The American Conservative Union (ACU) Launches Redesigned Website

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ACU Launches Redesigned Website
Refreshed look and new features will better serve conservatives nationwide
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Conservative Union (ACU) announced today that its freshly redesigned website went live on the web early this morning.  The new conservative.org  will offer more than just a new look; political leaders, activists and conservatives everywhere will now have easier access to original ACU content with more being added each week.

“For more than forty years, ACU has served as an umbrella organization harnessing the collective strength of conservative organizations fighting for Americans who are concerned with liberty, personal responsibility, traditional values, and strong national defense,” said ACU Chairman Al Cardenas. “The conservative movement worldwide has been reenergized like no other time in history and this new website will enable them to continue advancing conservatism by giving them the tools to highlight the power of conservative philosophy, fight the liberal agenda, and achieve electoral victories at all levels of government.”

Site Tour
About gives an overview of the American Conservative Union, providing insight into “Who We Are,” “What We Do,” and “What We Believe.”
ACU Ratings provides a freshly redesigned page with easier access to national and state level ACU Ratings guides, from 1973 to 2012.
Membership gives users access to information about ACU membership levels, as well as allowing them to easily become Card Carrying Conservatives.
News gives users easy access to ACU press releases and news articles, keeping the conservatives movement in tune with the latest developments across the nation.
Foundation highlights the work of the ACU Foundation, the educational arm of the ACU, including the fundamental philosophies of conservatism.
Conservative Battleline showcases the ACU’s journal of opinion, the “Bold Colors” Conservative Voice in Washington, providing an easily accessible home page and archives of past issues.
ACUPAC lets users easily follow the actions of the ACU Political Action Committee as it works for conservative change in local, state, and federal races nationwide.

More Developments to Come
Conservative.org  is just the first step in the ACU’s complete website re-launch strategy.  In the coming months, the ACU will bring additional components online and deliver even more access to new features and exclusive content.

Founded in 1964, The American Conservative Union is America’s oldest and largest grassroots conservative organization. The ACU has hosted CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in the Nation’s Capital since 1973.  ACU defines, grows and wins for conservatism. To learn more, please visit the ACU’s new website at conservative.org.

Free Speech Fight: Campus Anti-Zionism May Result in Hate Speech Ban

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No part of American society is supposed to value free speech more than our colleges and universities, but the University of California is now rethinking that idea.

University of California President Mark Yudof assembled a team earlier this summer to assess “campus climate” in response to a series of Anti-Zionist protests and demonstrations.

Yudof’s fact-finding team made a series of recommendations after visiting campuses, including banning hate speech.

“When you ban speech, it has a funny habit of boomeranging back at you,” says Will Creeley, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “Instead of pulling these often noxious or repellant ideas out from behind closed doors and debating them in open sunlight, you see these kind of fears silenced. And that kind of silencing builds a kind of repression, hate, fear, paranoia.”

The prospect of a ban on free speech has students up in arms, including members of the Jewish community.

“Jewish students, Muslim students, students of all creeds, faiths, colors, national origins, religions, sexualities can be trusted to defend their own point of view, to speak and enunciate their ideas clearly enough, to have good ideas triumph over ill-founded ones,” Creeley says.

President Yudof has said that he is currently reviewing the recommendations, but understands the first amendment concerns. However, he is still considering the report.

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV’s YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material

 

#NVSen: Desperate, Berkley Tries to Keep Fiction Alive New Ad Another Pathetic Attempt to Muddy Ethics Waters

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(Las Vegas, NV) – A new ad from Shelley Berkley consists of nothing but insinuations and false claims that show just how desperate the Congresswoman is to talk about anything but her ethics problems, not to mention her fourteen-year legislative record.

“This ad is a pathetic, transparent attempt from a fourteen-year Congresswoman desperate to hold onto power. Shelley Berkley, the same Congresswoman who is being investigated by her own Democratic colleagues on the House Ethics Committee, is throwing ethics arrows at Dean Heller? Unfortunately for Shelley Berkley, Dean Heller did nothing wrong. Period. Thousands of dollars in paid advertising cannot erase that fact, no matter how desperately Shelley Berkley wishes it would. Shelley Berkley is nothing but a sad, desperate politician who will do anything to get elected,” said Chandler Smith, Heller for Senate spokeswoman.

 

Take a closer look at the article used as the source for this ad, from the left-leaning Huffington Post.

Please note: This article appeared after the Berkley campaign spent months unsuccessfully pushing the story on reporters nationwide, and then decided to run the ad anyway:

The Huffington Post article states that Dean Heller did not know the CEO of CMKM Diamonds: “Stoecklein also said Heller did not know Casavant.” (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

The Huffington Post article verifies this statement: “According to Stoecklein’s sworn deposition, Heller declined to offer any advice to Casavant, saying ‘the problem may be far greater than the state wanted to get involved in at that point. (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

Jon Ralston noted that “newspapers” are not claiming any deception on the part of the Heller campaign: “‘Newspapers say the Heller campaign is openly trying to deceive the press on this issue.’ Love the chutzpah there. Newspapers say? No, they don’t. One columnist at a ‘newspaper’ says. No one else has.” (Jon Ralston, Morning Flash – August 24, 2012, August 24, 2012)

Regarding the meeting mentioned in the ad, here is what the Heller campaign actually said: “While Dean Heller does not remember this meeting, court transcripts show that Dean Heller did not have a relationship with the individual in question…Senator Heller was never contacted or questioned during the SEC investigation because he had no involvement or relationship with the company.” (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

There is ample evidence showing that Dean Heller would not have known about CMKM Diamonds.  Again, even the left-leaning blog Huffing Post reports: “Though the CMKM probe was big enough that Heller might have known about it, no one pointed to evidence that he actually did.” (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

Mark Faulk, the author of a book dedicated to CMKM Diamonds, himself said: “I would agree that it’s probably overreaching to say there’s evidence that Heller knew about the fraud at CMKM Diamonds.” (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

The Huffington Post also reports that Dean Heller did no wrongdoing: “There is no indication that Heller was aware of the furor around the company. Though Heller had long sought to beef up his office’s role in policing securities, such investigations are generally handled by the state attorney general. Corporate registrations in Nevada also number in the tens of thousands every year, and are handled almost automatically.” (Michael McAuliff, “Dean Heller, Shelley Berkley Spar Over Diamond Scam,” Huffington Post, August 16, 2012)

The “newspapers” referenced in the ad – the single column written by columnist John L. Smith — admitted that the ad was “an attempt to divert attention from her ethics imbroglio…” (John L. Smith, Berkley’s campaign ad raises a $64 million question, August 14, 2012)

 

Here’s what others are saying about this issue:

Jon Ralston called the attempt to connect Dean Heller with scandal on this issue “ridiculous,” saying: “As usual, a ‘newspaper’ columnist puts himself above the ‘political media’ to do the bidding of the Berkley campaign by drawing a still-tenuous connection between Sen. Dean Heller and a fraudster. Really?…How clever. How droll. How…ridiculous. I am shocked that the Berkley campaign sent the column out to its email list this morning. (Jon Ralston, “Morning Flash – August 14, 2012,” August 14, 2012)

Las Vegas Sun labeled the ad “laughable” (David McGrath Schwartz, Line of Attack: Did Dean Heller let a diamond scam happen under his watch? Las Vegas Sun, August 12, 2012)

Las-Vegas Review-Journal reports the ad is a “reach and a diversion”  (Laura Myers, Berkley ad hits Heller on stock scandal, Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 10, 2012)

Channel 8 stated the ad ranges from “misleading to false” (Steve Kanigher, Fact Check: Berkley Ad Ties Heller to Alleged Scam, Channel 8 News Now, August 10, 2012)

President Obama is AWOL on the Biggest Issue of All

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If anyone really thinks the election is going to be decided on issues regarding Todd  Akin or Romney’s tax returns then they’re missing what’s hiding in plain sight.  Twenty years ago, Bill Clinton’s campaign team coined the phrase “The Economy, Stupid.” Far and away, that’s the still the biggest issue of all and Obama is completely AWOL on it.  This week’s jobless numbers and CBO report are only the latest confirmation.

By L. Brent Bozell III

Thursday’s jobless numbers and Wednesday’s CBO report are beyond ominous and present a direct challenge to the rationale for Barack Obama’s presidency.

Before President Obama took office, he vilified President Bush for adding $4 trillion to our nation’s debt as “unpatriotic.” If Bush’s spending over the course of two terms was “unpatriotic,” Obama adding nearly $5.3 trillion to the national debt in half this time is not only “unpatriotic,” it’s also hypocritical. It displays an utter disregard for financial health of this country.

Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by 2012, but instead has increased spending so rapidly that our nation has surpassed the $16 trillion threshold. He and his ObamaClones in the Senate continue to call for even more liberal deficit spending.

Senate Democrats have enabled Obama by refusing to produce a budget for over three years. This is a complete dereliction of duty on the part of Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Senate is mandated to produce a budget but has failed to do so for almost the entire time Obama has been in office.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia expressed rare honesty in saying he was at a loss to explain why his fellow Democrats have gone along with this. The former governor even said if he had done this while governor of his state, he would’ve been impeached.

It’s an absolute disgrace that the last time the Senate passed a budget was on April 29, 2009. Since this resolution—which aimed to cut the deficit by two-thirds by 2014—the deficit has increased by $4.8 trillion.

Obama and his enablers in the Senate refuse to do their jobs and idly stand by as our nation teeters on the fiscal cliff. The American people not only deserve to know how the politicians in Washington are spending their tax dollars, they also deserve representatives who do the job they were elected to do.

Do we need more evidence that Obama doesn’t take fiscal responsibility seriously? His last budget proposal was shot down by both Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress: 414-0 in the House of Representatives and 99-0 in the Senate. When was the last time—if ever—you had a national, unanimous repudiation of this magnitude?

Both Obama and Reid must be held accountable for failing to do their jobs. The same goes for other enablers in the Senate such as Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) – all of whom are up for re-election this year.

Additionally, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is running for the Senate in Virginia, and he has continually supported all of Obama’s policies which have driven our country deeper in debt. Mr. Kaine needs to answer for this if he wants the voters to support him. He is not exempt.

Obama declared that Stimulus One (a trillion dollars of taxpayer money) would get the economy back on track. It was a miserable failure. When that didn’t work, he threw more tax dollars at more failed projects in Stimulus Two.

Back in February 2009, Obama said that as president he would be held accountable. He said that if the economy didn’t recover in three years, his presidency would be a “one-term proposition.”

Come November, the American people will remember Obama’s proclamation. They will also remember that this administration has engaged in the most reckless deficit spending in history which has grown the federal debt over $16 trillion.

At some point, the public’s patience will wear out unless Obama changes his spending ways and both he and his party begin to take this problem seriously. Don’t bet on this. You’ll be as successful as Obama and the Democrats have been lately.

_____________________________________________________________

Originally Published August 23, 2012 @ FoxNews.com

Brent Bozell is chairman and CEO of ForAmerica.org, the largest online conservative army in America with 2.5 million supporters.

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NEW POLL of 18-29: Millennials and 2012 Elections

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 Generation Opportunity Announces New National Poll Results of 18 to 29 Year Olds

89 Percent of Young Adults Say the Poor Economy Impacts Daily Life, 84 Percent Say Key Life Decisions in Jeopardy

Only 38 percent say today’s leaders represent their interests, while 76 percent intend to vote in the presidential election

Washington, DC – (8/22/12) – Generation Opportunity, the largest non-profit, non-partisan organization in America engaging and mobilizing young Americans (18-29 years old) on the important economic issues facing the nation, released new polling data today on Millennials as the 2012 presidential election nears. Since its launch in June of 2011, Generation Opportunity has amassed a following of 4 million fans on Facebook and is actively organizing Millennials across the country through grassroots tactics, voter registration, and voter turnout efforts.

“These numbers should put elected leaders on notice. What you see is a very pointed story of the impact the failed policies coming out of the White House over the course of the last three years are having on the daily lives and the long-term plans of young Americans. Frankly, it is not a pretty picture – millions of young Americans are paying the price, in a very personal way, for failed leadership and failed policies,” stated Paul T. Conway, president of Generation Opportunity and former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor. “Millennials are savvy. They know national policies have personal impact – they feel it first-hand. So it is no surprise that so few believe their interests are being represented in Washington, and it is no surprise that they plan to make their voices heard this November.”

For Generation Opportunity, the polling company, inc./WomanTrend, conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,003 American adults ages 18-29 between July 27 and July 31, 2012. This study has a ±3.1% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval, and sampling quotas were used to ensure the survey was representative of the larger 18-29 year old nationwide population with regard to race, region, and gender.

[list type="arrow"] [li]

  • 89% of young people ages 18-29 say the current state of the economy is impacting their day-to-day lives (Accepted multiple responses) (Randomized):
  • 51% reduced their entertainment budget;
  • 43% reduced their grocery/food budget;
  • 43% cut back on gifts for friends and family;
  • 40% skipped a vacation;
  • 38% driven less;
  • 36% taken active steps to reduce home energy costs;
  • 32% tried to find an additional job;
  • 27% sold personal items or property (cars, electronic appliances, or other possessions);
  • 26% changed their living situation (moved in with family, taken extra roommates, downgraded apartment or home);
  • 17% skipped a wedding, family reunion, or other significant social event;
  • 1% other;
  • 8% none of the above (accepted only this response);
  • 3% do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
  • 84% of young people ages 18-29 had planned to but now might delay or not make at all a major life change or move forward on a major purchase due to the current state of the economy (Accepted multiple responses) (Randomized):
  • 38% – Buy their own place;
  • 32% – Go back to school/getting more education or training;
  • 31% – Start a family;
  • 27% – Change jobs/cities;
  • 26% – Pay off student loans or other debt;
  • 25% – Save for retirement;
  • 23% – Get married;
  • 12% – None of the above (accepted only this response);
  • 4% – Do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
  • 83% of young people ages 18-29 say that current economic conditions have impacted their summer plans (Accepted multiple responses) (Randomized):
  • 53% cut back on entertainment and non-essential social spending like nice meals, spa treatments, bars, and going to the movies;
  • 34% had to skip taking a vacation here in the United States;
  • 25% will spend the summer looking for a job until one opens up;
  • 24% had to work all summer without any vacations;
  • 24% will spend the summer working a job they do not like just to make ends meet;
  • 19% had to skip taking a vacation abroad to another country;
  • 1% other, specified;
  • 14% none of the above (accepted only this response);
  • 3% do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
  • 64% of young people ages 18-29 believe the availability of more quality, full-time jobs upon graduation is more important than lower student loan interest rates.
  • 76% believe that the lack of job opportunities is shrinking the American middle class.
  • Only 38% believe that today’s political leaders reflect the interests of young Americans.
  • 76% of Millennials plan to vote in the election for President this year.

[/li] [/list]

 

Earlier this month, Generation Opportunity released the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) unemployment data for Millennials for July 2012:

[list type="arrow"] [li]

  • The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds specifically for July 2012 is 12.7 percent (NSA).
  • The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for July 2012 is 22.3 percent (NSA); the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for July 2012 is 14.0 percent (NSA); and the youth unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for July 2012 is 12.6 percent (NSA).
  • The declining labor participation rate has created an additional 1.715 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.
  • If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.7 percent (NSA).

[/li] [/list]

 

ABOUT GENERATION OPPORTUNITY

Generation Opportunity operates on a strategy that combines advanced social media tactics with proven field tactics to reach Americans 18-29. The organization’s social media platforms – “Being American by GO,” “The Constitution by GO,” “Gas Prices Are Too Damn High,” “Lower Taxes by GO,” “Keep Texas Awesome,” “Jersey Proud,” and “We Like Small Government” on Facebook – have amassed a total fan base of more than 4 million. The pages post links to relevant articles and reports from sources ranging from the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO), to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Brookings Institution, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and The Heritage Foundation.

#NVSen: Dean Heller Ups Attack on Shelley Berkley in Henderson Chamber Address

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From the Henderson Press:

Incumbent senator claims business-friendly platform in front of partisan crowd

Republican Sen. Dean Heller continued verbal jabs at Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley in a luncheon co-sponsored by the Henderson and North Las Vegas chambers of commerce, Aug. 15.

The same day, Heller’s campaign released a new TV spot criticizing the congresswoman for “a history of
public corruption.”

Heller is in a contentious battle with Berkley for the seat he was appointed to in 2011 by Gov. Brian Sandoval, following the resignation of John Ensign in the wake of an ethics violations probe.

“Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt, if we do nothing,” Heller told a largely partisan chamber gathering at downtown Las Vegas’ Plaza Hotel. “So the question is, ‘Do you want to save it? Preserve it? Or do you want it to
go bankrupt?’

Israel Faces the Cynical World

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By Caroline Glick
This week a German doctor in Bavaria filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg.
Rabbi Goldberg’s “crime”? He performs ritual circumcisions on Jewish male infants in accordance with Jewish law.
The doctor’s complaint came shortly after a ruling by a court in Cologne outlawing the practice of male circumcision.
The Austrians and the Swiss also took the ruling to heart and have banned infant male circumcision in several hospitals in Switzerland as well as in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. Denmark and Scandinavian governments are also considering limiting the practice of circumcision which has constituted one of the foundational rituals of Judaism for four thousand years.
Meanwhile, in Norway Dr. Anne Lindboe has come up with the perfect way out of the artificial crisis. Lindboe serves a Norway’s ombudsman for children’s rights. And she proposes that we Jews just change our religion to satisfy anti-Jewish sensitivities. She suggests we replace circumcision with “a symbolic, nonsurgical ritual.”
It’s worth mentioning that circumcision isn’t the only Jewish ritual these enlightened Europeans find objectionable. Sweden, Norway and Switzerland have already banned kosher slaughter.
Attacking circumcision isn’t just a European fetish. The urge to curb Jewish religious freedom has reached the US as well. Last year San Francisco’s Jewish Community Relations Council had to sue the city to strike a measure from last November’s ballot that would have banned circumcision if passed. The measure’s sponsor gathered the requisite 12,000 signatures to enter the proposition on the ballot. Circumcising males under the age of 18 would have been classified as a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Sponsors of the measure distributed anti-Semitic materials depicting rabbis performing circumcisions as villains.
The people involved in banning or attempting to ban circumcision are not on the political fringe of their societies. They are part of a leftist establishment. They are doctors and lawyers, judges and politicians. This doesn’t mean that all their fellow leftists are anti-Semites. But it does mean the political Left in the Western world feels comfortable keeping company with anti-Semites.
This state of affairs is even more striking in international affairs than in domestic politics. On the international level the Left’s readiness to rub elbows with anti-Semites has reached critical levels.
While the Europeans have long been happy to cater to the anti-Semitic whims of the Islamic world, the escalation of the West’s willingness to accept anti-Semitism as a governing axiom in international affairs is nowhere more apparent than in the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
And the American Left’s willingness – particularly the American Jewish Left’s willingness – to cover up the administration’s collusion with anti- Semitic regimes at Israel’s expense is higher today than ever before.
A clear-cut example of both the Obama administration’s willingness to adhere to anti- Semitic policies of anti-Semitic governments and the Left’s willingness to defend this bigoted behavior is the Obama administration’s decision not to invite Israel to participate in its new Global Counterterrorism Forum.
The GCTF was founded with the stated aim of fostering international cooperation in fighting terrorism. But for the Obama administration, it was more important to make Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who supports the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, feel comfortable, than it was to invite Israel to participate.
Not only did the US exclude Israel, at the GCTF’s meeting last month in Spain, Maria Otero, the State Department’s under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, seemed to embrace the Muslim world’s obscene claim that Israelis are not victims of terrorism because terrorism against Israel isn’t terrorism.
In her speech, titled “Victims of Terrorism,” Otero spoke of terror victims in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, India and the US. But she made no mention of Israeli terror victims.
Rather than criticize the administration for its decision to appease bigots at the expense of their victim, American Jewish leftists have defended the administration. Writing in The Atlantic, Zvika Kreiger, senior vice president of the far-left S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, wrote that allowing the Jewish state entry to the GCTF parley would have “undermined the whole endeavor.”
Kreiger sympathetically quoted a State Department official who explained that actually, by ostracizing Israel the administration was helping Israel.
The source “reasoned the progress made by the organization would ultimately better serve Israel’s interests (not to mention those of the United States) than would the symbolic benefits of including it in a group that likely wouldn’t accomplish anything. [Moreover]… once the organization was up and running, and its agenda was established, they could find ways to include Israel that would not be disruptive.”
So despite the fact that Israel is a major target of terrorism, and despite the fact that many of the states the US invited to its forum condone terrorism against Israel and support terrorist groups that murder Israeli Jews, Israel is better off being excluded, because the anti-Jewish governments invited by the Obama administration will somehow totally change their perspective on anti-Jewish terrorism as long as they don’t have to suffer the irritation of sitting in the same room as real-live representatives of the Jewish state.
THE CYNICISM of the State Department official’s statement to Kreiger is only outpaced by Kreiger’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that cynicism.
Kreiger’s behavior makes sense. If he acknowledges the bigoted nature of the Obama administration’s policies he will have to stop defending them.
To a degree, Kreiger’s willingness to defend and justify the Obama administration’s anti-Israel behavior parallels the behavior of Israelis who argue against Israel unilaterally striking Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to delay the Iranian regime’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Since 2003, when Iran’s nuclear weapons program was first revealed to the world community, Iran’s leaders have succeeded in convincing world leaders that Israel is No. 1 on their target list. And so, the international debate about what a nuclear-armed Iran will mean for the world has always followed the Iranians’ lead and centered on the dangers it would pose to Israel.
Israel’s leaders from then-prime minister Ariel Sharon down to the last governmental spokesman have maintained that Iran’s nuclear program threatens the entire Free World. Sharon – like his leftist disciples today – claimed that given the threat Iran’s nuclear program constitutes for global security, Israel has no reason to lead the global fight to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Indeed, Israeli leadership of the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program would cause some countries to do nothing because they hate Israel even more than they fear Iran.
Like his followers today, Sharon insisted that the US, as the leader of the Free World, is responsible for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And they are right. Iran’s nuclear program does threaten global security and Iran’s nuclear program does threaten the US specifically. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei just ordered his troops to carry out terror attacks against the US in retaliation for US moves to overthrow Iran’s Syrian puppet Bashar Assad. Iran was the principle sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and remains the principle supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It’s not that Israel’s leaders belittle the threat Iran’s nuclear weapons program constitutes for Israel. Across the spectrum on the Iran debate in Israel – from former Mossad director Meir Dagan and President Shimon Peres on the Left to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the Right – everyone agrees that in light of the Iranian regime’s religious fanaticism and its millenarian belief that Armageddon will hearken the coming of the Shi’ite messiah, Iran cannot be trusted not to use nuclear weapons against Israel.
Everyone admits that given Iran’s open sponsorship of terrorism, it is a certainty that terror groups would use the Iranian nuclear umbrella to massively expand their terrorist war against Israel.
Just as Dagan, Peres and their associates share Netanyahu’s assessment of the threat Iran’s nuclear program poses for Israel, Netanyahu agrees with their assessment that Israel’s options for contending militarily with Iran’s nuclear program are limited and imperfect. No one argues that Israel has a magic bullet to destroy Iran’s nuclear project.
Netanyahu and Barak have repeatedly warned that Israel has no perfect strike option. They have also warned that a response from Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon to an Israeli strike will likely be harsh and deadly. All they say is that it is better than the alternative of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.
The doves agree with Netanyahu that a limited Israeli strike is better than the alternative of a nuclear-armed Iran. They differ with Netanyahu on only one issue: their assessment of the US’s willingness to use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Voicing the doves’ assessment of the Obama administration and Europe, this week former commander of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Zeevi Farkash told NBC news, “I think Western leaders realize a nuclear Iran is the No. 1 challenge facing the world.”
Unfortunately, Farkash is wrong. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made this point earlier this week in an interview from Afghanistan. There Dempsey said frankly, “Israel sees the Iranian threat more seriously than the US sees it, because a nuclear Iran poses a threat to Israel’s very existence.”
In other words, Dempsey told us that Iran’s cynical packaging of its nuclear program as an anti-Israel initiative has worked. The Americans – and the Europeans – believe that Iran’s nuclear program is Israel’s problem to deal with. The Israelis are right that as the leader of the Free World it is the US’s responsibility to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Dempsey’s statement shows, the US is not interested in fulfilling its responsibility.
Like the Europeans, the Americans will only act when Iran forces them to do so. And that means they will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing the bomb. They will only move when Tehran has already crossed Israel off the top of its target list.
Israeli opponents of an Israeli strike against Iran don’t want to believe that Americans are capable of such cynicism. They would like to believe that the only government capable of behaving cynically is their own. They want to believe that the US – with its vastly superior military capabilities to destroy Iran’s nuclear program – will do the right thing and not leave it to Israel – with its limited means – to take care of the problem for a cynical world.
But just as Kreiger’s defense of the Obama administration’s courtship of anti-Semites at Israel’s expense crosses the line separating naivete from willful, bigotry-enabling blindness, so Peres, Dagan and their colleagues cross the line. And it is not mere bigotry they are enabling.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Heritage: Media “Fact Checkers” Promote Obama’s Gutting of Welfare Reform

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Originally posted at The Foundry by Amy Payne

Since Heritage’s Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley broke the story on July 12 that the Obama Administration had gutted the work requirements from the 1996 welfare reform law, the Administration has denied it. In recent weeks, media “fact checks” have popped up all over declaring The Heritage Foundation’s scoop “False.”

Major media—most recently, CNN—have carried water for President Obama’s defense of rewriting the welfare reform law. Since these supposed government watchdogs are playing the lapdog, Heritage will continue to provide the facts and do the investigative reporting.

Rector has already debunked the Administration’s claims that it did not gut welfare reform and that Republican governors tried to do the same thing in 2005. Now, he is taking apart the Administration’s defense of its new waiver policy piece-by-piece in a new series of papers.

The Claim: New Rules Will Still Increase Work

CNN’s “fact checkers” claim that “In some small way, the waivers might change precisely how work is calculated but the essential goal of pushing welfare recipients to work—something both Democrats and Republicans agreed to in the 1990s—remains the same.”

This is exactly Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s defense: that waiving welfare’s work requirements for states under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program will still require states to get welfare recipients into jobs. She maintains that the states will have to “commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state’s past performance.”

The Facts: Bogus Measures of Success

Rector meets this claim head-on in his new paper, “Ending Work for Welfare: Bogus Measures of Success.”

This standard is vague, first of all, since states do not actually need to fulfill it but merely “demonstrate clear progress toward that goal no later than one year” after they are exempted from the old TANF work standards. Nonetheless, at first glance, this goal looks fairly impressive.

President Obama’s HHS will exempt states from the federal work requirements if they increase by 20 percent the number of TANF cases that lose eligibility due to increases in earnings, a measure called “employment exits.” There are four reasons why a 20 percent increase in the number of employment exits, although it sounds impressive, is a very weak or counterproductive measure of success in welfare reform.

The four reasons this measure is weak, Rector says:

1. Employment exits will increase automatically when the economy recovers. Virtually every state in the U.S. will experience an increase in its employment exits by 20 percent “compared to the state’s past performance” as the economy moves from recession toward higher employment.

2. States could meet the target simply with better record keeping. A large number of TANF recipients leave the program each month for unknown or unspecified reasons. It seems likely that many states could meet the 20 percent increase target simply by collecting or reporting more accurate data on their current exits.

3. A 20 percent increase in exits is insignificant. An increase in employment exits of 20 percent is actually a very small change. The average state has a monthly TANF caseload of around 40,000 families and an annual caseload of perhaps 80,000. Each state has around 600 employment exits from TANF each month, or 1.5 percent of monthly caseload. According to Obama’s new welfare system, the state can be fully exempt from the work standards written in the TANF law if it raises its employment exits from 600 per month to 720. Why is it reasonable, fair, or wise to exempt the remaining 39,000 welfare households from workfare participation just because an extra 120 have left the rolls?

4. More employment exits indicate a larger caseload. The number of employment exits generally rises when the size of the welfare caseload rises, and it falls when the caseload falls. This is due to routine caseload turnover.

Rector concludes that “The number of employment exits is thus meaningless as a method for assessing the TANF program. Employment exits is a sham measure of success that creates the impression that welfare dependence is being reduced when, in reality, the number of persons on welfare is constant or rising.”

Under the Administration’s new measurement, the old welfare program would have been deemed a success, while the extremely successful 1996 reforms would have looked like a failure.

With an Administration that routinely creates new laws by executive order—disregarding the people’s elected representatives—accountability is in short supply. Heritage legal experts Todd Gaziano, Robert Alt, and Andrew Grossman have detailed why the Administration’s actions are illegal. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has no authority to grant the type of waivers it is creating. Yet the media haven’t done a “legality check” on the Obama Administration.

Stay tuned for the next installment in Rector’s continuing series next week.

Read the first installment: Ending Work for Welfare: Bogus Measures of Success