Bachmann-Clinton Showdown over Blind Sheikh

My article from the September 21, 2012, issue of Front Page Magazine:


Bachmann-Clinton Showdown over Blind Sheikh

By Matthew Vadum

In a dramatic confrontation with a conservative lawmaker on Capitol Hill yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flatly denied that the Obama administration is planning to send the 1993 World Trade Center bomber back to Egypt.

The face-off between Clinton and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) came after The Blaze news website started a firestorm Monday by reporting that a source close to the Obama administration said the Department of State was contemplating returning the “Blind Sheikh,” convicted terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his homeland “for humanitarian and health reasons.” The embattled Obama administration is currently in full-time damage control mode as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses.

As FrontPage Magazine exclusively reported earlier this week, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist group, Jamaa Islamiya, helped to foment last week’s deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya.

During a bipartisan closed-door briefing for House members on developments in the Middle East, Clinton was questioned pointedly by Bachmann, who asked if the administration intends to repatriate Abdel-Rahman, a highly placed congressional source told this writer.

Frustrated after the Department of State refused for days to confirm or deny reports about a possible transfer of the Blind Sheikh to Egyptian custody, Bachmann wanted to get Clinton on the record on the issue in front of House members. In an environment described by the source as “tense,” the lawmaker asked Clinton if anyone in any department or agency in the federal government was negotiating, corresponding, or in any way moving forward with plans to expel the terrorist from the United States.

“No,” was Clinton’s terse reply.

Later the same day Clinton gave another classified briefing to members of the Senate. Senators complained that Clinton stonewalled their requests for new information about the attack last week on the U.S. consulate in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.

“That was the most useless, worthless briefing that I have attended in a long time,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “Believe me, there is more written in every major and minor publication in America about what happened.”

Despite Clinton’s denial, evidence continues to mount that the Obama administration is seriously considering handing over the ailing 74-year-old Blind Sheikh to the Egyptian government. Diabetic since childhood, Abdel-Rahman was formerly a guest of the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. Today he resides in the medical wing of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.

More proof of secret State Department negotiations came yesterday in the pages of the New York Post. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and an unnamed Obama administration source confirmed that the government is considering sending the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing back to Egypt where he is now a revered figure for attacking the U.S.

King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers.

Releasing “Abdel-Rahman or any terrorist who plots to kill innocent Americans would be seen for what it is — a sign of weakness and lack of resolve by the United States and its President,” King wrote.

“While considerations regarding the blind sheikh’s release would be disturbing in any context, they are particularly alarming given recent events. The 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks was marked by the assassination of America’s ambassador to Libya and an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. The violence in Egypt has been attributed, in part, to that government’s demands for the blind sheikh’s release.”

The letter was signed by other House leaders including Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), and Armed Services Committee chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.).

The new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, considers Abdel-Rahman to be a U.S. political prisoner, and has asked the Obama administration to release him. The Arabic language newspaper al-Arabiya reported more than six months ago that the Obama administration offered to send Abdel-Rahman to Egypt as part of a prisoner swap. Called the “Emir of Jihad” by some, Abdel-Rahman is a spiritual leader to al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups.

Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution team that put Abdel-Rahman behind bars, is worried about the Obama administration’s intentions. “There’s no way to believe anything they say,” he said. “I believe there may already be a nod-and-wink agreement in place.”

On September 10, the day before terrorists assaulted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization demanded the release of the Blind Sheikh and all detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His group, Jamaa Islamiya (also known as al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or, in English, Islamic Group), works closely with al Qaeda, the group that ultimately succeeded in incinerating New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. At least two of the other groups that demanded Abdel-Rahman’s release — Islamic Jihad and the Sunni Group— also have al Qaeda ties.

Alinskyite Super PAC’s Crusade to Take Down Michele Bachmann

My article from the September 7, 2012, issue of Front Page Magazine:

Alinskyite Super PAC’s Crusade to Take Down Michele Bachmann

By Matthew Vadum

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is now in the crosshairs of the radical left-wing Credo Super PAC which jettisoned an earlier pledge not to target any female congressional candidate in the upcoming election.

Bachmann “has said more hateful and downright crazy things than just about anyone else in Congress,” said community organizer Becky Bond, president of Credo Super PAC.

Bachmann is the “Queen of Crazy,” according to Credo’s website. The PAC is attacking Bachmann because, among other things, she believes the U.S. Constitution limits the powers of the federal government, is an outspoken Christian, opposes same-sex marriage, believes manmade global warming is a myth, and wants to reform Medicare and Medicaid.

The well-funded political action committee was created by Credo Mobile, the wireless reseller that donates part of its profits to left-wing groups such as the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, ACORN-affiliated Project Vote, Color of Change, and the Sierra Club Foundation. Credo Mobile boasts that it has given upwards of $70 million to left-wing groups since 1985. Credo Super PAC has raked in nearly $2 million so far, according to the Federal Election Commission database.

Barely three months ago Credo was very reluctant to include Bachmann in what it calls its “Take Down the Tea Party Ten” campaign. The PAC declined at that time to gun for the conservative champion and Tea Party leader, out of deference to the Left’s phony anti-GOP “war on women” narrative and because its leaders didn’t want to antagonize female voters.

“There’s no shortage of Tea Party women but if you look at this picture, one of our main themes, and most of our volunteers, frankly, are women,” Credo Mobile president Michael Kieschnick said June 18 during a panel discussion at the Campaign for America’s Future’s Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, D.C. “We want to be able to go after Independent women [voters] in a year where the House has been ferociously anti-women. That’s why we’re doing it.”

Kieschnick did, however, qualify his statement. “I wouldn’t say we would never, ever do a woman but our structural bias is to start with all men.”

He also said Credo would only target candidates that were “beatable” — which makes Credo’s decision to open fire on Bachmann perplexing. (Kieschnick is a member of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a shadowy donors’ collaborative that aims to turn America into Greece.)

In announcing Credo’s assault on Bachmann, Bond cited the three-term lawmaker’s “weak primary showing.” Credo supporters’ “overwhelming demand” for Bachmann’s  head convinced the PAC to go after her, Bond said.

In fact Bachmann won her August primary election with more than 80 percent of the vote in a three-way race. She is also the only one of the “Tea Party Ten” whose name does not appear on the RealClearPolitics list of House seats most likely to switch parties. Moreover, Bachmann’s campaign and Leadership PAC have together raised an impressive $17 million this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Credo failed to respond to this skeptical reporter’s requests for comment. The PAC’s clam-up comes after the Obama campaign ordered high-level Democrats not to give interviews to conservative media outlets.

At the same time Bachmann joined the “Tea Party Ten,” two other lawmakers were added to the eight already on the list, bringing the total to 11, not 10 — a fact not reflected on the PAC’s website. As anyone who tracks government spending can tell you, math has long been progressives’ worst enemy.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) is now a target because he’s “a paranoid birther,” Bond said. Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) is a new blip on Credo’s radar screen because he’s “the poster boy for Tea Party economics.”

The original eight Tea Party lawmakers in the House of Representatives marked for defeat are Allen West (Fla.), Steve King (Iowa), Dan Lungren (Calif.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Joe Walsh  (Ill.), Frank Guinta (N.H.), Sean Duffy (Wisc.), and Chip Cravaack (Minn.).

Instead of running political ads, Credo prefers to use brutal in-your-face Saul Alinsky-inspired tactics aimed at silencing and intimidating its “enemies,” a word that Bond frequently uses.

Credo brags about bullying New Hampshire’s Guinta into not attending a fundraiser and about its candlelight vigils designed to highlight the lawmaker’s combatant status in the nonexistent “war on women.” The storm trooper PAC also celebrates disrupting a Lungren town hall meeting.

Credo calls Iowa’s Steve King a “paranoid bigot.” For proof, Credo consulted radical feminist ambulance chaser Roxanne Conlin. This unsuccessful office seeker was the first female president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (since rechristened with the smiley-face name American Association for Justice) and was president and general counsel of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.

King’s policy positions are “atrocious, offensive, and dangerous to the women of this district,” Conlin regurgitated on cue.

The PAC plans to escalate its attacks on Tea Party patriots leading up to Election Day.

“Credo Super PAC will be mobilizing thousands of volunteers to ensure that voters know just how extreme and crazy these Tea Party Republicans are,” Bond said.

“We’re determined to defeat these Tea Party Republicans before they do any more damage to women, seniors and the environment.”

In other words, Credo is mobilizing to stop the Tea Party from saving America.

Writer of Rolling Stone hit piece on Michele Bachmann is a left-wing extremist

It turns out that the author of a Rolling Stone hit piece on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) hangs out with some unsavory characters, Trevor Loudon reports.

The writer, Matt Taibbi, is the author of a fascinating piece of character assassination called "Michele Bachmann's Holy War." He received an award from the small-c communist organization known as Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Notable members of DSA include anarchist-communist intellectual Noam Chomsky, ACORN hagiographer John Atlas, convicted East German spy Kurt Stand, and a galaxy of America-hating Marxists such as Frances Fox Piven.

Should it then be any surprise that he characterizes Bachmann, now a contender for the Republican presidential nomination this way:

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. [...] 

In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.

This is the way those on the far left routinely characterize strong, principled conservatives: as out-of-control nutbars, religious zealots, and fascistic demagogues.

Expect much more of this kind of crap in the coming months.

* * * * *

America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, Machiavellian pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy the book at Amazon and in Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million bookstores. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann endorses Matthew Vadum's book Subversion Inc.

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann has endorsed my book Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books).

Bachmann is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represents the 6th district of Minnesota. She's also an outspoken Tea Party leader and antagonist of the Obama administration.

Here's the endorsement:

Through his careful research, Matthew Vadum shined a light that exposed ACORN's corruption. For months I fought to cut off the flow of tax dollars to ACORN. In Subversion Inc. Vadum warns that despite the defunding of ACORN, the group has only feigned death.

ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, Machiavellian pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.

Buy the book at Amazon. Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.

Endorsements of Subversion Inc.

Below are the endorsements as of today, March 30, 2011, of my upcoming book Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Further endorsements are, of course, welcome!

Here is the list:

"Knowing what I know about the 'zombie armies' of youth brainwashed by Team Obama, it's chilling to read Subversion Inc. Eye-opening and shocking, Matthew Vadum warns us of the danger still posed by ACORN." --Jason Mattera, New York Times bestselling author of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation

"Thanks to Matthew Vadum's extensive research there is no way liberals will be able to whitewash the evils of ACORN. History will not be kind to America's most notorious pressure group. I dare anyone to defend ACORN, and its radicals, after reading this book." --Hannah Giles, investigative journalist

"It's dynamite with a short fuse." -- G. Gordon Liddy, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

"Matthew Vadum has created a well-researched, irresistibly written book that every American should read. The criminal enterprise called 'ACORN' is the largest, most elusive, and most dangerous radical organization in America. If you are wondering about the operations and influence of a vast left-wing conspiracy, this is it, with tentacles that reach right into the heart of the Obama White House.” -- David Horowitz, author of The Shadow Party

"Matthew Vadum’s book, Subversion Inc., rips the cover off the cover-up and tells how much of America’s Ruling Class (Barack Obama, George Soros, the Catholic church, Hollywood, the media, unions, etc., etc.)  collaborated to bring socialism to America. P.S. Be forewarned – you’ll be so outraged you’re likely to buy more copies for friends and insist they read it." -- Richard Viguerie [Viguerie pioneered political direct mail and has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (Nation magazine), one of the “conservatives of the century” (Washington Times), and one of 2008’s “top 25 influencers” among Republicans (NewsMax magazine).] 

"Subversion Inc. is a riveting journey through the tangled web of ACORN. Vadum exposes the depth of this corrupt criminal enterprise with the clarity and precision of an invested author. This is one of the most comprehensive compilations of evidence against ACORN available. ACORN's continued existence, under any guise, puts the integrity of our electoral system and the sanctity of America's ballot box are at risk." --Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa)

"In his expose of the nefarious history of ACORN, Matthew Vadum has definitively revealed how socialist and ideological  partisanship was manipulated, twisted and ultimately destroyed by the evil of unscrupulous 'community organizers,' whose driven ambitions knew no bounds of restraint and whose compatriots involved some of the most powerful names in American politics, up to and including the president himself." --John J. Tierney Jr., Walter Kohler Professor of International Relations at Institute of World Politics; Faculty Chairman; Former Special Assistant and Foreign Affairs Officer, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

"For too long the institutional left has been allowed to operate under cover of darkness because the Democrat-media complex refuses to hold them accountable. But these radicals who have been sticking it to Americans for decades scatter like cockroaches under the harsh spotlight of Matthew Vadum’s great new book, Subversion Inc." --Andrew Breitbart, Internet news entrepreneur

"Through his careful research, Matthew Vadum shined a light that exposed ACORN’s corruption. For months I fought to cut off the flow of tax dollars to ACORN. In Subversion Inc. Vadum warns that despite the defunding of ACORN, the group has only feigned death." --Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota)

Politico disguises hit piece on Cong. Michele Bachmann as fact-checking

People who get paid to talk for a living are bound to make a lot of innocent mistakes when they talk. This includes our elected representatives.

But mistakes made by conservatives almost always generate more media coverage than mistakes by liberals.

And so yet another dreary left-wing hit piece on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) emerges. This time it is disguised as a fact-checking exercise. (Of course Bachmann's misstatements are trifling compared to those of Barack "57 States" Obama and Joe "Stand Up For Chuck" Biden.)

The phony fact-checkers are Jonathan Martin and Kendra Marr of the Politico.

They say Bachmann was wrong when she said that the Founding Fathers worked to get rid of slavery in the United States. Bachmann is quoted saying, "The very Founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." (Note: Founders is spelled with a lower-case F in the article. This is incorrect. When referring to the American Founding Fathers the upper-case must be used on the initial letters.)

Martin and Marr write

While some of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in favor of abolishing slavery, they were, of course, dead when the institution was ended following the Civil War.

Bachmann singled out John Quincy Adams as someone who “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”

But John Quincy Adams, the sixth president who went on to campaign vigorously against slavery while serving in the U.S. House, was not yet 9 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776; he died in 1848 — nearly two decades before the 13th Amendment was ratified abolishing slavery.

This is a typical Media Matters-style lawyering of a statement. Although some Founders did tirelessly work to kill off slavery, I suspect Bachmann was advancing the view that the seeds of slavery's destruction as an institution were sewn into the very fabric of the Constitution. This used to be the dominant view before the awful 1960s and political correctness came along.

If Martin and Marr had bothered to actually read the Constitution they might have discovered that it contained clauses designed to cripple slavery. Those provisions were inserted by Framers opposed to slavery and over the vigorous opposition of slave states.