, from a March 31, 1809 letter Jefferson wrote to "the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland[.]" It appears in volume 8 of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by H. A. Washington (1871).

Interestingly, the real quotation is stronger than the one used by Huckabee which asserts only that protecting life is "the chief purpose of government."

The actual Jefferson quotation makes protecting life the singular purpose of government, not merely an overarching purpose of government.

So again, Huckabee shouldn't have done it, it's not okay, but the quotation he used isn't crazily far afield from something Jefferson actually wrote. The bogus sentences, which have been traced back to at least 1989 in a work by his co-author George Grant, were good enough to trick at least a generation of Americans. (Maybe BuzzFeed should have gone after Grant.)

In at least this one case BuzzFeed was a bit too hard on Huckabee.

I regret I don't have time to go through the whole article tonight. Oh, the gems that likely await.

BREAKING: Hillary is "bitchy"

Well, duh.

It was a female focus group member in the early primary voting state of New Hampshire who on MSNBC described Democrat Dowager Hillary Clinton as "bitchy."

The woman, wearing a sticker marked "Shannon," told moderator Mark Halperin that the “scorned” tone of her Her Majesty can be “off-putting.”

“Tell me what it’s like, what are you seeing,” Halperin said.

Shannon sighed, saying “You know, when she’s — I don’t want to use the word.” She whispered “bitchy.”

Here is the video clip of this honest woman speaking truth to power:

Any minute now MSNBC will be filing a copyright infringement claim with YouTube.

Radical Pope

My article in today's FrontPageMag:

Radical Pope

By Matthew Vadum

Pope Francis chided Americans yesterday for their supposed intolerance and xenophobia, the same thing President Obama does every day, in his historic address to the U.S. Congress.

Although Francis toned down his sometimes in-your-face rhetoric for his congressional speech, it was still a politically tone-deaf lecture on America's failings, past and present.  

It bore more than a passing resemblance to the many speeches President Obama has given around the globe apologizing for America's history and greatness. The pope delivered this address standing on the dais in front of Vice President Joe Biden (D) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Both are Catholics. Boehner made this major debacle, which amounts to a propaganda boost for the Obama agenda, possible by inviting the pope to address Congress. (A full transcript of the pope's address is available here.)

It may be significant that only four members of the nine-member Roman Catholic-dominated Supreme Court showed up for the Holy Father's address. The attendees were Chief John Roberts (Catholic), Anthony Kennedy (Catholic), Sonia Sotomayor (Catholic), and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jewish). Absent were Samuel Alito (Catholic), Antonin Scalia (Catholic), Clarence Thomas (Catholic), Stephen Breyer (Jewish), and Elena Kagan (Jewish).

The Left loves the pope's message. Although the Left vindictively led the charge against the Catholic church during the various sexual abuse scandals, it now has the current pope's back because, except for abortion, he agrees with leftists. For example, in recent days the Salon website, a hotbed of hostility to organized religion (except Islam), has switched sides. Salon has been running stories sympathetic to the pope with titles like "The transcendent compassion of Pope Francis" (by leftist mud-hurler Joan Walsh, no less), "Twitter tells the tale: Pope Francis' speech does not sit well with the conservative 'intelligentsia,'" "Conservatives who hate the pope rush to his defense," "5 new ways Pope Francis is sticking it to the Christian right," and "The GOP's venomous Pope tirades are the ultimate example of hypocritical rage."

FBI Carries Hillary's Water in Email Scandal

My Sept. 23, 2015 article in FrontPageMag:

FBI Carries Hillary's Water in Email Scandal

By Matthew Vadum

The FBI's bizarre and shocking refusal earlier this week to cooperate with legal efforts to force the public release of emails from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's hacker-friendly private Internet server is yet more proof that the Obama administration is continuing to provide political cover for the 2016 presidential hopeful.

This strange behavior comes as Republican lawmakers escalate their criticism of Mrs. Clinton's unusual emailing habits. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) is demanding that U.S. Attorney General and Obama lackey Loretta Lynch appoint a special counsel to investigate the case. Other lawmakers want hearings to consider compelling testimony from Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton staffer who installed the server in her private residence.

The Department of State is also dragging its heels in processing the electronic correspondence, Citizens United President David Bossie said. The agency is "slow walking" the Freedom of Information Act requests for the almost-certainly damning emails to prevent their release before key Democratic primary elections next year, he said.

The server is at the heart of the growing scandal over Clinton's mishandling of an Islamic terrorist attack in militant-infested Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that left four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. Even now, three years after the assault, the Obama administration has failed to provide an autopsy report about Stevens who was initially reported to have been ritualistically sodomized before being murdered by Muslim terrorists.

BlackLivesMatter Goes to the White House

My Sept. 18, 2015 article on FrontPageMag:

BlackLivesMatter Goes to the White House

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama White House rolled out the red carpet this week for leaders of the racist revolutionary Black Lives Matter movement, providing yet more confirmation that the Obama administration supports its members' increasingly violent activism.

News of the meeting comes after a Southern police chief was given the boot for posting a note critical of Black Lives Matter and of President Obama's incessant race-baiting.

Black Lives Matter is animated not only by anti-white racism but by a hatred of normal American values, including law and order. Its members denounce the U.S. for imagined institutional racism and discrimination against African-Americans. Members idolize convicted, unrepentant cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal, both of whom are black, and have declared "war" on law enforcement. Its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated.

Black Lives Matter activist Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, murdered 31-year-old white Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder last Sunday night. Johnson-Shanks apparently committed suicide-by-cop when troopers caught up with him the next morning. The convicted felon pointed a gun at police and they shot him in self-defense. 

The White House love fest Wednesday came after several high-profile attacks on law enforcement across America.

Activists enjoyed an audience with President Obama. Brittany Packnett, a highly influential Black Lives Matter leader, told reporters that Obama personally supports the movement that has inspired violence against police officers and spurred civil unrest.

Infiltrating the #BlackLivesMatter Cult

My new in-depth feature article, which is the lead story today, at American Thinker:

Infiltrating the #BlackLivesMatter Cult

By Matthew Vadum

It is wrong to think of the Black Lives Matter movement as merely a movement, a racist insurgency that embraces violent attacks on police and white Americans.

It is so much more.

It's a Marxist, anti-American, revolutionary cult whose members aim to unleash a reign of terror on American society.  It is religious in the limited sense that the late anti-PC intellectual Christopher Hitchens used that adjective to describe the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  After visiting barren, Stalinist North Korea, where people eat grass clippings and tree bark to survive, Hitchens remarked that it was "the most religious state I've ever been to."

But North Korea doesn't embrace a religion in the sense we in the civilized world use the word.  At risk of oversimplifying the politics and culture of the hermetically sealed, oversized gulag run by Kim Jong-un, that country's religion is socialism.

The religion of socialism is a faith utterly impervious to facts and logic.  Socialist failure is irrelevant, because only intentions count when you're on the side of the angels.  No amount of evidence can pierce the force fields that surround the socialist mind.  These people insist they are enlightened, but they are invincibly ignorant.

The Black Lives Matter cult is animated by a hatred of normal American values.  Its members idolize convicted, unrepentant black militants and cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal and have declared "war" on law enforcement.  While its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated, its leaders, wishing to seem more respectable before the TV cameras, downplay the insurrectionary rhetoric whenever a member kills a cop.

Black Lives Matter disciple Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, murdered 31-year-old white Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder on Sunday night.

The perpetrator, subsequently shot dead by police, reportedly lived in Florissant, Missouri, near race riot-torn Ferguson, and his (suddenly unavailable) Facebook page indicates that he participated in demonstrations protesting the death last year of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he tried to take the officer's handgun.  There is evidence that Johnson-Shanks, a convicted felon, was so preoccupied with the Brown case that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service.  Of course, Obama advisor Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the funeral.  (The Daily Caller made copies of some of the photos before they disappeared down the Memory Hole.  Infowars screen-grabbed many of the photos as well.)

Among the notable items on Johnson-Shanks's Facebook page is a post that buys into the myth that there is such a thing as white privilege and that black Americans suffer because of it.  The post, from a website called Atlanta Black Star, is titled "Watch This Young Black Man Give A Near Perfect Response To A White Male Who's Ignorant About The Systematic Oppression of Black People[.]"  It features a video from PBS last year in which a Black Lives Matter leader named Phillip Agnew lectures white American Spectator contributor and talk radio host Ross Kaminsky about white privilege.

"I'm mad at a system every day that stakes its claim on saying that there's a certain segment of society that is a criminal element," says Agnew, executive director of a neo-communist black nationalist group called Dream Defenders. 

Agnew has met with President Obama in the White House.  Not surprisingly, this fake civil rights leader was warmly embraced by the president, a fellow community organizer.  Agnew described those at the meeting as "representatives from a community in active struggle against state sanctioned killing, violence and repression" (italics in original).

"When my fellow young leaders and I walked into the Oval Office this week, we felt empowered and powerless at the same time," Agnew wrote in a December 2014 op-ed.  "The president said we shouldn't demand too much, too soon." 

Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky, an incrementalist guiding light to both Obama and Hillary Clinton, couldn't have said it better.  (And Alinsky, an atheist, specialized in infiltrating religious congregations, especially Roman Catholic ones.)

Bernie Edges Hillary in New Hampshire

My FrontPageMag article today:

Bernie Edges Hillary in New Hampshire

By Matthew Vadum

Insurgent radical Bernie Sanders' passionate anti-American campaign is eating away at the once-commanding lead of frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary race, according to new polling.

Although Hillary is still edging out Bernie at the national level, according to a new Monmouth University poll for the first time Bernie is now leading Hillary by 7 points in New Hampshire, the first state to vote in 2016. New Hampshire allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary of their choice.

Clinton still clings to a small lead among Democrats in the state. She has 43 percent support among Democrats, compared to Sanders' 39 percent support. Sanders enjoys 49 percent support from registered Independents and new voters, way ahead of Clinton's 26 percent.

Vice President Joe Biden, who is pondering joining the race, has 13 percent. A mere 2 percent back Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee, Larry Lessig, and Jim Webb each receive 1 percent.

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post reports with apparent alarm that Hillary "is suffering a rapid erosion of support among Democratic women — the voters long presumed to be the bedrock in her bid to become the nation’s first female president."

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that while in July 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters expressed support for Clinton, only 42 percent do at the moment, a dramatic 29 percentage point collapse in eight weeks. Tumulty blames Hillary's slide on continuing adverse media coverage of the disappearing emails scandal and a focus on the Clintons' perfidious behavior in the 1990s in the White House.

That Sanders is beating Clinton in New Hampshire and nipping at her heels nearly everywhere else is seeming proof that his hate-filled blame-America-first rhetoric is turning on the radical left-wingers who make up the Democratic Party's political base. Sanders has been getting away for years with describing himself as a "socialist," sometimes a "democratic socialist," when in reality he is an outright America-loathing communist. Clinton, of course, isn't much better with her communitarian-sounding "it takes a village" rhetoric and her close ties to the late radical organizing guru Saul Alinsky.

Sanders' belief in communism is reflected in his platform, which the actual Communist Party USA is openly praising. Even a brief glance reveals his plan to be hopelessly utopian. It will extinguish freedom and shutter businesses and cause widespread suffering especially among the poor people he claims to want to help. It is a program for exporting the best and the brightest to places that appreciate them.

But from a conservative's perspective at least, most of Clinton's policy platform doesn't seem much different from Sanders'. Both want to cripple the United States internally and externally. Both want to go after the so-called 1 percent and tax them aggressively. Both are pandering to the ugly, racist Black Lives Matter movement.

#BlackLivesMatter Activist Murders Kentucky Cop

My FrontPageMag article from Sept. 15, 2015:

#BlackLivesMatter Activist Murders Kentucky Cop

By Matthew Vadum

A Black Lives Matter supporter was killed by police yesterday after he shot a rookie Kentucky State Trooper to death following a high speed chase.

This murder is the latest in a series of cop-killings nationwide committed by aggrieved African-Americans who falsely claim blacks are perennial victims of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. The virulently racist Black Lives Movement, which formed after the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012, has been promoted by President Obama who has gone out of his way to foment race-based resentment and cop-hatred. The movement's members, who idolize convicted, unrepentant cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal, have declared "war" on law enforcement and openly call for police officers to be assassinated.

Following Obama's lead, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially endorsed the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement whose unhinged radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and of extrajudicially executing black Americans. In other words, it is now official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America. 

The man who killed Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder has been identified as convicted felon Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks. The perpetrator reportedly lived in Florissant, Missouri, near race riot-torn Ferguson, and apparently participated in local demonstrations protesting the death last year of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he tried to take the officer's handgun. There is evidence that Johnson-Shanks was so preoccupied with the Brown case that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service.

Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, earned his infamy late Sunday when Trooper Ponder, a 31-year-old white man, pulled his vehicle over on Interstate 24.

Immigrant Welfare Addiction

This is my article in today's FrontPageMag:

Immigrant Welfare Addiction

By Matthew Vadum

Non-citizens in the U.S. -- and especially recent Middle Eastern refugees -- are addicted to welfare programs, two newly released studies suggest.

Although open-borders propaganda typically claims that illegal aliens are hardworking and industrious, one of the reports unveiled yesterday showed that among illegal alien households with children, a shocking 87 percent accept benefits from one or more welfare programs, compared to just 52 percent of native households.

The reports come as a rancorous debate rages in American society over what immigration policies best serve the economic, cultural, and national security interests of the United States. Americans on both sides of the partisan divide are becoming increasingly angry that the nation's borders are porous and that illegal aliens are able to access generous government benefits upon arrival. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has rocketed to the top of the GOP field largely by opposing amnesty and pushing for the enforcement of existing laws, including the removal of millions of illegals.

Although illegal aliens impose a heavy burden on taxpayers, legal permanent residents are even more likely to be enamored of public welfare programs, according to Steven Camarota, the author of one of the reports and director of research at the respected nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

"Welfare use by illegal immigrant households is certainly a concern, but the bigger issue is welfare use by legal immigrants," said Camarota.

Ferguson Bombers Sentenced

My article in today's FrontPageMag:

Ferguson Bombers Sentenced

By Matthew Vadum

A foiled plot to use bombs to assassinate the police chief, county prosecutor, and other officials in troubled Ferguson, Mo., and also blow up the iconic Gateway Arch in nearby St. Louis, has ended in federal prison terms for two New Black Panther Party members.

In a sweetheart plea bargain deal, Olajuwon Davis and Brandon Orlando Baldwin, both radical black Muslim men in their twenties, received mere seven-year custodial sentences last week from U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey when they could have been sent to prison for decades. The men were sentenced "on charges of planning and conspiring to ignite explosive devices during the Ferguson protests and procuring firearms for convicted felons," according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan congratulated law enforcement for preventing what might have been a major disaster. "The disruption of this plot ... undoubtedly saved lives. Luckily for all of us, we’ll never know just how many," he said.

Davis and Baldwin met when they participated in the protests in Ferguson that followed the Aug. 9, 2014 death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man. Brown was killed by white then-police officer Darren Wilson when he charged Wilson after trying to wrest his service weapon from him. Brown's death sparked riots in Ferguson and across America. Soon after meeting, Davis and Baldwin began plotting to arm fellow demonstrators and destroy the Gateway Arch.

The sentencing comes as black nationalists and members of the Black Lives Matter movement escalate calls for violent attacks on police, while the Obama administration responds by sitting on its hands. Last month Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for "10,000 fearless men" to come forward and slaughter white Americans. Black-supremacist King Noble is calling on blacks to murder whites and police. "It's not safe no more to be white in America," Noble announced in a viral YouTube video. "Lurking behind any corner could be an angry black man ready to take yo ass out."

It also comes as the terrorist-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) throws its lot in with the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement. Breitbart News reports that "CAIR leaders and members joined Black Lives Matter in a march on the California State Capitol on [Sept. 2], targeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s office over a new bill that, in part, would expand bans on racial profiling to include perceived ethnicity." The fact that CAIR is siding with violent activists against police "creates a serious problem for CAIR’s defenders, which argue that its associations with Islamic extremism can be overlooked because it helps law enforcement work with, and within, the Muslim community."

Why would-be bomber Olajuwon Davis wanted to destroy the Gateway Arch

The Facebook page of Olajuwon Davis, one of the two New Black Panther Party members recently sentenced for planning to use bombs to assassinate officials in Ferguson, Missouri, is revealing.

Davis and his co-conspirator, Brandon Orlando Baldwin, also wanted to blow up the iconic Gateway Arch in nearby St. Louis.

In a rambling post dated Nov. 19, 2014, that is littered with inaccuracies, Davis makes his case:

"Saint Louis" is a Slave Capital in a Slave State! Look what Picture of History I discovered in McDonald's lobby. Notice the hooded Clansman!!?? Notice the crucifixs and Arch!? Fireworks?!! What is being celebrated or honored!!??
St. Louis, the Christian European Conqueror, was a member of the Knights of Columbus (KKK) and this City was founded as a milestone of Westward expansion aka "take the land from the Native Aboriginals".
The Arch is the Shackle of Oppression. We wonder why St. Louis (historically called Mound City) seems so Miserable (Missouri=Misery). My theory is, if you want to Control the New World then you Chain it at its Heart, which is Mound City/Midwest/St. Louis. This is exactly what has happen here.Dred Scott case that was heard here set the precedent that ALL those of African Descent (aka ANY trace of Melanin) could NEVER be Citizens of this US (Union States) System.
White Supremacy has the World/Planet around its Neck link a Jesus Piece and it is linked at the Arch. Think about it, if one wanted to wear the World on a Chain or keep it Chained up, the Arch would be the place where one would connect the Links. Yet, we worship and reverence a structure that was built as a Symbol of Our destruction and demise.
Think and Free yourself!!!

I made a screen grab of the page in case it goes down the Memory Hole. It is posted immediately below:

Dems Officially Endorse Anti-Cop BlackLivesMatter Movement

This is my article from the Sept. 2, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

Dems Officially Endorse Anti-Cop BlackLivesMatter Movement

By Matthew Vadum

The Democratic National Committee has officially endorsed the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement whose paranoid radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects.

Throwing their lot in with black racists and radical Black Power militants who have openly expressed support for the murder of police officers, Democrats embraced a statement that slams the U.S. for allegedly systemic police violence against African-Americans. The statement is not extreme enough for the Black Lives Matter movement whose leaders quickly rejected it. Last month members of the movement unveiled a list of policy proposals they claim will help to bring about "a world where the police don't kill people."

What's especially interesting about the resolution that hundreds of delegates at the DNC meeting in Minneapolis on Friday approved is that it accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children."

In other words, it is now official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America. Police in the United States today, says the DNC, are no better than the Sturmabteilung and Einsatzgruppen of Nazi Germany, the Soviet-era Cheka and NKVD, and the (Democrat-led) Ku Klux Klan, all of which used extrajudicial killings for political repression.

A copy of the draft resolution obtained by BuzzFeed News before the grotesque anti-American pander-fest Friday uses the same kind of inflammatory, dishonest wording Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades used to endorse the Black Power movement and condemn the U.S. during their bombing sprees that wreaked havoc on American society.

Cop Execution in Texas

My article in the August 31, 2015 issue of FrontPageMag:

Cop Execution in Texas

By Matthew Vadum

Cops in Houston, Texas are blaming the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement for the unprovoked killing Friday of a uniformed white sheriff's deputy allegedly committed by a black man who snuck up on the officer without saying a word and fired a gun repeatedly into his body until he was dead.

This murder appears to be the latest in a series of cop-killings nationwide committed by African-Americans who claim blacks are perennial victims of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. President Barack Hussein Obama has been at the forefront of ramping up hostility to police officers throughout his time in office. From early in his presidency when he jumped to conclusions accusing Cambridge, Massachusetts police of acting "stupidly" for daring to arrest his black Harvard professor friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., on suspicion of burglary, Obama has gone out of his way to foment race-based resentment and cop-hatred. His Saul Alinsky-style agitation encouraged the formation of the virulently racist Black Lives Matter movement whose members have declared "war" against police.

Houston law enforcement officials say it's time for this war to end.

At a press conference Saturday, an angry Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman (R), described the killing as "senseless and cowardly" and said that his deputy was targeted "because he wore a uniform." Hickman told reporters:

Our system of justice absolutely requires law enforcement be present to protect our community so any point when the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen this rhetoric has gotten out of control. We've heard black lives matter -- all lives matter -- well, cops' lives matter too. So why don't we just drop the qualifier and just say lives matter and take that to the bank.

An impassioned Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson (R) weighed in, saying:

It is time for the silent majority in this country to support law enforcement. There are a few bad apples in every profession. That does not mean that there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement. The vast majority of officers are there to do the right thing, are there because they care about their community and want to make it a safer place. What happened last night is an assault on the very fabric of society. It is not anything that we can tolerate. It is time to come forward and support law enforcement and condemn this atrocious act.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Saturday that "heinous and deliberate crimes against law enforcement will not be tolerated in the State of Texas." He added, "Texas reveres the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve their communities."