The al-Qaeda reject busted by the feds yesterday is a tinhorn terrorist who lives at home with his parents in the suburbs and talked tough about attacks on shopping malls and government officials - even though he failed to make the cut at terror school and couldn’t find any guns to carry out his big plan, prosecutors said.
Federal authorities allege Tarek Mehanna was rebuffed at least three times as he sought terror training in Yemen, Iraq and Pakistan - including a rejection by the notorious Taliban, which cited his “lack of experience.”
Mehanna, a 27-year-old trained as a pharmacist, lives with his parents in Sudbury in a two-story home with a white picket fence, yet allegedly fancied himself as a jihadist bent on killing innocent Americans because they pay taxes to the government.
The Heritage Foundation says this arrest brings the latest number of known terrorist plots foiled since 9/11 to 27.
The Supreme Court set aside the objections of the Obama administration and said Tuesday that it will consider whether judges have the power to release Guantanamo Bay detainees into the United States if they have been deemed not to be "enemy combatants."
The case, involving a group of Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, again thrusts the court into the jangle of policy decisions and constitutional principles involving the approximately 220 men still held at the base in Cuba. And the court's decision to hear it could further complicate plans to close the military prison in January, a deadline the Obama administration recently said it might be unable to meet.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate has given legislative approval for allowing Gitmo detainees to be brought to the U.S. mainland under certain conditions:
After dropping some popular immigration-enforcement measures, Congress on Tuesday passed the 2010 homeland security spending bill that gives President Obama the authority to transfer terrorism-suspect detainees to the United States for trial, though only after he submits a plan to Congress...
The spending bill funds more than 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents, pays for more border security technology and extends the E-Verify program, which allows businesses to check a government database to make sure their new workers are legal. But it doesn't require further construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence.
E-Verify was extended only for three years, and a provision allowing businesses to check their existing work force in addition to new hires was dropped.
The bill also contained a provision that prevents the disclosure of detainee abuse photos.
In a New York Times op-ed piece, Robert L. Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, says the organization has lost its way by no longer distinguishing between open and closed societies and instead adopting a moral equivalence game:
When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.
Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.
...Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over the 1995 federal terrorism prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others, argues that putting terrorists on trial in civilian courts is a bad idea:
The Obama administration has said it intends to try several of the prisoners now detained at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts in this country. This would include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and other detainees allegedly involved. The Justice Department claims that our courts are well suited to the task.
Based on my experience trying such cases, and what I saw as attorney general, they aren't. That is not to say that civilian courts cannot ever handle terrorist prosecutions, but rather that their role in a war on terror—to use an unfashionably harsh phrase—should be, as the term "war" would suggest, a supporting and not a principal role.
The challenges of a terrorism trial are overwhelming. To maintain the security of the courthouse and the jail facilities where defendants are housed, deputy U.S. marshals must be recruited from other jurisdictions; jurors must be selected anonymously and escorted to and from the courthouse under armed guard; and judges who preside over such cases often need protection as well. All such measures burden an already overloaded justice system and interfere with the handling of other cases, both criminal and civil.
Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the places of both trial and confinement for such defendants would become attractive targets for others intent on creating mayhem, whether it be terrorists intent on inflicting casualties on the local population, or lawyers intent on filing waves of lawsuits over issues as diverse as whether those captured in combat must be charged with crimes or released, or the conditions of confinement for all prisoners, whether convicted or not.
...Moreover, the rules for conducting criminal trials in federal courts have been fashioned to prosecute conventional crimes by conventional criminals. Defendants are granted access to information relating to their case that might be useful in meeting the charges and shaping a defense, without regard to the wider impact such information might have. That can provide a cornucopia of valuable information to terrorists, both those in custody and those at large.
...Moreover, it appears likely that certain charges could not be presented in a civilian court because the proof that would have to be offered could, if publicly disclosed, compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The military commissions regimen established for use at Guantanamo was designed with such considerations in mind. It provided a way of handling classified information so as to make it available to a defendant's counsel while preserving confidentiality. The courtroom facility at Guantanamo was constructed, at a cost of millions of dollars, specifically to accommodate the handling of classified information and the heightened security needs of a trial of such defendants.
Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad—people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.
Despite the new 287(g) program, "America's Sheriff" is not backing down from enforcing immigration law in Maricopa County. Since the feds (and their friends in the ACLU and elsewhere) appear intent on watering down border enforcement, expect more investigations and lawsuits thrown in the sheriff's path.
Department of Homeland Security officials have signed new agreements authorizing nearly 70 state and local law enforcement agencies, including a contentious Arizona sheriff, to help arrest and deport illegal immigrants charged with violent or criminal acts.
Under the new agreements, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who has come under fire for his immigration sweeps, will continue to work with federal authorities when illegal immigrants are booked into his jail. But Sheriff Arpaio's office will not be given the power to arrest such people, as it previously had, federal officials said.
As the new agreements were announced, Sheriff Arpaio launched a crime and immigration sweep Friday in northwestern metro Phoenix, according to the Associated Press.
The sheriff told the AP that he can still arrest immigrants under a state smuggling law and a federal law that gives all local police agencies more limited power to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
"It doesn't bother me, because we are going to do the same thing," Sheriff Arpaio said. "I am the elected sheriff. I don't take orders from the federal government."
Writing at NationalReviewOnline, immigration scholar Heather MacDonald observes that..
Though this tightening of 287(g) authority comes under the Obama administration, the Bush administration was no fan of the statute, either, and resisted allowing sheriff’s deputies to enforce immigration law on the streets against gangbangers. The trend is clear. When amnesty finally rolls around, among those millions of illegals allowed to jump the queue ahead of people who intend to be legal immigrants will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of criminals whose residency in the U.S. has been carefully protected to guarantee their ability to take advantage of the inevitable amnesty.
In a previous post, we mentioned that left-of-center media polemicists and politicians often accuse their right-of-center counterparts of lying even though it is the left that often puts forth disinformation, canned talking points, or other forms of obfuscation. In other words, a classic case of projection. The unprofessional, inappropriate outburst by the formerly obscure South Carolina congressman notwithstanding, nothing has changed. If anything, the left has stepped up its efforts.
So, with that in mind, here is the second installment of our media bias roundup (in no particular order). Again, please feel free to forward additional double-standard examples to us--or in the alternative, let us know if you disagree with our premise. As in Part 1, we include the crickets sound effect (well known to political- and sports-talk radio fans) to signify instances when the so-called mainstream media ignores--primarily for ideological reasons--a legitimate news story.
===================================
Republican lawmaker calls President Obama a liar Media response: saturation coverage, demands for assorted groveling
Democrat lawmakers spend eight years calling President Bush
a liar Media response: crickets
===================================
Republican lawmaker leaves office early to run for higher office Media response: strong denunciation, quitter
Democrat lawmaker stays in office (thereby neglecting
his/her job) while running for higher office Media response: crickets
===================================
Scattered, random offensive signs at "tea party" rallies Media response: focus coverage almost exclusively on
the small percentage of offensive signs
Extensive number of offensive signs at anti-war, anti-capitalsm,
anti-globalism, or other left-of-center demonstrations Media response: crickets
===================================
Right-of-center politician who supports school choice
sends children to public schools Media response: crickets
Left-of-center politician who opposes school choice and
unconditionally supports teachers union sends children to
private school Media response: crickets
===================================
Right-of-center think-tank releases study or representative
of think tank appears on cable news network Media response: makes sure to ID think-tank as conservative
[also raises issues concerning who is funding the organization]
Left-of-center think-tank releases study or representative
appears on cable news network: Media response: no adjective included
in front of think-tank's name--no discussion of funding sources
===================================
Right-of-center candidate runs negative ads Media response: unseemly, undignified, poisonous
of the electorate, "smear machine"
Left-of-center candidate runs negative ads Media response: crickets
===================================
Right-of-center former govt. official makes big
money on lecture tour Media response: greedy, excessive, compromising
Right-of-center former govt. official makes big
money on lecture tour Media response: crickets
===================================
Embarrassing info on the family of right-of-center
politician or activist--or politician him/herself. Media response: major headlines and coverage
Embarrassing info on the family of left-of-center
politician or activist--or politician him/herself. Media response: crickets
===================================
Right-of-center blog/website reader posts offensive
comments. Media response: yet another example of
lack of civility, extremism
Left-of-center blog/website reader posts offensive
comments. Media response: crickets
===================================
Right-of-center politician supports traditional marriage
and/or takes pro-life position Media response: constant mention
Left-of-center politician supports traditional marriage
and/or takes pro-life position Media response:crickets
===================================
Hate crime allegedly committed against media-favored
group Media response: saturation coverage
Hate crime allegedly committed against media-disfavored
group Media response:crickets
===================================
Right-of-center persons regularly mischaracterized as
"racist" Media response: accept caricature at face value
Longest serving Democrat in U.S. Senate is a former
Ku Klux Klan member Media response: crickets
FNC's quirky and controversial Glen Beck seems to cry on camera more than someone sitting down for a Barbara Walters interview. Perhaps he was understandably moved to tears by this footage of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn singing the praises one of her favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse Tung, the Communist dictator who sent tens of millions of Chinese citizens to their death.
