John Kerry, belatedly, proven right

Qasem Soleimani, deceased commander of the Quds Force (Iran’s amalgam of the CIA and Navy Seals), a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – designated as a terrorist organization last year – has a long history of conducting war against the United States.

He helped plan the attack on our Benghazi diplomatic facilities. He armed dozens of militia groups enabling them to kill hundreds of Americans. He was responsible for the Dec. 27th attack near Kirkuk that killed an American contractor. He organized the recent attack on the American embassy (i.e., American soil) in Baghdad by Quds Force proxy Kata’ib Hezbollah; who raised their flags on its walls.

He had been sanctioned by the previous administration in 2011:
Flashback: Obama Sanctioned Soleimani for Attempted Terror Attack in Washington, DC

“Under Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, Soleimani was to be removed from international sanctions after eight years, though then-Secretary of State John Kerry promised that sanctions against Soleimani would be in place “forever.””

Now, John Kerry is right. If not about the sanctions he was thinking about.

Soleimani was traveling when he died after a very short illness.

Our Maim Scream Media is describing Soleimani as a “revered figure” and a “war hero.” One Progressive wag suggested Soleimani’s demise was like the killing of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Captain America “all in one.”

This person was referring to the sentiments of Iranians, most of whom, au contraire, are glad the asshole is in pieces. Still, I can’t help but consider that promoting such concern over a terrorist is like the Confederate press favorably noting the North’s mourning of Lincoln’s assassination, the British press happily detailing celebrations of Washington’s victories, and the Red Skull posting excerpts of Captain America’s eulogy on his blog.

So, the parallel with the American press is accurate.

Immigration Policy is national security

The Weekly Standard notes that

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who is running for president, was among those who voted against the USA Freedom Act. “Just four days before the terrorist attack in California this week, the USA Freedom Act limited our access to critical information about potential threats,” said Rubio’s campaign in a statement provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “Because too many in Washington have failed to grasp the nature of this enemy, we have less access to intelligence information now than we did just days ago. In the wake of Wednesday’s attack on innocent Americans doing nothing more than going about their daily lives, we must act swiftly to reverse the limitations imposed on these critical intelligence programs. Radical jihadists are trying to kill as many Americans as they can. Our law enforcement and intelligence professionals need access to this information. Failing to give them the tools they need to keep Americans safe is dangerous and irresponsible.”

It’s just a bit odd to connect an attack your policy didn’t detect with the efficacy of that policy in preventing such an attack.

Rubio is better spoken than Josh Earnest, but the Senator sounds just like the Press Secretary when the latter was asked for an example of a mass shooting “more gun control” would have prevented.

Our law enforcement and intelligence professionals had the authority Senator Rubio is complaining they lost before the San Bernadino attack. Were they not using it, was it overwhelmingly vast or just useless? Or all three?

Of course, there was intelligence which could have stopped the attack, but law enforcement and intelligence professionals were prevented from using it by the Obama Administration’s exquisite tribalist sensitivities, not by Senators who voted in favor of the Fourth Amendment.

The male shooter in San Bernadino was aligned with a Mosque known to promote radical Islam, but an investigation that would have raised that flag was shut down by Homeland Security on the request of the State Department’s Office of Civil Rights. Killing this investigation can only be viewed as a public relations exercise in political correctness. No profiling!

The female shooter had publicly indicated she supported ISIS long before she was Federally “vetted” on three separate occasions. Federal policy prevented a search of her Facebook account that would have revealed this. On the admittedly flimsy assumption that support for ISIS is disqualifying, she would have been denied the opportunity to shoot anyone in San Bernadino.

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, according to a former senior department official.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

Since multiple sources for determinative information which would have put these two under surveillance was ignored – because the approbation of the American elite left was more important to the Obama Administration than protecting Americans – we’re supposed to bend the Fourth Amendment to Senator Rubio’s will? Over an incident where the program he’s pushing failed?

Senator Rubio, if he wants to prevent future terror attacks, might consider directing his fire at the people who failed us with their PC attitude to vetting immigrants. Of course, Rubio has demonstrated he shares a bit of that attitude. He seems not to realize that Immigration Policy is the intersection of Foreign Policy with Domestic Policy. Rubio advances the surveillance state in order to maintain the illusion the two sets of policy are unrelated.

His complaint about the USA Freedom Act boils down to this: We need this intrusion into your life to keep you safe from our incompetence in using the obvious intelligence sources we already have.

Related: Quite a long article, but with a good bit of explanatory power about Cruz and Rubio on foreign and immigration policy. And why they’re attacking each other in precisely the way they are. This addresses some very substantive issues.

YMMV, but I do recommend it. It may assist you in a choice we’ll face if we can ever get rid of the blowhard rug-head.

And let’s finish by examining the Weekly Standard’s intro to the piece in the first link:

Thanks to a law recently passed by Congress and signed into law, federal law enforcement are unable to access phone records of the terrorists who killed or injured dozens of people in San Bernardino this week.

Wrong. All that’s necessary is a subpoena to get the needed records. I’m sure they got one almost instantly. I call Marco Rubio shilling on the Standard.

HSA distracted by terabytes of phone meta-data

U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media

Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

American law enforcement officials said they recently discovered those old — and previously unreported — postings as they pieced together the lives of Ms. Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, trying to understand how they pulled off the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country. But immigration officials do not routinely review social media as part of their background checks, and there is a debate inside the Department of Homeland Security over whether it is even appropriate to do so.

Blog about #brettkimberlin day

News about #brettkimberlin
Brett Kimberlin, AKA “The Speedway Bomber,” is a convicted serial bomber who served only 17 years of a 50 year sentence. He was convicted of perjury while still a teenager. Since his release he has been quite active in support of “Progressive” causes. He has also been busy with lawsuits against bloggers who mention his felonious past. That’s why today is his day.

Rather than repeat information given elsewhere, I’m providing some links to help him lower his profile to the depths it deserves: Here, here, here, here and here.

There is much more, but those will give you some feeling for the man.

Update: 5:25PM. These links are well worth a visit: How to kill the First Amendment and Free speech blogburst.

Funding the Speedway Bomber

Conservative Blogs Learn Of Brett Kimberlin …and more about the Tides Foundation, Barbra Streisand and Teresa Heinz Kerry, supporters all.

Follow the links at the link above. It makes Bill Ayers look like an angel. This story should be more widely known. If Kimberlin had tea party connections, you can bet it already would be.

Things you won’t see in the Lansing State Journal

…nor elsewhere in the statist media.

Jimmy Hoffa warming up the crowd for our president yesterday:

We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war.

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

To be clear, the LSJ, et. al. did report on the Detroit rally, they simply fail to mention Hoffa’s “incivlity.”

No one in the MSM seems to recall our president’s comments following the Tucson shootings:

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Of course, we can’t talk in a healing way to people whose motivation is asking the national government to live within its means. That’s crazy talk. As the Vice President has indicated, such people are terrorists – unworthy of civil discourse

Al-taqiyya

Brutally stabbed to death in their home by Islamic fanatics: Udi and Ruth Fogel, 36 and 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4 and baby Hadas, 3 months.

In the land of Hamas this atrocity was celebrated by dancing in the street and the passing out of candy. One can understand a twisted mind. This is a twisted people.

In defense, Hamas invoked Al-taqiyya, Islamist’s standard operating procedure: Hamas Speaks