Category: history

Divided

In the United States right now, there’s a lot of talk about unity. It’s mostly coming from people who consider themselves “conservative” and some people who believe themselves to be “independent” or “moderate.”

It’s important to understand that ideological labels, particularly political ones, are only functional in a society that has shared values. When people are rooted in similar belief systems or political systems, they can have some ideological deviation from one another. This is achievable because any and all parties have a measurable faith in the system in which they are all rooted. The shared Judeo-Christian heritage of people such as John Adams and Patrick Henry afforded the freedom of expression to atheists and deists such as Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. Here were differing ideologies uniting around a concept of nationhood and liberty.

Leftists and anarchists seldom concern themselves with unity. This is because leftists succeed by destroying free systems, or by making such systems smaller. They then build their own totalitarian systems. In some few cases, these totalitarian systems can be benevolent and briefly functional. But they are never free systems that protect personal liberty.

So, when we hear leftists and/or Democrats claim that we need “unity,” generally what they’re truly claiming is that you must think like they do. Your personal ideas and values are irrelevant to their goals.

In a similar, but slightly varied vein, Republicans and conservatives (and even a few moderates) cry that “American values” should unite us. But these same people have historically been wishy-washy about exactly what those “American values” contain. What’s worse is that they remain very foggy about defining them even now.

What has happened in America is that we are not united. Unity is nothing more than a quaint concept, a memory left over from our history when unity was a requirement for national survival . . . and, by extension, personal survival and liberty.

The political labels we discussed earlier are somewhat dangerous because they do offer a division. At their root, however, none of them takes precedence over actual being an American citizen.

During the early 1900s (not coincidentally, around the same time the un-American idea of an income tax arose), the dramatic rise in immigration to America created some social upheaval. Among these changes were the practice of identifying immigrants by their country of origin. Terms like “Italian-American,” “Serbian-American,” “Polish-American,” etc. came into popular use.

President Theodore Roosevelt addressed the inherent danger of such thinking:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

It should be qualified that like many politicians of his day, Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive. He advocated for the income tax and government seizure of private land, both notably un-American ideals. So, maybe his words above are nothing more than political rhetoric.

But, let’s take them at face value.

If he’s right, then putting a word and hyphen in front of “American” to describe oneself is disloyal at its very core. It supplants the adoptive nation – the United States of America – with an immediate precedence and loyalty to one’s prior country. That’s not only foolish, but dangerous. Yet, Teddy Roosevelt, in his single most obvious concession to traditional Americanism, lost the fight. And American immigrants and their families for generations would be “German-Americans” or “Welsh-Americans” or “Scottish-Americans.”

Theodore Roosevelt tried to make a point about the deleterious impact that maintaining national identities outside of a solely American identity would have. Most Americans ignored him . . . and, in part due to that lack of attention, the United States is collapsing.

This bad fish went from frying pan to fire when, during the 1960s through today, we began hyphenating not based upon nationality, but rather upon skin color and ideology.

Almost universally, there is nothing African about black Americans. They did not come from Africa anymore than I came from Scotland. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, certain political interests in the black community manipulated a willing media and political class to begin using the term “African-American.”

This was a social test. The manipulation of the American psyche had begun. Using political identity as a tool for division proved effective during the 20th century immigration waves. And, as the United States began a new millennium, the tool of division would be ratcheted up.

Soon, we had “Gay Americans” incorporating sexual preference into political identity. And political identity is superior to identity as an American. The fact that race and sexual preference are totally dissimilar characteristics means nothing politically. The two were equated by those social elements that could advance themselves through division. And the more divisions that could be created, the more efficiently the United States of America could be fractured.

White Americans are separate from black Americans. The two groups do not share similar experiences. One group is privileged; the other oppressed. To question such a position is to be regarded as racist. But, only if you are white. Because black Americans cannot be racist. And through the historical cudgel of chattel slavery, black Americans claim superiority over Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans.

Hispanic Americans are separate from Asian, black and white Americans. They are superior through their native status to the North American continent. Hispanics are la raza . . . the race.

And Asian-Americans are superior to Hispanic, black and white Americans through their suffering as slave and low-wage labor in the American west and internment camps during World War II (another deviant Roosevelt brainchild).

Gay Americans are separate from heterosexual Americans. The two groups are polar opposite. One group is dominant and fascistic; the other oppressed. To question these conditions is to be regarded as a “homophobe.”

Finally, even as the flames of September 11, 2001 still burned, the hyphenation went to its deepest extreme.

Previously, the hyphens were inserted with nationalities or races or behaviors. These things could be clearly defined by borders or traits or actions. But now, the hyphens went to something more nebulous, an unquantifiable element that has no tangible threads to pull or skin to touch – ideology.

Islamic-Americans are separate from other Americans, They have been oppressed by the prejudice of 9/11. They are persecuted for their religious faith. To question their commitment to the Constitution and the United States of America is, to use the phrase that was created, “Islamophobic.”

One of Orwell’s enduring lessons (1984) was that control of the language is tantamount to controlling thought. And controlling thought is mandatory to controlling a population (Animal Farm).

There are all kinds of Americans. Black. White. Gay. Straight. Hispanic. Asian. Scottish. Polish. Islamic.

But some Americans are more equal than others. And they’re divided, too

Fait accompli

fait ac·com·pli/ˌfed əkämˈplē,ˌfād əkämˈplē/ noun: fait accompli; plural noun: faits accomplis

a thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it.

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The phrase is from the French and probably originated around the mid-19th century. That’s fitting (or, as the French themselves may say, apropos). It was around that time that the government in France changed with the same degree of frequency usually reserved for cheap transistor radios. The monarchy was overthrown. Then the republic. Then Napoleon. Then the next republic. Then the next Napoleon . . .

You get the point.

A tumultuous period of governmental overthrows in 19th century France led to mass executions and economic collapse as politicians sought to establish themselves as “necessary” to the French people’s existence and happiness. The French claimed to be inspired in their motives by the success of the new nation, the United States of America.

The great majority of Americans don’t realize it, but the fait accompli of their lives is the disappearance of their liberty, both personal and political.

They have no option but to accept it. Their parents and grandparents sealed their fate with tolerating income taxes and praising Social Security and accepting dozens of illegitimate, unconstitutional Supreme Court decisions without so much as a whimper.

Liberty is a funny thing. Unless someone is willing to fight for it, it dies. And, sometimes, that death is brutal and slow. Places like Hong Kong and Venezuela take a long time to kill liberty because it was really only a seedling concept in those places.

Fighting for liberty doesn’t always mean death to the individual fighter, although that is possible. And it’s a price someone must be prepared to pay for the successful defense of liberty. Defending liberty, however, can mean something as tempered as speaking at a meeting or writing a letter. These are options Americans have that other nations like Cuba and North Korea will never experience.

But, America is different. It was founded on liberty bedrock. The holes were drilled and the pillars were sunk straight into it. Liberty was so deep a part of the United States that citizens didn’t believe it could ever be separated.

What we have learned is that regardless of the foundation, the inhabitants of a house can destroy it from the inside. And they have. We have.

We – and by “we,” I mean “me” – rolled over passively at the disgusting and ridiculous suggestion that we/I were “killing grandparents” with COVID-19. We donned masks to shield ourselves when we knew full well it was useless. We didn’t question the information being fed to us despite the fact that the FIRST obligation of freedom is to educate yourselves.

Now, we have masked mobs raging the urban streets, unidentifiable through tools the government itself mandated. They murder and kill as indiscriminately as coronavirus ever did, probably more so. Their outrage is as false as the pandemic that was forgotten the moment they threw the first conveniently-placed brick.

As Americans, we had traditionally been united by our mutual love for liberty. That is to say, our desire to remain unoppressed by a government – ANY government – was shared by every American of every political orientation. Democrats wanted collective money with local authority. Republicans wanted local money with collective apathy. Both concepts were untenable and wrong.

So, here we are in 2020. Everyone wanting the government to “do something’ . . . “fix this.”

It can’t. It is the Frankenstein American citizens created. It is only capable of more destruction. We place feeble chains on our monster, yet we ask it to do more for us. And when it breaks those shackles and runs amok in our cities’ streets, we act betrayed or outraged.

Americans disgust me. I disgust me.

The United States of America is dead. Fait accompli.

Fear

I loathe fear.

I consider it the ultimate personification of weakness, selfishness and manipulation. This understanding often places me at odds with other courageous people who are trying to operate out of compassion.

While I understand this approach, I believe that such a perspective is an early step toward moral relativism. “Be merciful to her,” I am told. “He’s just scared,” they say. “We need to understand why they act this way.”

I understand fully.

Recently, I was involved in a business transaction that was potentially worth over $100,000. Our representative, a Christian like myself, was dealing fairly and openly with the other organization.

Suddenly, following a few weeks of negotiation, one of the other company’s principals became insultingly aggressive toward our rep. He attempted to instill fear in my personnel, even unto threatening their livelihood.

My wife, whom God has spiritually revealed to me is one of the most courageous people on Earth, suggested that we pray over how to proceed.

Clearly, unquestionably, God showed me the heart of the other principal and the future of the decisions and said, “Get out. Now.”

God hates fear. He told me to leave the deal because no one should operate in a spirit of fear. This includes conducting business.

Once I was on the leadership team of a small church in Florida. A prominent member of our congregation had been struggling with sin and openly disrupting the fellowship of our church. Our lead pastor asked our associate pastor to bring me in for intercessory prayer over this person, who had agreed to be prayed over.

As we prayed, this person screamed and shrieked and carried on in what was revealed as an effort to scare us.

Internally, I was furious. A holy attempt to reach out to a person’s heart was being turned into a manipulative sideshow intended to frighten.

God knows no fear. At least 350 times in the text of the Bible, He commands His people also to not fear.

Since the night of that intercession, the person who was the object of our prayers continued to wreak havoc among that church, even long after my wife and I had left it.

We in the Western world have abandoned our culture of faith, hope and love.

We have replaced it with one of intellect, arrogance and fear.

China is a Communist nation whose government is overseen by an atheistic oligarchy determined to dominate the world with their ideology.

This statement is not hyperbole. It is truth.

outbreak-coronavirus-world-1024x506px
A Centers for Disease Control electron microscope image of Chinese corona virus molecules (COVID-19).

The advent of the recent corona virus (COVID-19) was initiated, incubated and advanced by the Chinese Communist government. Among the first people in China to tell the truth about what they were seeing with the scientific results of the disease were courageous Christians who had performed the research.

The West has obediently followed operating in this spirit of fear as we’ve panicked, hoarded and isolated.

We worship a cult of media instead of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God of Love – YHWH, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit.

We do not worship the One, True God any longer. I should be perhaps surprised by what I see. But, like Him, I am only profoundly disappointed.

Fear is the enemy trying to separate me from Christ’s work. “Social distancing” is code for the personal loneliness of others.

While responsible, restrained action can be good, all-out cultural withdrawal and economic deterioration is foolish.

Yet, that’s exactly where we are.

And what makes it worse is that we are here at the command of our government. You are not free to choose your actions. You are commanded to comply.

Such actions from a government sound familiarly totalitarian.

If a culture built on forced collectivism and economic control wanted to crush its thriving, free neighbors, an ideal method would be to instill fear into every aspect of that free society – economic, medical, cultural.

That’s exactly what Chinese corona virus has done.

The stock markets have collapsed in one of the largest economic freefalls in Western history. The fear of losing money – also known as greed – took a strongly growing economy and crushed it overnight. Hoarding and panic buying are rampant and fracturing the supply chains.

Medical facilities in Europe are quarantining en masse and isolating the elderly from care in an effort to avoid bringing them into hospitals . . . because of fear of contamination (yet, I’m the one who lacks compassion because I don’t tolerate fear).

We have closed all public gatherings – sports, music, theater – because of fear that being together socially does more damage than being isolated and alone. The very cornerstones of our culture collapse with a meek cough and a wheeze.

We comply without challenge. Our obedience to government supersedes our obedience to Christ.

We tremble without conscience. Our comfortless hearts focused only upon survival and ourselves.

I stand in opposition.

I will allow the Almighty to use me to comfort and heal, both others and myself. I bow to no government – only to Him.

And if I die in such a ministry, I know exactly to Whom I shall return.

Amazing Grace Movie

It’s coming . . .

AGM_bannerC_160x600                                      AGM_bannerA_300x250

. . . and I’m excited.
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*EDIT: Without ruining the movie, I believe it’s fair to say that William Wilberforce was the single most influential element in the elimination of chattel slavery in the Western world. A British aristocrat who was later elected to Parliament, he was dramatically impacted by the great Christian preacher, George Whitefield.

And while Wiberforce was born almost 100 years before the American Civil War that would abolish chattel slavery in the United States, his impact was massive in that cause nonetheless.

It speaks a great deal that the oldest Black private university in the United States is Wilberforce University.

The famous song from which the movie derives its title was written by John Newton, who spent a large portion of his life as the captain of a slave trading ship. A supernatural encounter with God during a storm off the west African coast led him to Christ and a position alongside Wilberforce as a leading British abolitionist. Newton’s story deserves its own movie.

Sadly, however, it falls to us today to continue Wilberforce and Newton’s fight. Groups like iAbolish and Christian Solidarity International continue to reveal the heinous practice of slavery existing throughout the world, mostly among Muslim nations.

War

Yesterday, I made a passing reference to how the next national election in the United States will be defined by a single issue: the War on Terror.

Let’s be clear. When we say the “War on Terror” what we are mainly addressing is the fight against Islamofascism.

To be sure, there are terrorist organizations that have been and continue to be engaged in this war who have nothing to do with Islam (the argument can be made that Islamofascism itself has nothing to do with Islam, but that’s an issue for another day). Still, such ancillary groups are not the intended targets of the war, merely collateral beneficiaries.

There are four active fronts in which the United States is actively fighting the War on Terror.

  • Iraq – This is the most problematic front. Islamofascist groups and their supporting national governments (see Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc.) have been forced to pour men and material resources into Iraq in an effort to thwart a successful free society from rising. Fascism is nullified by freedom. Worse for the Islamofascists, America would be seen as having helped create and support this freedom.
  • Afghanistan – While this remains a success story for the Coalition and the Afghan people, there has been a recent resurgence in Taliban activity in the region, particularly near the mountainous Pakistani border where supplies and men can come and go relatively unchecked. These resources then move surreptitiously throughout the countryside where they can be deployed against American, Romanian, Australian, British, Afghan and other Coalition troops . . . not to mention civilians. This resurgence has been growing in direct proportion to the vocal opposition of the war – particularly as it is being prosecuted in Iraq – by American political leaders and a weak-minded American public.
  • Global – There are many places in the world where Islamofascist militant groups have established strongholds. The current human rights crisis in Darfur is just one example of how these groups terrorize the entire planet. The United States Navy has been actively engaged off the east coast of Africa for over a year in interdiction of weapons and personnel into the region. In southeast Asia and The Phillipines, terror groups have been flushed out and engaged after carrying out public bombings and assassinations.
  • Covert – The United States has been actively utilizing covert action to infiltrate groups, capture suspects and covertly interrogate combatants and sources. Great Britain, Poland, Germany, Romania and a few select other nations have been actively or passively assisting on this front. This front is probably the single most important element to Western success in the War on Terror. Sadly, it is also the most heavily compromised – with the possible exception of Iraq.

Our nation, as we are currently directed, will likely lose the War on Terror. At the very least, we will withdraw to a self-imposed truce which our enemies will not acknowledge nor honor.

The Islamofascist enemy will then use the time that will be afforded to them by a change in American (and British) politcal administration to resupply their cells and other organizations, recruit new and younger zealots (many from Africa and Egypt) and find funding from oil-rich Middle Eastern and southeast Asian economic forces.

At around the point where the new Western political structures are reaching out to engage these elements through ideological or economic tactics, they will strike civilian targets in Western locations with a ferocity which we can barely conceive of now. Literally, their intent will be to make us think 9/11 was a warm-up exercise.

And, in fact, it was.

We have seen the future. We know how the events of the next 10 to 15 years can play out. Our decisions now must be based upon our factual acceptance of this knowledge or upon our wish that things would be different.

There is always a clear difference between prophecy and dream.

Jimmy Carter: Hypocrite

A while ago, I talked about how President Carter has become nothing short of an embarrassment as he tries to jusify his anti-Semitic positions advocated in his new book.

Well, Carter’s dictatorial tactics continue as he arrogantly squelches any discussion of his ideas at a public appearance (full story here).

Granted, Brandeis University is a private university and they’re welcome to set up any rules they desire in order to accomodate a guest – even if that guest is an outrageous opponent of the State of Israel and questions said state’s right to exist.

One has to wonder, however, what level of academic liberty actually exists at Brandeis if a visiting professor (Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law) from a fairly reputable insitution (Harvard University) is denied access to one of their “guests.”

Golden Rule

 

Why Do Good Things for Others?
Brain Study May Offer Clues

Monday, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) – People may not perform selfless acts just for an emotional reward, a new brain study suggests.

Instead, they may do good because they’re acutely tuned into the needs and actions of others.

Scientists say a piece of the brain linked to perceiving others’ intentions shows more activity in unselfish vs. selfish types.

“Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals. And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to treat myself,” explained study author Scott Huettel, an associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.

He and lead researcher Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student at Duke, published their findings in the Jan. 21 online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

For decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have puzzled over the tendency of humans to engage in altruistic acts — defined by Huettel’s group as acts “that intentionally benefit another organism, incur no direct personal benefit, and sometimes bear a personal cost.”

Experts note that altruism doesn’t seem to provide individuals with any survival edge, so how and why did it evolve?

To help solve that puzzle, Heuttel’s team had a group of healthy young adults either engage in a computer game or watch as the computer played the game itself. In some sessions, the computer and participants played for personal gain, while in other sessions, they played for charity.

The researchers used high-tech functional MRI (fMRI) to observe “hot spots” of activity in the participants’ brains as they engaged in these tasks.

Participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire aimed at assessing their personal levels of selfishness or altruism.

Huettel said he was surprised by the study results.

“We went into this experiment with the idea that altruism was really a function of the brain’s reward systems – altruistic people would simply find it more rewarding,” he said.

But instead, a whole other brain region, called the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), kicked into high gear as altruism levels rose.

The pSTC is located near the back of the brain and is not focused on reward. Instead, it focuses on perceiving others’ intentions and actions, Huettel said.

“The general function of this region is that it seems to be associated with perceiving, usually visually, stimuli that seems meaningful to us — for example, something in the environment that might move an object from place to place,” he explained.

This type of perception would have allowed humans’ more primitive ancestors to quickly pick out a potential threat – a crouching lion, for example – from amid a mass of less important stimuli.

It’s much less clear why pSTC activity gets ramped up in the brains of altruistic people, however. “That was really surprising to us,” Huettel said.

The researchers found that pSTC activity was highest when study participants were observing the computer play the game on its own – not when they were playing themselves. “That gets to this idea of agency – watching somebody else play the game,” Huettel said. “You are thinking, ‘Oh, the computer pressed the button – somebody else did that.’ ”

The bottom line, he said, is that altruism may rely on a basic understanding that others have motivations and actions that may be similar to our own.

“It’s not exactly empathy,” he said, but something more primitive. “We think that altruism may have grown out of – at least in part – such a system.”

Another expert said the Duke study raises even more questions than it answers.

“It’s a really interesting study,” said Paul Sanberg, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa. “It would be really interesting, now though, to see if people who had damage to that [brain] area were much less altruistic.”

Huettel said he’s pondered that possibility. “For example, we don’t know if people who are sociopaths, or people who are autistic, might show differences in this region,” he said. “It’s a good question, but we don’t have data that shows anything one way or another. This is just a jumping-off point.”

Sanberg said the study also showed only an association between heightened pSTC activity and altruism, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship. “That needs further study,” he said.

But the Florida neuroscientist said this type of work is helping unravel the mysteries of human consciousness and behavior.

“These functional studies with high-level human behaviors are shedding important light on the contribution of different brain areas,” Sanberg said.

Jimmy Carter – Anti-Semite

Carter advisors quit over Mideast book
By UPI Staff
United Press International
January 12, 2007

ATLANTA (UPI) — Fourteen members of an advisory board at the Carter Center in Atlanta have resigned over former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s controversial Mideast book.

The group, including some who worked with Carter when he was in the White House 30 years ago, said it could “no longer in good conscience continue to serve” because of Carter’s “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” the Wall Street Journal said Thursday.

“It seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy,” the departing members said in a letter to the former president.

The book, published Nov. 14 by Simon & Shuster, has enraged some critics who claim it is historically inaccurate and unfairly harsh toward Israel. The use of the word “apartheid” is a particularly sore point with some.

Those departing were part of the Center’s 200-member board of councilors, an advisory body of community and business leaders and not a governing body.

Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Just the other day, I was just telling someone about how I feel about Jimmy Carter. The former president and I will have eternity in Heaven to work out our differences, because I do believe he is saved.

But while he’s on earth I consider him a traitorous, carpetbagging son-of-a-bitch. I have no doubt his emotions for President Ford were sincere last week. After all, in Carter’s mind it was Ford who lost the ’76 election to himself.

The truth, however, is that the Democrats could have run Satan himself for president in ’76 and probably still won . . . even if the Republicans had drafted Jesus Christ. The anti-Nixon, anti-Republican sentiment in the United States was just that high. And understandably so.

For Carter to think that he acheived anything in a very narrow victory over Gerald Ford is a nauseating precept. Carter’s four-year, disaster-riddled, leadership-devoid term was one of the darkest times in modern American history. Comparing politcal situations, the period that Carter presided over and himself described as a “national malaise” makes our current dark days seem like Mardi Gras.

He truly was one of the worst presidents our nation has ever seen. Possibly the worst.  And with James Buchanan hanging out there as our 15th, that’s really saying something awful about the 39th.

Still, this story deals with his new book. Apparently, Carter continues his anti-Semitic rants in the pages of this new hatchet job on Israel. How any Jewish citizens of the United States vote for candidates from the Democratic Party is completely a mystery to me.

Carter signed over the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government, which led to the presence of American military forces being needed to remove Panamanian warlord and drug dealer Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Carter signed an executive order banning covert assassination as a tool of the United States government – a clear indicator of his lack of understanding of the radical enemy that was growing in the Islamic world (although, on this point, Presidents Ford and Reagan were equally blind).

Do you know who the first prominent victim of Islamofascism was? Robert F. Kennedy. But, did that knowledge pentrate the darkness of Carter’s indoctrinated mentality? Hell, no.

In fact, the only enemy Carter seems to clearly identify these days are American Republicans and Israeli Jews.

Illegals

So, apparently John McCain (R-Ariz) lost it with David Vitter (R-La) this afternoon. McCain accused Vitter of creating “nonsense” by saying that allowing the 11-to-12 million illegal aliens currently in the U.S. to stay “amounts to amnesty”.

I really have my issues with both of them. But, between the two of them, I prefer Vitter – especially on this point (although, in a steel cage match, I have to go even-money on McCain).

Vitter’s point is valid. Let’s enforce the law as it stands before we go trying to improve it. McCain, on the other hand, is eyeing presidential aspirations and knows the power of the Hispanic vote. He’s also pissed because Vitter is raising this issue and doesn’t have hundreds or thousands of well-meaning (albeit ILLEGAL!) Mexicans asking him to help them become Americans.

Hey, sorry, dude. You chose to live in Arizona. You should have been Dave Vitter last fall. Now THAT really sucked.

I don’t know why we can’t focus on the “illegal” part of this whole alien/immigrant debate. I really don’t care how hard they work or how noble their aspirations are. They entered the country by knowingly violating the laws of the country they’re trying to claim as home.

This is not what normal people consider as being off to a good start.

Zacarias Moussaoui

Moussaoui Asks to Withdraw Guilty Plea

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied on the witness stand about being involved in the terrorist plot and wants to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial. The judge turned him down.

 

Moussaoui said he was “extremely surprised” that he was sentenced to life in prison instead of execution and now believes he can get a fair trial from an American jury.

In a motion filed Monday, Moussaoui said he testified on March 27 that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House “even though I knew that was a complete fabrication.”

A federal court jury spared the 37-year-old Frenchman the death penalty last Wednesday. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema gave him six life sentences, to run as two consecutive life terms, in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colo.

The judge also pointed out that, although he could appeal the sentence, he had lost his right to appeal his conviction when he pled guilty in April 2005. “You waived that right,” she said.

On Monday, Brinkema said his request to set aside his guilty plea and go back to trial on the facts of the case was “too late” under federal rules and must be rejected.

Explaining his latest reversal, Moussaoui said in an affidavit:

“I had thought I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11. But after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence … I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors.”

Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers told the court that they filed the motion even though a federal rule “prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after imposition of sentence.” They did so anyway, they said, because of their “problematic relationship with Moussaoui” and the fact that new lawyers have yet to be appointed to replace them.

The motion said Moussaoui told his lawyers Friday that he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea because when he entered it his “understanding of the American legal system was completely flawed.”

In an attached three-page affidavit, Moussaoui cited his new opinion of American jurors and wrote that he now believes he has a fair chance “to prove that I did not have any knowledge of and was not a member of the plot to hijack planes and crash them into buildings on Sept. 11, 2001.”

“I wish to withdraw my guilty plea and ask the court for a new trial to prove my innocence of the Sept. 11 plot,” Moussaoui wrote. “I have never met (lead 9/11 hijacker) Mohammed Atta and, while I may have seen a few of the other hijackers … (in Afghanistan), I never knew them or anything about their operation.”

Explaining his twists and turns, Moussaoui said, “Solitary confinement made me hostile toward everyone, and I began taking extreme positions to fight the system.”

Moussaoui said that, coupled with his inability to get a Muslim lawyer, led him to distrust his lawyers when they told him he could be convicted of being an al-Qaida member but acquitted of involvement in 9/11.

Moussaoui wrote that he pleaded guilty because he mistakenly thought the Supreme Court would immediately review his objection to being denied the opportunity to call captured enemy combatant witnesses to buttress his claim of not being involved in the 9/11 plot.

An appeals court agreed with the government that national security would be at risk if captured operatives like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed testified or were even questioned by Moussaoui’s lawyers. Instead, statements taken from their interrogations were read to the jury.

Shaikh Mohammed’s statements said Moussaoui was never considered for the 9/11 plot, only a later attack.

Moussaoui shocked the courtroom at his sentencing trial when he recanted his four-year-old claim of having nothing to do with 9/11. When he pleaded guilty in 2005, he had explained that he was to hijack a 747 jetliner and fly it into the White House at some later date if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik who is serving a life term for terrorist acts in New York.

But when he testified, Moussaoui claimed that the 747 was to be a fifth plane hijacked on Sept. 11 and that Richard Reid, now imprisoned for a December 2001 shoe bombing attempt aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, was to be on his hijacking team.

That testimony revived the government’s flagging case in the first part of the sentencing trial.

On April 3, the jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty. It apparently accepted prosecutors’ arguments that by withholding information from federal agents who arrested him on Aug. 16, 2001, he bore responsibility for at least one death on 9/11 by preventing the agents from identifying and stopping some hijackers.

Nevertheless, the same jury was unable to unanimously find that Moussaoui, who was in jail on 9/11, deserved execution. Three jurors wrote on the verdict form that they doubted he knew much about the 9/11 plot.

After Moussaoui’s testimony, his lawyers made clear in court that they thought he was lying to achieve martyrdom through execution. Prosecutors even stipulated that the government doubted Moussaoui’s claim that Reid was part of his team. And the judge told lawyers, out of the jury’s hearing, that she doubted his testimony about how much he knew about the 9/11 plot.

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So, allow me to summarize Mr. Moussaoui’s request (can’t really call it an arguement because there is no point of law for him to stand upon in this):

“I hated and distrusted Americans so much that I only wanted someone of my own religion to defend me. If I couldn’t get that, I was going to lie about how deeply involved in the crimes of 9/11 I was so that the Americans would execute me.

“But, their system of justice worked – go figure. So, I’d like another chance to manipulate that system for my benefit . . . and this time I promise I won’t lie.”

Dude, please. Get comfortable, write a book that portrays you as some kind of jihad hero and enjoy the rest of your life with “Bubba the Sissymaker” in a maximum security Federal prison.

One of my favorites – “Solitary confinement made me hostile”. Yo, Z-Dog . . . you only get put in solitary confinement if YOU’RE ALREADY HOSTILE! Goofball.

There is more than enough evidence to prove that this man is a present and real threat to the safety of Americans if he is allowed to ever go free, whether he was involved specifically in 9/11 or not. His guilty plea to what might have been subjective charges is a done deal and was so from the day he was convicted.

He was told that in advance. He knew that throughout the trial. He chose not to act upon that knowledge.

The best thing we can say to Mr. Moussaoui is that we cannot – will not – reverse justice simply because the hatred spawned in your heart by your chosen religion made you stupid.

Now, you and I both know that Mr. Moussaoui would likely have been stupid regardless of what faith he embraced. The great thing about Christ, though, is that He doesn’t care if you’re stupid . . . or mean . . . or arrogant. When you show up with your life and put it in His hands, He renews your mind. He softens your heart. He makes you as a little child.

The truest measure of American justice is that we have mirrored Jesus’ grace and given Mr. Moussaoui a full lifetime to make that decision.