Intifada in Ferguson

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Intifada in Ferguson

By Matthew Vadum

The same violent protesters in Ferguson, Missouri demonstrating against the killing of Michael Brown have also been taking it to the streets in Detroit and elsewhere to press for the release of a Palestinian terrorist who killed two Israelis.

Activists are blackmailing the grand jury that is now hearing evidence against Wilson. If the grand jurors refuse to indict Wilson, radical activists are promising even more mayhem. The message is unmistakable: indict the cop, and there will be peace; don’t, and Ferguson will burn.

Brown is the young, black, 6’4″, 292-pound man who was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. When media outlets describe Brown they usually omit the fact that he viciously assaulted Wilson and tried to seize his handgun, presumably in an effort to do the officer harm. Journalists also tend to downplay the fact that minutes before Brown attacked Wilson he robbed a convenience store.

The Palestinian terrorist is Rasmea (also spelled Rasmieh) Odeh who was convicted by a Detroit jury on Monday of immigration fraud. Prosecutors accused Odeh of killing Israelis in the Sixties and then lying about it in U.S. immigration papers.

Odeh was previously convicted in Israel “for her role in the 1969 bombings of a supermarket and the British Consulate in Jerusalem, which were carried out on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization,” according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Prosecutors said one of the supermarket bombs killed two people and injured others. Odeh received a sentence of life imprisonment but was released after 10 years as part of a prisoner swap.

Odeh used to live in Michigan and resided in Chicago until her bail was revoked Monday. In Chicago she was employed as associate director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which was founded by terrorist promoter Rashid Khalidi and his wife, Mona. Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and former director of the PLO’s press agency, is a well-known friend of Barack Obama. AAAN, which is hostile to Israel, claims “to challenge government policies that violate the civil, political and human rights of the Arab American and Arab immigrant community.”

The seditious collaboration in Ferguson between anti-American left-wingers, some of whom are well-funded, and anti-American Islamofascists isn’t all that unusual in U.S. politics but it receives scant attention from the media.

Obama's Amnesty By Blackmail

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Obama's Amnesty by Blackmail

By Matthew Vadum

Ignoring voters’ historic coast-to-coast repudiation of his disastrous policies this week, President Obama is now threatening to move forward unilaterally with a massive immigration amnesty by the end of the year.

At his first post-election press conference Wednesday, instead of embracing conciliation as a responsible adult might do, Obama, the petulant Chicagoland thug, pulled a switchblade. Obama tried to blackmail newly emboldened congressional Republicans, vowing to enact amnesty through executive fiat if Congress doesn’t play ball.

Republicans’ newly won control of the Senate and enhanced majority in the House of Representatives means the Republicans who just gave Obama’s Democratic allies a savage electoral beat-down are now in a better position to give Obama the unprecedented immigration amnesty he wants. As the president said,

So before the end of the year, we’re going to take whatever lawful actions that I can take that I believe will improve the functioning of our immigration system … at the same time, I’ll be reaching out to both [incoming Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell, [House Speaker] John Boehner, and other Republican as well as Democratic leaders to find out how it is that they want to proceed. And if they want to get a bill done — whether it’s during the [approaching] lame duck [session of Congress] or next year — I’m eager to see what they have to offer.

Although McConnell and Boehner have been all over the map on immigration amnesty in recent months, since the election they have said they will not be pushed around by the president on the issue of amnesty.

Acting unilaterally on immigration would be “a big mistake” akin to “waving a red flag in front of a bull,” McConnell said. Such action “poisons the well for an opportunity to address a very important domestic issue.”

Boehner also said unilateral action would “poison the well.” The House Speaker warned Obama, “when you play with matches, then you take the risk of burning yourself, and he’s going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path.”

Republicans Conquer the Senate

My article from the Nov. 5, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Republicans Conquer the Senate

By Matthew Vadum

Republicans wrested control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats last night, setting the stage for potentially dramatic legislative showdowns with President Obama during the final two years of his already-catastrophic presidency.

After a GOP electoral wave wiped out several Democratic senators who supported Obamacare, around 11:15 p.m. Eastern time major media outlets projected Republicans would hold at least 51 seats in the Senate in January. In the approaching 114th Congress both chambers will be under GOP control and in a position to hinder Obama’s agenda if lawmakers so choose. It also clears the way for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to become the Senate’s first Republican majority leader since Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) left the post at the beginning of 2007.

The first big confrontation between Obama and Congress, a massively unpopular immigration amnesty that could trigger a major constitutional crisis, is already on its way. Several hours before the first polls closed in the East, ABC News reported that White House officials said the president would move forward with an executive order on immigration reform “no matter how big a shellacking Democrats” got Tuesday.

And what a shellacking Democrats received.

In Arkansas challenger Tom Cotton (R) picked off incumbent Mark Pryor (D). In Colorado Cory Gardner (R) defeated incumbent Mark Udall (D).

In Georgia, David Perdue (R) dispatched Michelle Nunn (D). Perdue garnered more than 50 percent of the vote, thereby avoiding a runoff election. The seat is currently held by retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R).

In Iowa Joni Ernst (R) triumphed over Bruce Braley (D), a sitting congressman. The seat is now held by retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D). In Kansas, incumbent Pat Roberts (R) beat back a fierce challenge from Greg Orman, an Independent with close ties to Democrats.

In the Bluegrass State, incumbent Mitch McConnell (R) easily bested challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), Kentucky’s current secretary of state. Grimes refused in the closing days of the campaign to say if she voted for Obama for president.

Understanding Obama's Ebola Psychosis

My article in today's American Thinker:

Understanding Obama's Ebola Psychosis

By Matthew Vadum

Many Americans believe that the Obama administration's schizophrenic behavior during the unfolding Ebola crisis is proof that Barack Obama is an incompetent chief executive.

They are wrong.  Obama is a competent leader.  That's the problem.  He's good at implementing bad ideas.  And he's a self-described citizen of the world whose first loyalty is not to the United States.

President Obama has been rolling out the red carpet for Ebola.  His policy is not designed to keep the American people safe from the deadly airborne virus that is ravaging West Africa.  Instead of treating foreign Ebola patients overseas, the president is now making plans to import them into the United States, a move that jeopardizes American lives for no reason other than the fulfillment of his ideological objectives. 

It is to share the burden, a redistribution of both wealth and health, much like Obamacare, which itself is an instrument of socioeconomic leveling posing as a health care system.

To Obama, the U.S. is nothing special.  America is just another country, or as he has put it, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Obama is unburdened by traditional American values.  Instead, his behavior is guided by his radical left-wing principles, repulsive as they may be to normal Americans.  He is embarrassed by America. 

Obama's neo-Marxist, multiculturalist, identity politics-infused worldview holds that America is an imperialistic, systemically racist, rotten, unjust country that has victimized other nations merely by being wealthy and powerful.  America must be punished and deprived of its power to abuse brutal third-world dictators who fatten themselves while keeping their countries in desperate poverty, he believes.

Kaci Hickox, a prospective 21st century Typhoid Mary, should be barred from nursing for life

Kaci Hickox, the reckless nurse who treated Ebola patients and who has resisted being quarantined, is a terrible person who has no respect for any human life except her own.

She should be barred from nursing or any kind of health care work for the rest of her life.

Having gotten back from an Ebola zone a week ago, the virus could still be present in her body. This is why sane people support quarantining such people for 21 days

She says because she has tested negative for Ebola there is no reason for a quarantine.  She says Ebola is difficult to transmit.

She's a liar (and a left-wing activist who works for the dangerously dysfunctional Centers for Disease Control).

Ebola is NOT difficult to transmit.

Ebola is, as I wrote a week ago, an airborne pathogen.  Sneezing or coughing can spread the virus which can travel through the air within droplets.

Dr. Steven J. Allen, is an expert on Ebola.  Allen earned his Ph.D. in biodefense from George Mason University’s College of Science in 2007.  He told me:

"We don’t how long it can last on surfaces or as droplets in the air ... You can get the disease from such a small number of viral particles that logic says you can get it from someone coughing in your vicinity."

Great Britain's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) found in 2010 that the Zaire strain of Ebola can survive on samples on glass at low temperatures for up to 50 days.  All an infected person would have to do is sneeze or cough near a lunch room refrigerator to spread the pathogen. The virus can survive on dry surfaces such as tables and doorknobs for hours.  In moisture it can live even longer.

Hickox knows, or ought to know, better. She is encouraging others to defy quarantines.

Americans will die because of her stubbornness and stupidity.

Illegal Voters Tipping Election Scales?

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Illegal Voters Tipping Election Scales?

By Matthew Vadum

Voting by illegal aliens and other non-citizens is so prevalent throughout the nation that it gave us Obamacare, according to a disturbing new study.

And if illegal voting by non-citizens, who tend to support Democratic Party candidates and who heavily supported President Obama, could tip the scales in the 2008 congressional elections, it can do so again in congressional elections next week and in the presidential contest in 2016. In 2008 one report estimated that as many as 2.7 million non-citizens were registered to vote nationwide.

The academic report, to be published in the December issue of Electoral Studies, continues the ongoing demolition of the Left’s narrative that voter fraud is a figment of paranoid Republicans’ imagination. 

Democrats cling religiously to their mantra that voter fraud doesn’t exist or is of little consequence because they have difficulty competing electorally without vote fraud. Fraud helps Democrats eke out victories in close races, which helps to explain their vehement opposition to commonsense electoral integrity measures like purging dead people from voter rolls or requiring photo ID for voting.

The findings of Jesse Richman and David Earnest, two political science professors at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., confirm that voter fraud is commonplace and widespread, something that honest, as opposed to engaged or left-wing, scholars have known for years.

Is ACORN behind violent unrest in Ferguson?

My article in today's American Thinker:

Is ACORN behind violent unrest in Ferguson?

By Matthew Vadum

ACORN's old Missouri chapter is playing at least a supporting role in the violent unrest and crime wave that has plagued Ferguson and St. Louis, Missouri since the Aug. 9 death of Michael Brown.

With all the pathologies on parade right now in and around Ferguson, really, how could the loyalists of ACORN, which once claimed a membership of 400,000, have stayed away from the opportunity to lynch a white police officer for doing his job?  The recruiting and fundraising opportunities for the cop-hating progressive movement are virtually unlimited.

What's going on in Ferguson is mobocracy at its ugliest. 

Activists are blackmailing the grand jury that is now hearing evidence against police officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown in August reportedly in self-defense.  If the grand jurors refuse to indict Wilson, radical activists are promising even more mayhem.

The message is unmistakable: indict the cop, and there will be peace.  Don't, and Ferguson will burn.

One of the groups deeply involved in causing chaos in Ferguson is Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. 

MORE is the rebranded Missouri branch of the former Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which filed for bankruptcy in late 2010.  That ACORN state chapter reconstituted itself in December 2009 as MORE under orders from ACORN's national headquarters.  President Obama used to work for ACORN, and he represented it in court as a lawyer.

MORE has been active in the protests and in efforts to free jailed demonstrators so they can continue vandalizing businesses, intimidating perceived adversaries, setting fires, throwing projectiles and urine at cops, and engaging in the left's usual modes of so-called nonviolent protest.  MORE believes that protesters should be given a blank check to inflict whatever harm they wish on the community in pursuit of social justice.

Obama Prepping Amnesty for 34 Million?

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Obama Prepping Amnesty for 34 Million?

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration may be planning to issue 34 million work visas and green cards in coming weeks without the required legal authorization from Americans’ elected representatives in Congress, according to a recently uncovered government procurement order.

If 34 million individuals were amnestied the U.S. population would grow by more than a tenth. The U.S. Census Bureau currently estimates the nation’s population at a little over 319 million. There is no official count of illegal aliens present in the United States but 11 million is one widely circulated estimate. Some studies put the figure as high as 38 million.

The procurement order is a smoking gun suggesting that President Obama intends to plunge the nation into a grave constitutional crisis after Election Day by using executive orders to unilaterally enact an amnesty affecting millions of undocumented aliens now unlawfully present in the United States. The prospective amnesty could also impact aliens who have yet to arrive in the country.

Congress has repeatedly refused to grant the amnesties that Obama seeks, but the president refuses to take no for an answer, pressing on regardless of how much damage he inflicts on the country.

A large-scale amnesty would be a profoundly cynical move that would reward lawbreaking and beget future immigration amnesties. It would also spell electoral death for the Republican Party in coming years because Latinos, who are believed to comprise the bulk of the illegals, have traditionally shown a strong preference for the Democratic Party and its left-of-center public policies.

The amnesty that Obama promised his radical political base had been widely expected to take place after Labor Day last month but in the summer the president took significant political heat over the plan and the still-ongoing invasion of the southern border by illegal aliens –many of them unaccompanied minors and gang members — from Central America. Obama then apparently decided to delay the executive action until after next month’s elections in hopes of not sabotaging Democrats’ efforts to hang onto control of the U.S. Senate.

Obama’s scheme came to light when Breitbart News uncovered a draft request for proposals that appears to provide broad outlines of the president’s extra-legal amnesty scheme two weeks before congressional elections that may place both chambers of Congress in the hands of Republicans.

Obama's Deadly Ebola Lies

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Obama's Deadly Ebola Lies

By Matthew Vadum

President Obama’s lies about the communicability of the truly terrifying Ebola virus are recklessly putting American lives at risk.

And yesterday Obama did the unthinkable: he cancelled a precious campaign fundraiser to address an issue of intense interest to the American people. At a photo-opportunity disguised as an emergency cabinet meeting the president did what he always does: he lied and lied and lied.

“Here’s what we know about Ebola: That it is not like the flu,” Obama told his groupies in government and the media in reassuring tones.

“It is not airborne. The only way that a person can contract Ebola is by coming into direct contact with the bodily fluids of somebody who is showing symptoms. In other words, if they don’t have symptoms, they’re not contagious.”

To demonstrate his fearlessness, Obama bragged about canoodling with health care professionals:

I want to use myself as an example just so that people have a sense of the science here. I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory [University Hospital, where Ebola patients are treated] because of the valiant work that they did in treating one of the patients. They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing, and I felt perfectly safe doing so. And so this is not a situation in which, like a flu, the risks of a rapid spread of the disease are imminent. If we do these protocols properly, if we follow the steps, if we get the information out, then the likelihood of widespread Ebola outbreaks in this country are very, very low.

The White House website repeats Obama’s lies: “You can only get the Ebola virus by direct contact with: Body fluids of a person who is sick with or has died from Ebola; Objects contaminated with the virus; Infected animals.”

My Capital Research Center co-worker, Dr. Steven J. Allen, happens to be an expert on the Ebola virus and he says Obama is not telling the truth. Allen earned his Ph.D. in biodefense from George Mason University’s College of Science in 2007.

Although Ebola is indeed spread by means of body fluids there’s a catch.

“We don’t how long it can last on surfaces or as droplets in the air so when President Obama said earlier this month you can’t get it from sitting beside someone on a bus that was a total lie,” Allen said. “You can get the disease from such a small number of viral particles that logic says you can get it from someone coughing in your vicinity.”

Would-be Cop Killer is New Ferguson Hero

My article from the Oct. 14, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Would-be Cop Killer is New Ferguson Hero

By Matthew Vadum

More than two months after a black man was killed trying to wrest a handgun away from a white police officer, left-wing protesters continue to perpetrate acts of violence with relative impunity in and around Ferguson, Mo. where the incident happened.

Reports indicate 17 people were arrested during weekend demonstrations as activists geared up for even more violence and vandalism in the St. Louis suburb that has been under siege by cop-hating radicals more or less continuously since the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown.

Activists in Ferguson are also upset that a different 18-year-old black man was shot and killed in a separate incident last week by a police officer in the St. Louis area. VonDerrit Myers Jr. was shot dead in St. Louis City, reportedly after shooting at an officer three times during a chase. Myers was wearing a monitoring ankle bracelet as a condition of bail from a gun case months ago. After Myers’s death, activists reportedly broke windows, burned a U.S. flag, and attacked journalists.

Thousands of protesters converged on Ferguson over the weekend, according to reports. The out-of-state visitors included anti-war radicals left over from the Sixties, seminarians, college students, and fast food workers imported from Chicago, Nashville, and elsewhere.

Community organizers are also hard at work attempting to destabilize Ferguson and the surrounding region.