Former Fox News Channel broadcaster Glenn Beck, now of The Blaze TV, has been warning theatrically of an inchoate catastrophe should the country choose Donald J. Trump “as its next president.”
Trump “will be a monster much, much worse” than Barack Obama, says Beck. …
… “Where are the people who say we stand with the Constitution,” protested Beck. Trump fails to talk about the Constitution in depth, he blathered.
True. Trump is not a TV talker. Moreover, all candidates who talk about the Constitution “in depth” are dishonest. For there is no Constitution left to talk about. That thing died over the course of centuries of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. That’s why when Iraqis were composing their Constitution (after no. 43 destroyed their country), the late Joe Sobran recommended we give them ours because we don’t use it.
Mention of the Constitution means nothing. It’s on the list of items candidates check when they con constituents. Beck went on to OMG it about Trump saying this: “President Obama’s irresponsible use of executive orders has paved the way for him to also use them freely if he wins the presidential race.”
Amen—provided Trump uses executive power to repeal lots of laws, not make them. We live under an administrative “Secret State.” Very many, maybe most, of the laws under which Americans labor ought to be repealed. The only laws that are naturally inviolable are those upholding life, liberty and property.
Trump, thankfully, has proclaimed: “the one thing good about executive orders: The new president, if he comes in – boom, first day, first hour, first minute, you can rescind that.”
Beck has protested. He apparently accepts the inherent legitimacy of Barack Obama’s executive orders. Beck also seems to believe that the Constitution, or some other higher order, demands that people continue to labor under burdensome government edicts forever after, and that to promise repeal is the act of a progressive.
“Ted Cruz,” countered Beck, who has since endorsed candidate Cruz, “is the guy who says he’s for certain principles and will be tethered and tied to them, exactly like Ronald Reagan was.”
Well, another of Eland’s discomforting observations about Reagan is that he “enhanced executive power through questionable means. Although presidential signing statements, accompanying bills passed by Congress, had been around since George Washington, Reagan began to use these signing statement to contravene or nullify Congress’s will without giving that body a chance to override a formal presidential veto.”
There’s nothing necessarily progressive about overturning laws that have been passed.
There is nothing sacred about every law an overweening national government and its unelected agencies inflict on the people. “At the federal level alone,” the number of laws totaled 160,000 pages,” in 2012. By John Stossel’s estimation, “Government adds 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year.” According to the Heritage Foundation, “Congress continues to criminalize at an average rate of one new crime for every week of every year.”
America has become a nation of thousands-upon-thousands of arbitrary laws, whose effect is to criminalize naturally licit conduct. …
To shut down an investigation into an Islamic sect suspected of infiltrating US mosques is not “political correctness run amok,” as Fox News neocon Marc Thiessen finesses it, but treason.
Consider: You hire a private firm to protect you, only to discover that, as part of the scheme to “protect” you, your guards undergo sensitivity training which would desensitize them to potential evildoers, thus giving the latter easier access to you and yours. Given that this strategy, if it can be so called, would undermine your life, and considering this company would be violating its contractual responsibilities by reneging on the obligation to defend you—you’d first fire the firm. If the negligence came at a cost; you’d sue. You’d put this “business” and its “business plan” out of business.
Government has no meaningful contract with its citizen (other than a dead-letter Constitution). Thus you can’t fire leadership at Homeland Security for intentionally adopting policies that have likely already imperiled citizens. But you can, at least, call a spade a spade. It’s good to frame matters with precision.
What was exposed by Philip Haney—a heroic, soft-spoken, demure, retired employee of the Department of Homeland Security—is treason by any other name.
Philip Haney, a former employee at the Department of Homeland Security, has revealed that his superiors shut down an investigation that might have raised a red flag and averted the recent Islamic terror attack in San Bernardino. On Thursday, Megyn Kelly interviewed Haney, with backstory provided by Trace Gallagher.
Per Gallagher, Haney was one of the founding members of DHS. He was later assigned to the Intelligence Review Unit, where he investigated individuals with potential links to terrorism. While in this position he began to observe trends, including links between global terror networks and radicalized Muslims who were coming to America.
A year into the investigation, the State Department and the DHS Civil Rights Division told Haney that tracking these groups and individuals was problematic because they were Islamic groups. Haney reports that internal memos forbade him from developing any cases based on this profile.
His investigation was shut down, and many of his records were deleted, including evidence about a suspicious group as well as specific individuals tied to the mosque in Riverside, California, that Farook attended.
Haney notified Congress and the DHS inspector general about the termination of his investigation into Islamic groups. Instead of reinstating the investigation, he asserts they retaliated, relieving him of his duties and revoking his security clearance. Fox News reached out to the DHS for comment. They claimed that there are “many holes” in Haney’s story but could not comment further due to privacy laws.
During the interview with Kelly, Haney went into some detail about connections among various terror groups. He also spoke about the thousands of individuals his unit was tracking who were traveling in and out of the United States on the visa waiver program. As the investigation continued, more and more pieces fell into place. Among them, and as noted, Haney identified individuals connected to Farook’s mosque who would have been flagged. Haney did not say that Farook, in particular, was one of those people, but he appeared confident that if his investigation had been allowed to go forward, it is likely that Farook would have been identified. Once identified and flagged, Farook would have been put on the no-fly list because of his association with that mosque, and/or the K-1 visa his wife received might have been denied because of Farook’s affiliation with a known terror organization via the mosque (or perhaps directly, as well).
In sum, Haney believes that if he had been allowed to continue his investigation, he may have uncovered enough information to have thwarted the recent terror attack in San Bernardino.
Haney appears to have had a distinguished career, stating he has a commendation letter for finding 300 terrorists.
UPDATE (1/2): From the just-cited TAT, second-hand report, it must be concluded that neither did Congress heed Mr. Haney’s pleas. Haney’s own words, in The Hill, are more powerful:
Administration nixed probe into Southern California jihadists
By Philip Haney
There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration.
I was a firsthand witness to how these policies deliberately prevented scrutiny of Islamist groups. The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration’s closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized individuals into this country.
While working for the Department of Homeland Security for 13 years, I identified individuals affiliated with large, but less well-known groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and the larger Deobandi movement freely transiting the United States. At the National Targeting Center, one of the premier organizations formed to “connect the dots,” I played a major role in an investigation into this trans-national Islamist network. We created records of individuals, mosques, Islamic Centers and schools across the United States that were involved in this radicalization effort. The Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque in San Bernardino was affiliated with this network and we had identified a member of it in our investigation. Farook frequented that mosque and was well-known to the congregation and mosque leadership.
Another focus of my investigation was the Pakistani women’s Islamist group al-Huda, which counted Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, as a student. While the al-Huda International Welfare Foundation distanced themselves from the actions of their former pupil, Malik’s classmates told the Daily Mail she changed significantly while studying at al-Huda, gradually becoming “more serious and strict.” More ominously, the group’s presence in the U.S. and Canada is not without its other ties to ISIS and terrorism. In 2014, three recent former students at al-Huda’s affiliate school in Canada, aged 15 to 18, left their homes to join the Islamic State in Syria.
We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik’s K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list.
But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?
Worse still, the administration then went back and erased the dots we were diligently connecting. Even as DHS closed my investigation, I knew that data I was looking at could prove significant to future counterterror efforts and tried to prevent the information from being lost to law enforcement. In 2013, I met with the DHS Inspector General in coordination with several members of Congress to attempt to warn the American people’s elected representatives about the threat.
In retaliation, DHS and the Department of Justice subjected me to a series of investigations and adverse actions, including one by that same Inspector General. None of them showed any wrongdoing; they seemed aimed at stopping me from blowing the whistle on this problem. Earlier this year, I was finally able to honorably retire from government and I’m now taking my story to the American people as a warning.
My law enforcement colleagues and I must conduct our work while respecting the rights of those we monitor. But what I witnessed suggests the Obama administration is more concerned with the rights of non-citizens in known Islamist groups than with the safety and security of the American people.
You cannot call yourself libertarian if you want the central government to police people for propriety of thought. That’s the work of the federal-government enmeshed Southern Poverty Law Center, which runs a money racket second only to the race rackets run by Jessie Jackson and Reverend Sharpton. Cultural Marxists that they are, the SPLC has declared the militia led by Marine Jon Ritzheimer a hate group and this group’s defense of farmers and their constitutional right to be free of federal incursion and oppression hateful. The story via Twitter:
“Bernie Sanders’ socialist inclinations do not bother his fans,” blared a Los Angeles Times headline. Just kidding. That’ll be the day a left-liberal ignoramus hypocrite at the LA Times lobs insults at the beloved Bernie’s supporters.
The real title to this fatuous piece is, naturally, “Donald Trump’s fascist inclinations do not bother his fans.” Because the author is ignorant about everything, not least political philosophy and history, he sees nothing comparably vile, detestable and totalitarian about other candidates’ socialist prescriptions and proclivities. You’ll never hear a word from moron media members (David Horsey) to the effect that professing anything remotely socialist ought to be stigmatized as totalitarian.
Of course, no fascism is involved. As at least one legal scholar writing at the New York Times offered, “Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional.” In other words, a president’s plenary power to prevent a possibly dangerous cohort from obtaining immigration status is not fascistic, it’s just not “nice.” In line with the writer’s liberal asininity, the rest of this bloke’s article (David Horsey) consists in appeals to authority, not argument: “Megyn Kelly said, Max Boot said, Paul Ryan said.”
… apart from [the great economist] Ludwig von Mises and his readers, practically no one thinks of Nazi Germany as a socialist state. It is far more common to believe that it represented a form of capitalism, which is what the Communists and all other Marxists have claimed.
The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.
De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.
But what specifically established de facto socialism in Nazi Germany was the introduction of price and wage controls in 1936. These were imposed in response to the inflation of the money supply carried out by the regime from the time of its coming to power in early 1933. The Nazi regime inflated the money supply as the means of financing the vast increase in government spending required by its programs of public works, subsidies, and rearmament. The price and wage controls were imposed in response to the rise in prices that began to result from the inflation.
The effect of the combination of inflation and price and wage controls is shortages, that is, a situation in which the quantities of goods people attempt to buy exceed the quantities available for sale. …
