THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis

Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.. Editor



Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic, Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues

MOST RECENT ARTICLES


EPA ACCUSED OF ENGAGING IN A MASSIVE POWER GRAB       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 295, December 26, 2011
MINIMAL BENEFITS, EXTENSIVE HARM:
EPA Mercury Rules for Electricity Generating Units
Are Based on False Science & Pseudo-Economics.
By Craig Rucker

Environmental Protection Agency just released its draconian new air quality standards for electricity power plants. It did so despite extensive and bipartisan concern that the rules will disrupt electricity reliability and send costs skyrocketing, in the face of serious criticism that the agency had doctored and falsified much of the data and analyses on which its environmental and health benefit claims are based, and despite the near certainty that the rules will bring few or no additional benefits, but will impose serious harm on human health and welfare.

Many commentators are again wading into the fray over these rules, exposing exactly how EPA has grossly and deliberately misrepresented the health risks and benefits involved. The following commentary addresses several important aspects of what many say is an expensive fraud on the American people.

EPA is accused of engaging in a massive power grab that threatens to give the agency nearly unfettered power over the energy we need to support our livelihoods and living standards.

Full Story


EXISTENCE OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM CALLED INTO QUESTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 294, December 23, 2011
WILLFUL BLINDNESS TOWARD ISLAMIST TERRORISTS
AT UCLA A DECADE AFTER 9-11
By Judith Greblya

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted a roundtable discussion last month titled, "After a Decade of the 'War on Terror': The Middle East, Human Rights, and American Muslims." Sponsored by the UCLA School of Law Critical Race Studies Program, the event featured UCLA Law Professor Asli Bali, University of California, Santa Barbara Sociology Professor Lisa Hajjar, and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Southern California attorney Ahilan Arulanantham. The audience of approximately twenty people was comprised mostly of law and graduate students, along with a few members of the community.

According to the introduction, the speakers were to "examine this decade on the War on Terror in the broader context of the international community," but the two-hour event quickly descended into a forum for America-bashing. All three speakers called the existence of Islamic terrorism into question and, what's worse, behaved as if the attacks of September 11, 2001 never occurred.

Full Story


IRAN AS A MAJOR FACTOR IN THE 2012 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 293, December 20, 2011
TEHRAN HOLDS OBAMA RE-ELECTION WILD CARD
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The formal end of the U.S. war in Iraq on December 15, 2011, enhanced neighboring Iran as a major, unpredictable factor in the U.S. presidential election of 2012.

Ayatollah Khamene'i and President Obama can both make trouble for the other. If they do, Iran and Iraq would play outsized roles in the U.S. presidential contest, continuing in their unique thirty-year role as the tar babies of American politics.

Full Story


BUTTING HEADS WITH ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN DURBAN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 292, December 19, 2011
THOU SHALT NOT QUESTION UN "EXPERTS":
Inconvenient Questions Will Not Be Tolerated
in Durban or at Other Climate Crisis Conferences
By Dr. Kelvin Kemm

British Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley parachuted with me into Durban, South Africa, to challenge United Nations climate crisis claims, attracting numerous journalists and onlookers. A 20-foot banner across our press conference table gave the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow further opportunities to present realistic perspectives on the science and economics of climate change.

CFACT played by the rules, obtained the necessary permits beforehand, and ensured that its message was heard throughout the Seventeenth Annual Climate Conference (COP-17). Greenpeace, on the other hand, got no permits before staging an Occupy Durban protest in the hallway outside the plenary session – and got kicked out of the conference.

Full Story


FARMERS FACING THEIR GREATEST CHALLENGE IN HISTORY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 291, December 18, 2011
A NEW STRATEGY TO FEED THE WORLD
By Dennis T. Avery

Can we successfully grow more plants per acre as a future strategy for increasing our crop yields and food production? Sixty thousand corn plants per acre — twice Iowa’s current average — could be one route to higher productivity. The world will need twice as much food in 2050, and we’ll need to triple the crop yields on the best land. Doubling would be a very good start.

Otherwise, we’ll see one of two bad things: Either lots of people will starve, or we’ll plow down all the wildlife for low-yield crops. The stakes are high. But the basic ways to raise yields over the past half-century — cross-breeding plants, irrigation, pesticides, and lots of nitrogen fertilizer — are already widely used. Another three-fold yield increase will be tough.

Full Story


CHRISTIANITY, WESTERN CULTURE, & THE THREAT OF ISLAM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 290, December 18, 2011
CHRISTIANITY'S TRIUMPH
By Alan Caruba

To ignore the rise of Christianity is to be ignorant of an essential element of Western history. Likewise, to ignore the threat of Islam, whose beginning is usually dated around 622 CE and which exploded following Mohammad’s death in 632 CE, is to ignore the greatest threat to civilization, past and present. Less a religion than a battle plan for world conquest, Islam preaches death to all “unbelievers.” Take heed!

Full Story


U.S. ENERGY POLICY & OUR CURRENT ECONOMIC SITUATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 289, December 15, 2011
AMERICAN ENERGY CAN JUMP-START U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY:
Tapping Abundant U.S. Energy Deposits
Would Create Jobs & Restore Prosperity
By Paul K. Driessen

Our nation’s economic growth may finish an anemic 2% on the last day of this year. More than 14 million Americans are unemployed, excluding the nearly nine million who have been forced to take part-time jobs, or the 2.5 million who’ve given up on finding work.

Part of the solution to this unacceptable, demoralizing, and unnecessary situation is literally right under our feet -- the vast energy bounties which America is blessed with, but which our politicians and regulators have kept locked up, making them unavailable to us.

Full Story


FOLLY OF OBAMA'S "GREEN ENERGY" PUBLIC POLICY AGENDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 288, December 14, 2011
OBAMA'S STRANGLEHOLD ON THE U.S.A. & ITS ECONOMY
By Christopher G. Adamo

At least until January, 2013 (assuming the people have had their eyes opened since the elections of 2008), America can expect to struggle and travail against a noxious opponent within its own government which continually thwarts them at every turn, and always under some noble sounding premise. After that, it will face one of two starkly diverging fates, depending on who is at the helm. Under the stewardship of a true, unwavering Conservative possessing the courage to stay on track, it might rebound significantly. The ponderous engine of modern technology, once it is lifted from the slough of overregulation and taxation, could come roaring back to life.

Or, if President Barack Obama retains his place, the remaining gasping breaths of a struggling nation will be summarily snuffed out. In sharp contrast to past presidential contests, the pretense of middle ground no longer exists.

Full Story


BIOTECHNOLOGY & HIGH-YIELD CONSERVATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 287, December 12, 2011
THE WASHINGTON POST CONVERTS TO CONSERVATION?
By Dennis T. Avery

For 25 years, the Washington Post has praised organic foods, while I warned that low-yield organic farming posed a threat to the world’s wildlife. I estimated that Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution not only saved billions of people from starvation, but, at the same time, saved seven million square miles of wildlife habitat that would otherwise have been plowed down for more low-yielding crops. Seven million square miles is the land area of South America. That’s “high-yield conservation.”

Full Story


THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY & AMERICAN ECONOMIC RECOVERY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 286, December 10, 2011
REAGANOMICS & THE AMERICAN CHARACTER
By Dr. William Philip "Phil" Gramm

What was the American economy like in the decade prior to the Reagan Presidency? The 1970s, for a myriad of reasons, were not a happy time. They featured a combination of stagnation and inflation, which came to be called “stagflation.” The inflation rate peaked at just over 13 percent, and prime interest rates rose as high as 21-and-a-half percent. Although President Jimmy Carter did not use the exact words, a malaise had certainly set in among Americans. Many wondered whether our nation’s time had passed. A Time magazine headline read, “Is the Joyride Over?” Did we really need, as Jimmy Carter told us, to learn to live on less?

Full Story


A POLITICAL & MORAL VICTORY FOR U.S. SENATE REPUBLICANS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 285, December 9, 2011
HALLIGAN NOMINATION DEBACLE EXEMPLIFIES
AMERICA'S PRECARIOUS CROSSROADS
By Christopher G. Adamo

Finally, Senate Republicans have achieved a political and moral victory. Caitlin Halligan, a Far-Left judicial activist and Obama nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was soundly rejected in a fifty-four to forty-five Senate vote on Tuesday, December 8, 2011. Though Liberalism continues to ravage the nation, at least one extra-constitutionalist militant Leftist will not be spearheading the movement by exceeding and abusing the authority vested in the U.S. federal court system.

Full Story


ARABISM, ISLAMISM, & U.S. INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 284, December 8, 2011
THE "ANGRY ARAB" GOES MAD
By Cinnamon Stillwell & Rima Greene

As'ad AbuKhalil, a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus, spoke last month at a day-long "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley -- the "teach-in" titled, "Building Solidarity with the Arab Spring."

AbuKhalil, author of the Angry Arab blog, was introduced as "the most influential Arab blogger in English and Arabic." Wasting no time living up to his self-caricature, he presented the demise of Israel as his life's work, referred repeatedly to the "usurping Zionist entity," and characterized the U.S.A. as the source of all that ails the Arab world.

Whether glorifying violence, exalting in the death and misery of Israelis, or blaming the U.S.A. for the ills of the Arab world, AbuKhalil lived up to his moniker as an "angry Arab." Presumably, he brings the same radicalism to the classroom, which is a frightening prospect for his students. When anger replaces reason, there's little hope for an education, no matter how many "teach-ins" universities offer.

Full Story


THE ECONOMY -- WHAT HAS GONE SO TERRIBLY WRONG & WHY?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 283, December 7, 2011
LOOKING TO THE DOLLAR, GOLD, & "MUTTI" TO SAVE THE WORLD
By Alan Caruba

Perhaps, the most likely outcome of the currency wars and the debasement of the dollar is a chaotic, catastrophic collapse of investor confidence, resulting in emergency measured by governments to maintain some semblance of a functioning system of money, trade and investment.

The two currency wars of the last century led to two world wars. The current path of the dollar is unsustainable, and, therefore, the dollar will not be sustained. A return to the gold standard offers the best chance of stability.

Full Story


WILL EGYPT COME TO BE DOMINATED BY ISLAMISTS?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 282, December 6, 2011
EGYPT'S SHAM ELECTION
By Dr. Daniel Pipes & Ms. Cynthia Farahat

According to Egypt's elections committee, the Muslim Brotherhood won 37 percent of the vote of the first round of voting in Egypt; and the Salafis, who promote a yet more extreme Islamist program, won 24 percent, giving them together a jaw-dropping 61 percent of the vote.

This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?

Full Story


ENTERING THE GREAT DEPRESSION NUMBER TWO       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 281, December 4, 2011
SPENDING MORE HAS NEVER WORKED!
By Alan Caruba

Ask any financial advisor what to do when you are drowning in debt and they will tell you to spend less and pay down your debt. This is just common sense. However, if you ask politicians what to do, they will advise that the nation spend more and borrow more.

Despite a huge national debt and deficit, the U.S. federal government just concluded its biggest spending year with its second biggest annual budget deficit. For Fiscal Year 2011, which ended September 30, the government spent $3.6 trillion, an increase over the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009.

Full Story


COP-17 -- UNITED NATIONS WORLD ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE CONFERENCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 280, November 30, 2011
DURBAN DUE DILIGENCE:
We Must Demand Scientific Rigor on Climate Change,
or We Will Reap the Consequences
By Dr. Kelvin Kemm

From my vantage point here in South Africa, I could hardly miss the major build-up to the COP-17 United Nations world environment and climate conference, which is being held November 28 to December 9, 2011, in Durban, where I went to school and university.

Let us hope that at least some world leaders will have the courage to stand up at COP-17 and demand the kind of scientific rigour that brought so much enlightenment and progress over the centuries. Proper due diligence in Durban requires nothing less.

Only then will poverty be eradicated, and health and environmental conditions improve, for billions of people all over our planet.

Full Story


THE U.S. DEBT EXCEEDS THE NATION'S ANNUAL CAPACITY TO GENERATE INCOME       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 279, Nov 30, 2011
PAPER MONEY, REAL DEBT, & SPENDTHRIFT NATIONS
By Alan Caruba

As the citizens of the United States of America and the seventeen member-states of the European Union look on, a great drama regarding the future of the EU and its currency, the Euro, is occurring.

The essential problem is that both the U.S. dollar and the Euro are just so much paper, despite the promises and guarantees that they will be honored as real money. The trick has been to keep everyone believing there are sufficient real assets to back up those promises.

Full Story


THE U.S. NATIONAL DEBT NOW LARGER THAN THE NATION'S GDP       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 278, November 27, 2011
THE THREAT OF A GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE
By Alan Caruba

At present, the amount of the annual U.S. Gross Domestic Product, $14 trillion — the value of all the goods and services that generate income — is exceeded by the nation’s debt.

America is presently $15 trillion in debt, and the debt grows daily.

In a November 21, 2011, Wall Street Journal interview, Erskine Bowles, of the presidential advisory commission on the nation’s debt, said: “If you take 100% of the revenue that came into the country last year, every single dime of it was consumed by our mandatory spending and interest on the debt.”

Full Story


AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA -- FOOD PRODUCTION PER CAPITA IS FALLING       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 277, November 27, 2011
ADD HERBICIDES TO AFRICA'S RESCUE PLAN
By Dennis T. Avery

Africa is the only continent where food production per capita is falling, as its population continues to expand. Three-fourths of Africa’s food is produced on small farms that get radically lower crop yields than its experimental farms.

Even if these little farms got adequate fertilizer and high-yield seeds, they still wouldn’t get the higher yields produced by First World farmers because of the heavy weed populations fostered by Africa’s high temperatures, high humidity, and intense sunlight. A Nigerian field has an estimated 200 million weed seeds per hectare!

Full Story


FLUENCY IN ARABIC -- ONE TOOL AMONG MANY IN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES RESEARCH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 276, Nov 22, 2011
ARABIST SNOBS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Is knowledge of Arabic necessary to write about Arabs or make policy toward them?

Of course, it helps to know languages. But, languages do not protect against ideology, faddism, pedantry, or misinformation. They guarantee neither quality scholarship nor policy insights. Whoever has learned Arabic can take pride in this achievement without boasting that it trumps other qualifications. It is one tool among many, not a status.

Full Story


GLOBAL WARMING -- THE GREATEST HOAX OF THE MODERN ERA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 275, Nov 22, 2011
CLIMATEGATE, PART DUH!
By Alan Caruba

At what point will it finally occur to the pea-brained legion of journalists, academics, alleged scientists, United Nations propagandists, and others still blathering about “global warming” and “climate change”that there is no global warming and that the climate has been changing for the past 4.5 billion years on planet Earth?

It would appear that no amount of the evidence of fraud is sufficient to convince these environmentalist ideologues and radical Leftists that they have either participated in or been taken in by the greatest hoax of the modern era.

Full Story


EXPECT MODERATE GLOBAL COOLING FOR THE NEXT 30 YEARS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 274, Nov 20, 2011
UN IPCC TRAPPED IN CLIMATE TURMOIL
By Dennis T. Avery

The environmentalists and man-made global warming activists at the United Nations are trapped in turmoil over how to deal with the earth’s lack of warming since 1998. A week or so ago, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) circulated a draft statement that would have admitted we are unlikely to have any further earth-warming for the next 30 years “because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small, compared to natural climate variability.”

The BBC’s environmental reporter Richard Black reported that he had received a copy of that draft. Black said he expected member governments to reject the statement, however, because it would embarrass the first-world governments’ Green energy subsidies and taxes agenda. It would also have finally killed the world’s climate-terror campaign.

Full Story


NEEDED -- A RESTORATION OF AMERICA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 273, Nov 19, 2011
SYSTEM FAILURE ON A GLOBAL SCALE
By Alan Caruba

We are living in times when the structures involving the global financial system, national security, and self-governance are under attack, decaying or just self-destructing, due to all the ills to which humanity is prone.

Full Story


COLE'S SKEWED VIEW OF THE MIDDLE EAST:       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 272, Nov 17, 2011
JUAN COLE -- CRITIC OF DEMOCRACY, APOLOGIST FOR TYRANNY:
JUAN COLE'S TOTALITARIAN ODYSSEY
By Alan Jacobs

Few professors in the controversial world of Middle East Studies boast more about their own notoriety than Juan Cole, a man who believes the consistent criticism of his public positions to be a sign of distinction. Yale University's decision not to hire him for an endowed chair five years ago, due to insufficient scholarship, led him to publicly charge that George W. Bush and the CIA torpedoed his candidacy. When publications and organizations such as Campus Watch publicize Cole's outlandish commentary, he cries "censorship" and labels them "McCarthyite."

Full Story


THE "OCCUPY WALL STREET" PHENOMENON       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 271, Nov 16, 2011
"OCCUPY" MOVEMENT: WELCOME TO LIBERAL UTOPIA
By Christopher G. Adamo

For all but the most blindly dogmatic, any former “bloom” has long since left the rosy facade of the “Occupy Wall Street” phenomenon. Though the Liberal media have been working overtime from the beginning to maintain the fantasy that the protesters embody the concerns and aspirations of Real America, and, despite their best efforts to frame any discussion of the movement as a noble endeavor propelled by unfettered idealism, its sheer ugliness is daily becoming more apparent and inescapable.

Full Story


THE MODERN GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 270, Nov 14, 2011
ICE-FREE ARCTIC: 6,000 YEARS AGO
By Dennis T. Avery

Perhaps the silliest thing about the modern global warming debate is that we’re trying to evaluate major climate changes in eye-blinks of time, such as 10 or 30 years. A big Ice Age cycle lasts about 90,000 years, and the last one ended about 12,000 years ago. El Ninos last a year of two and change nothing, climate-wise. The Weather Channel can (sort of) predict ten days out.

Yet, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made claims of man-made global warming, claims based on an “unprecedented warming” that was only 22 years long, 1976–1998.

Full Story


THE RIGHT MAN AT THE RIGHT TIME       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 269, Nov 12, 2011
IF NOT ROMNEY, WHO?
By Alan Caruba

Generally overlooked in the midst of the many debates and the usual competition between Republican contenders for their Party’s nomination as its candidate for President is the fact that a rather impressive number have thrown their hats in the ring. It is testimony to the health, depth, and diversity of the Republican Party. Compare that with the Democratic Party’s lone candidate, a President already ceded the title of worst President ever.

As campaigns proceed toward the on-rushing primaries, Republicans are increasingly focused beyond the usual circus atmosphere, including the latest problems encountered by Herman Cain and Rick Perry’s gaffs. Selecting the GOP candidate has now reached the critical stage.

Full Story


DANGEROUS ENEMY INFILTRATION OF THE U.S.A.       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 268, Nov 11, 2011
THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ESTABLISHMENT
VERSUS WALID PHARES
By Cinnamon Stillwell

Walid Phares's moral clarity on Islamism and jihadism do not sit well with those who would rather engage in apologetics and obstructionism. This explains why his fiercest opponents have included some of the worst from the academic field of Middle East Studies.

Full Story


THE IMPACTS OF "GREEN" ENERGY POLICIES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 267, Nov 11, 2011
REAL MONSTERS DIDN'T DISAPPEAR AFTER HALLOWEEN:
Energy-Depriving, Job-Killing, Income-Squeezing
Regulations Have a Frightening Impact
By Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr.,
& Reverend Efrain Pineda

As Winter sets in, America faces real monsters: government regulations that stifle energy production, increase energy prices, kill jobs, squeeze family and business incomes, and threaten living standards and productivity.

Millions of poor, black, Latino, and elderly Americans will bear the brunt of rising energy costs. Even middle class families will have to decide whether to heat their homes or buy groceries or medicine.

Full Story


NO BASTIONS OF TRUE SCHOLARSHIP LEFT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 266, Nov 10, 2011
GILBERT ACHCAR'S ANTI-ZIONISM OF FOOLS
By Cinnamon Stillwell & Rima Greene

"Don't expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I'm an Arab."

So declared Gilbert Achcar — Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies — at the outset of his lecture last month at the University of California, Berkeley. Those in the audience hoping for scholarly objectivity were thus informed that Achcar's ethnicity trumped intellectual independence and that, despite evidence to the contrary, an Arab could not be pro-Israel. One had to give him credit for at least confirming his biases up front.

Full Story


THWARTING GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 265, Nov 10, 2011
ELECTRICITY, PARKS, & PROGRESS FOR CHILE:
Apply CSR Standards to Doug Thomkins for
Honesty, Transparency, & Concern for People
By Paul K. Driessen

American billionaire Doug Tompkins acquired millions of acres in Chile’s Patagonia region, in a block of land from Argentina to the Pacific. He claims he wants to protect unique habitats and species. His real motive appears to be thwarting energy and economic development in Chile. The huge block of land, known as Pumalin Park, effectively prevents any north-south roads, travel, transmission lines and commerce, except by air or sea. Tompkins is also leading and financing campaigns to stop a major hydroelectric project that would provide much-needed electricity for Chile.

Equally as bad, Tompkins and his Deep Ecology activists consistently violate nearly every cannon of corporate social responsibility that they demand of for-profit corporations. That is not just hypocritical. It enables them to present false and misleading information to support their campaigns, without having to worry about accountability for fraud … or even for the adverse consequences of the policies they want to impose on Chile. In other words, CSR for you, but not for us.

Tompkins calls his actions saving the planet. Many others call it energy and economic eco-imperialism.

Full Story


CAIN "SEXUAL HARASSMENT" CONTROVERSY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 264, Nov 8, 2011
HOW THE ESTABLISHMENT INTENDS TO MAINTAIN CONTROL
By Christopher G. Adamo

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the entire Herman Cain “sexual harassment” controversy was its complete predictability. The moment Cain stunned the nation by winning the Florida straw poll, an ambush of this nature became inevitable. And it is for that reason more than any other that, despite the ferocity of the attack, the vast majority of early supporters remain steadfastly in his camp.

After being so overused, the pattern has become unmistakable. The moment any true Conservative moves to the political forefront, the script books are opened and a methodical deconstruction of that individual begins.

Full Story


NEED TO CRACK DOWN ON THE OCCUPIERS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 263, Nov 6, 2011
HIGH TIME TO RID THE STREETS OF THE
"OCCUPY WALL STREET" MOVEMENT
By Alan Caruba

Is there any doubt left in the minds of observers of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that the movement tends toward violence and is in need of control? The mayors of the cities — some seventy at last count — that are being occupied need to crack down on it.

Full Story


"LIBERALISM" & "HYPOCRISY" SYNONYMOUS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 262, Nov 2, 2011
LIBERALS SUDDENLY CARE ABOUT SEXUAL HARASSMENT, AGAIN!
By Christopher G. Adamo

It is hard to know where to begin listing the reasons why “Liberalism” and “hypocrisy” have become synonymous. But the latest flap over some warmed over charges of “sexual harassment” against Herman Cain is a sterling example. Outrageous though this synthetic controversy may be, it hardly comes as a surprise. Conservatives have been warning for weeks that the political Left would most certainly engage in just such behavior once Cain’s star began to rise. Yet, it is always amazing how shamelessly Liberals can ignore the mountains of evidence proving their insincerity while they lecture the nation with almost comical passion.

Full Story


EXECUTIVE ORDERS & U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 261, Oct 31, 2011
THE U.S. PRESIDENCY & EXECUTIVE POWER IN WARTIME
By Michael Mukasey

President Obama campaigned for office largely on the claim that his predecessor had shredded the Constitution. By the Constitution, he could not have meant the document signed on September 17, 1787. Article II of that document begins with a simple declaration: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Not “some” or “most” or even “all but a teeny-weeny bit” of the executive power. The President is vested with all of it. This is particularly noteworthy when compared with the enumerated legislative powers vested in Congress: “All legislative Powers herein granted.” The Founders understood, based in part on their unfortunate experience under the Articles of Confederation, that the branch of government most likely to be in need of the ability to act quickly and decisively is the executive. The branch most likely to overreach is the legislature.

Full Story


CONSIDERABLE MISREPORTING IN THE MEDIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 260, Oct 31, 2011
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON THE
U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Following President Obama's promise that all American troops will be home from Iraq by Christmas time, there have been numerous misconceptions circulated in media reports about what is precisely going on regarding the U.S. withdrawal.

Full Story


OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ENERGY POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 259, Oct 30, 2011
KILLING ENERGY, KILLING JOBS, KILLING AMERICA
By Alan Caruba

America has been under attack since President Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009. The primary target has been the nation’s ability to generate energy for electricity and transportation, without which this nation will slide into Third World status and economic decline.

This appears to be the goal of this administration from the President to his Secretaries of Energy and Interior, to his Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no other rational explanation for what they are doing.

Full Story


PREDOMINANTLY HOSTILE TO THE WEST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 258, Nov 8 2011
FRIENDLESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The Arab upheavals of 2011 have inspired wildly inconsistent Western responses. How, for example, can one justify abiding the suppression of dissidents in Bahrain, while celebrating dissidents in Egypt? Or protect Libyan rebels from government attacks, but not their Syrian counterparts? Oppose Islamists taking over in Yemen, but not in Tunisia?

Such ad hockery reflects something deeper than incompetence: the difficulty of devising a constructive policy toward a region where, other than in a few outliers (Cyprus, Israel, and Iran), populations are predominantly hostile to the West. Friends are few, powerless, and with dim prospects of taking control. Democracy therefore translates into hostile relations with unfriendly governments.

Full Story


AS EUROPE GOES, SO GOES THE U.S.A.       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 257, Oct 26, 2011
WHAT EUROPEAN CHAOS PORTENDS FOR AMERICA
By Christopher G. Adamo

Those who ascribe to such quaint and sentimental notions as national sovereignty and cultural cohesiveness would certainly not shed any tears over the demise of the European Union. Once praised as the gleaming example of the new order, it now teeters on total collapse. And, in an inarguable statement on the reality of the human condition, its travails do not involve any irreconcilable conflict of altruistic philosophies, or contrasting visions of the future ascendancy of civilization. Rather, the widening rift among its members centers on the comparatively prosaic issue of money.

Full Story


U.S. MYOPIA REGARDING THE MIDDLE EAST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 256, Oct 25, 2011
OBAMA'S MISPLACED MIDEAST OPTIMISM
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Confidently commenting on the execution of Libya's long-time dictator, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that "the death of Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do." About his own decision to pull all U.S. troops from Iraq in two months' time, Obama asserted: "In Iraq, we've succeeded in our strategy to end the war." He then drew triumphalist conclusions from these developments, bragging that they show "The tide of war is receding" and "we've renewed American leadership in the world."

Full Story


ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING THEORY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 255, Oct 25, 2011
IT'S LIBEL, EXCEPT WHEN MIKE MANN DOES IT.
This Mann-Made Global Warming Lawsuit
Could Backfire on the Penn State Alarmist.
Support True Science, Energy, & Freedom.
Donate to Tim Ball's Legal Defense Fund.
By Paul K. Driessen

My commentary this week calls attention to an absurd lawsuit by Penn State climatologist Michael Mann, who has sued Canadian climate scientist Tim Ball for allegedly defaming him through a little joke that played word games with “Penn State” and alluded to some of Mann’s questionable research practices.

What’s truly strange is that, just a couple weeks ago, Mann accused another climate scientist of “dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.” This string of libels Mann does not consider libelous. But a little joke is.

Nevertheless, Mann’s lawsuit has put a lot of strain on Dr. Ball, who is now working with lawyers, preparing to defend himself – and launch a counteroffensive. In addition to explaining the facts surrounding this idiotic defamation suit, my article encourages people to support Dr. Ball’s legal defense fund – and in so doing protect their own freedoms and living standards.

Full Story


WHERE HAS GLOBAL WARMING GONE?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 254, Oct 25, 2011
GLOBAL WARMING: AN OBITUARY
By Alan Caruba

For the past six years, the Heartland Institute has sponsored International Climate Change Conferences, the last in Washington, D.C., June 30-July 1, 2011. Haven’t heard about them? Maybe that’s because the mainstream media has gone out of its way to ignore them. The conferences, however, have contributed to the growing body of knowledge disputing global warming to the point where, even in the nation’s capitol, the topic has become little more than the slow revelation of the utter mendacity of the hoax and its perpetrators.

Where has global warming gone? Onto the ash heap of the history of the last twenty-plus years of bad policies, wasted billions of the public treasure, and all of it driven by the UN’s mendacious “science.”

Full Story


BLACK FAMILIES & RISING UP FROM POVERTY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 253, Oct 25, 2011
IT TOOK TOO LONG TO GET A HERMAN CAIN
By Dennis T. Avery

When I think of Herman Cain, I see a strong black family with a hard-working chauffeur father who also worked a night job, and an equally strong mother, the pair of whom collaborated in pulling their son up toward his fullest potential in a free society. What grieves me most deeply is that it’s taking so long for the promise of the black family in America to be fulfilled.

I blame the welfare system that began many decades ago for shattering the strong black families that existed at the end of the Depression. The free black families had built strong communities based on pride in even the low-level work they were allowed to do, and the collective strength of their closely-knit society.

Full Story


BAD TIMES FOR MIDDLE EASTERN DICTATORS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 252, Oct 23, 2011
MUAMMAR AL-QADDAFI -- DEAD AT LAST
By Alan Caruba

There were, at last count, at least 643 ways to spell Muammar al-Qaddafi and, I for one, am very happy he is dead for that reason alone. The fact that he was the dictator of Libya for over forty years and funded the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am airliner and other terrorist acts also contributes to the good news.

Full Story


E.U. & THE EURO ON THE ROAD TO COLLAPSE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 251, Oct 18, 2011
KISS THE EUROPEAN UNION GOODBYE
By Alan Caruba

In Paris, on October 15, 2011, a group of finance ministers and central bankers known as the G20, representing major nations, gave the European Union until October 23, 2011, to find an answer to the financial crises that are tearing apart the European Union and its monetary structure.

Don’t hold your breath. If not now, at least in the foreseeable future, the European Union will collapse for the oldest reasons, national sovereignty and national self-interest.

Full Story


ISLAMISTS GOT EXACTLY WHAT THEY PAID FOR       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 250, Oct 16, 2011
ACADEMIC PAY TO PLAY: RADICAL ISLAMISTS
FUND ONE OF THEIR OWN IN ONTARIO
By Winfield Myers

Huron University College (HUC) in Ontario announced Friday morning the appointment of Ingrid Mattson, a professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and former President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), as the first London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at its Faculty of Theology.

The move validates widespread concern, as revealed in the Campus Watch article by Canadian journalist Barbara Kay and a letter from concerned faculty and friends at HUC, both published in May, that the support of several Islamist groups in funding the chair would lead to the appointment of a radical Islamist as the first holder. In Ingrid Mattson, the funders' wishes have been fulfilled.

Full Story


ILLEGAL ALIENS & U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 249, Oct 16, 2011
IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, POLITICS, & POLICIES
By Alan Caruba

America is not called a nation of immigrants for nothing. Aside from the native tribes that were here for centuries, it was waves of immigration, first from Europe and then from everywhere else, that created the most unique citizen on planet Earth, the American. The lure was a fairly scarce commodity in the world -- freedom and opportunity.

Full Story


HYDRAULIC FRACTURING & NATURAL GAS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 248, Oct 15, 2011
TAPPING NATURAL RESOURCES TO ADDRESS
MARYLAND'S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS:
We Should Develop Previously Unavailable Energy
Resources to Generate Jobs & Revenue
By Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr.

Using hydraulic fracturing to produce natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation will create jobs, improve lives, and boost tax revenues in Maryland – while also protecting water and other environmental resources through proper, commonsense regulations. That’s the message laid out by Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., in this commentary.

As Co-Chair of the Affordable Power Alliance, Bishop Jackson understands energy – and poverty. And he knows enough about “fracking” to respond knowledgeably about myths and falsehoods that anti-hydrocarbon environmental activists are using to generate opposition to drilling techniques that have quadrupled America’s natural gas supplies, and driven gas prices lower than they have been in years. Families will now find heating their homes won't break their budget, electricity will also cost less, and companies will be able to hire and retain more workers in factories and petrochemical plants.

It’s a win-win-win for everyone.

Full Story


U.K. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 247, Oct 14, 2011
WILL RENEWABLE ENERGY BANKRUPT THE UNITED KINGDOM?
By Dennis T. Avery

In an age of few political beliefs, the cause of preventing catastrophic climate change has become an end in itself. Only recently, the British Government's Chief Scientist [Professor Sir David King], no less, forecasted that, by the end of the Twenty-First Century, Antarctica would be the only habitable continent.

But he notes that there has been no global warming trend since 1998. Are we absolutely certain that the main cause of global warming is carbon dioxide emissions and has nothing to do with the action or output of the Sun? It would be unfortunate if history recalled that we solved a problem which, in the end, did not require a solution by tipping Britain’s economy into a depression.

Full Story


THE U.S. POLITICAL & CULTURAL LEFT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 246, Oct 12, 2011
CAN LIBERALS DEVICE A NEW "GRASSROOTS" PHENOMENON?
By Christopher G. Adamo

The U.S. political and cultural Left is once again working to construct its own mass movement, touting it as the real voice of the American people. It is this effort that lies at the root of the vastly overblown “Occupy Wall Street” debacle of recent weeks. And, once again, the underlying truths of this effort inexorably highlight the real means and motives of Liberal Leftists in the U.S.A.

Hardly a “spontaneous” outpouring of cohesive sentiment among the people of the nation, this phenomenon has been pre-planned, orchestrated, and funded from the top-down. In that aspect alone, it wholly and accurately reflects the standard operating procedures and mindset of its Leftwing Statist creators. Nor do its players engender compelling hopes and goals for the nation. Rather, they expose the standard subversive Alinsky/Soros fingerprints, along with the necessary funding and top-down control that invariably come from them.

Full Story


CYPRUS -- FULL-ON CYPRIOT-ISRAELI ALLIANCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 245, Oct 11, 2011
CYPRUS ON THE WORLD STAGE
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Cyprus, an island near Turkey and Syria of roughly 1.3 million inhabitants, finds itself on the cusp of momentous change. As it belatedly makes its grand debut on the world stage after domestic Greek-Turkish communal issues have consumed its first 51 years of independence, it faces both great opportunity and great danger.

Full Story


REJECTING SELF-CENSORSHIP -- A NEW TREND?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 244, Oct 6, 2011
DAVID LETTERMAN GETS IT EXACTLY RIGHT
By Adam Turner

David Letterman, an American TV commedian, stood up to Islamists threatening to kill him for his speech. We at the Freedom Forum's Legal Project recognize that Letterman has far more resources than most to try to protect himself and his family. But even their wealth can't fully protect them from terrorist reprisal. Yet, Letterman did not allow fear to silence him. His example is important, not least because Letterman is so prominent, and this incident is so public. Let's hope he spurs others to follow in his footsteps, so that threats and intimidation do not silence free expression in this country on any topic.

Full Story


EEN'S MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 243, Oct 5, 2011
OUR CHILDREN ARE AT RISK:
EEN Needs to Get it Right, Before it Preaches to Others
By Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr.

Once again, partisan political activists are defending job-killing regulations that will harm the most vulnerable people, while providing no demonstrable environmental benefits. Unfortunately, these environmentalist activists are also working hard to seduce sincere Church leaders.

Full Story


FOUR DECADES OF THE EPA'S FALSE CLAIMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 242, Oct 2, 2011
THE EPA GETS CAUGHT IN A BIG FAT LIE
By Alan Caruba

The notion that the Environmental Protection Agency uses “science” to justify their regulations is false, just like most of the claims they issue on various aspects of the nation’s environment. Their favorite scam is to estimate the number of deaths they will prevent with some new draconian regulation.

The EPA is a ruthless enforcement agency with a very Green agenda that is opposed to the use of many beneficial chemicals, every form of energy, and the right of people to be left alone.

At the top of its list of priorities is the destruction of the American economy, with special attention to all forms of energy production. Manufacturing anything comes next, followed by afflicting the America’s vast agricultural sector. The EPA insists that dust is a pollutant. You can’t farm without generating dust.

Full Story


RESISTANCE TO ANTIBIOTICS IS ANCIENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 241, Oct 2, 2011
NEW ANTIBIOTICS, OR NEEDLESS DEATHS
By Dennis T. Avery

For decades, physicians and livestock producers have been warring about the low-level feeding of antibiotics to hogs and poultry. The meat producers have been putting small quantities of antibiotics into their poultry, hog, and cattle feeds to prevent the development of animal disease epidemics. The better herd and flock health reduces death losses and animal suffering — and also slashes their feed requirements.

However, the doctors asserted that resistance to new antibiotics was appearing too fast to be explained by the modest levels of the prescriptions they write. Human lives are clearly at stake. The Centers for Disease Control and physicians’ associations demanded the end of farm antibiotic use.

Full Story


SHALE GAS: ENERGY POLICY GAME CHANGER       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 240, Oct 1, 2011
WHAT THE FRACK IS GOING ON HERE?
HYDRAULIC FRACTURING OPPONENTS MISREPRESENT FACTS
TO PROTECT & PROMOTE THEIR IDEOLOGIES & AGENDAS
By Paul K. Driessen

Hydraulic fracturing (HF) sends “huge volumes of toxic fluids” deep underground at high pressure, to fracture shale rock and release natural gas, Food & Water Watch claims. “Billions of gallons of toxic fluids” will “contaminate” groundwater and drinking water “for generations.” We need to “Ban Fracking Now.”

Environmentalists used to support “clean natural gas.” Whence the intolerant new attitude?

Full Story


A DANGEROUS MIDDLE EASTERN STATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 239, Sep 27, 2011
IS TURKEY GOING ROGUE?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

In a Middle East wracked by coups d'état and civil insurrections, the Republic of Turkey credibly offers itself as a model, thanks to its impressive economic growth, democratic system, political control of the military, and secular order.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan effectively bought the June, 2011, elections by pumping credit into the Turkish economy.

But, in reality, Turkey may be, along with Iran, one of the most dangerous states of the region.

Full Story


NATIONS & CONTINENTS ARE ON EDGE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 238, Sep 27, 2011
THE WORLD IS HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
By Alan Caruba

If one has been in the habit of reading history, then the events of the past and of the present inform each other. For this reason, it occurred to me that the world is once again having a nervous breakdown.

Full Story


THE ECONOMY & U.S. FISCAL POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 237, Sep 25, 2011
THE FINANCIAL ADVICE OF EXPERTS:
THEN & NOW
By Alan Caruba

As the economies of the U.S.A. and several European nations totter on default, it is essential to draw on lessons from the past. The most obvious lesson is that the governments of the U.S.A. and the Europeans have been spending far more than they can tax or borrow.

Decades since the 1980s, all these governments have spent huge amounts of money, wasting billions on “alternative” sources of energy in the name of global warming or climate change. All have stayed busy before and since the end of World War Two consolidating power in the U.S. federal government and, more recently, in the European Union.

Full Story


ROMNEY AS THE PREFERRED GOP CANDIDATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 236, Sep 21, 2011
RICK PERRY VERSUS MITT ROMNEY:
THE POLITICAL "HORSERACE"
By Christopher G. Adamo

It would be a mistake to believe that the “mainstream” media and press are only interested in boosting ratings as they play up the contest between Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in their quest for the Republican presidential nomination. While increased viewership is a definite “plus,” their ultimate concern is the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama. And they have made it abundantly clear that Romney would be their preferred Republican candidate in a general election race.

Full Story


PREPARE FOR MORE EPA ONSLAUGHTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 235, Sep 20, 2011
VICTORY IS SWEET, BUT THE WAR CONTINUES:
CELEBRATE EPA'S WITHDRAWAL OF JOB-KILLING
OZONE STANDARDS, BUT PREPARE FOR MORE ONSLAUGHTS
By Paul K. Driessen

Millions of Americans shared the joy that erupted after the White House told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shelve its plans for imposing tough new ground level ozone rules and regulations on the country. However, vast numbers of other punitive rules and regulations are still in the federal pipeline, which, if implemented, will have adverse impacts on our lives and livelihoods, and people’s jobs, health, and welfare. Today's article summarizes some of those new rules and regulations, focusing on the most egregious and destructive rule-maker and regulator of all, the EPA.

Full Story


ISRAELIS V. ARABS -- CONFLICT CONTINUES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 234, Sep 17, 2011
FIVE WARS, 63 YEARS OF TERRORISM, & ISRAEL SURVIVES
By Alan Caruba

It’s tough enough for the Israelis and Jews around the world to deal with the growing anti-Semitism that has been spread and nurtured by Muslims, but this irrational hatred, the well spring of the Holocaust, could set off a series of events initiated by such hatred.

Having destroyed the World Trade Center towers ten years ago, World War Three would be Islam’s gift to the world.

Full Story


THE FUTURE OF LIMITED GOVERNMENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 233, Sep 16, 2011
THE U.S. CONSTITUTION & LIMITED GOVERNMENT
By Dr. Edward J. Erler

Two cases that are currently making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court may very well, in the short term, decide the constitutional issue of the reach and extent of the central government. At stake, in other words, is the future of limited government. And together, these two cases present an exceedingly odd situation. In the case of the Arizona illegal alien law, the central government is suing a state for constitutional violations; and, in the case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — that is, Obamacare — more than half the states are suing the central government, contesting the Act’s constitutionality. It is indeed a litigious season.

But the Supreme Court’s decisions in these two cases may not be the last word, because both of them present eminently political issues that will have to be decided ultimately by the American people.

Full Story


ARAB REJECTION OF A TWO-STATE SOLUTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 232, Sep 15, 2011
WHERE IS THE PALESTINIAN BEN-GURION?
By Dr. Efraim Karsh

Sixty-four years after partitioning Palestine into two independent states – one Jewish, the other Arab – the UN General Assembly is set again to vote on the same issue. While this time around Palestinian leaders appear to be preaching compromise, closer scrutiny reveals this to be a tactical, rather than a strategic, change of heart, stemming from the different circumstances of the two votes and aimed at disguising their lingering unwillingness (or perhaps inability) to live with a two-state solution.

Full Story


THE ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS' AGENDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 231, Sep 15, 2011
TRYING TO SNOOKER SMUCKER:
Climate Alarmist Campaigners Make Pitiful Case
That Man-Made Climate Change Threatens Coffee
By Paul K. Driessen

As Al Gore tries to plug holes in his sinking “manmade climate chaos” ship, self-styled “corporate social responsibility” activists are pressuring companies to endorse their global warming, sustainability, fair trade, and organic farming agendas. Among the recent targets is the J M Smucker Company, maker of jams, syrups and coffees.

My commentary today eviscerates the Calvert and Trillium campaign against Smucker – shooting holes in many of their central assertions, and urging Smucker to continue resisting the activist pressure. Staying the course, I argue, will protect the Company’s growers, customers, and bottom line alike.

Full Story


WORK OF THE REPUBLICAN TASK FORCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 230, Sep 14, 2011
EARLY WARNINGS IGNORED: SEPTEMBER 11, A DECADE LATER
By Dr. Jonathan Schanzer

Working under the obscure banner of the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, a handful of U.S. congressmen consistently warned of the threat of Islamist jihadist terrorism for more than a decade before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Full Story


THE U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN IRAQ       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 229, Sep 14, 2011
PANETTA VERSUS U.S. MILITARY ON IRAQ:
DEBATING THE WITHDRAWAL OF AMERICAN TROOPS
By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

As the original withdrawal deadline of December 31, 2011 under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) edges ever closer for U.S. troops in Iraq, reports have emerged that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has come out in support of a plan that would keep 3,000 to 4,000 American troops in the country beyond this year. Their sole purpose will be to provide training for the Iraqi security forces.

On the other hand, senior military figures such as General Lloyd J. Austin III -- the senior American commander in Iraq -- would prefer to see a much larger and open-ended presence of around 14,000 to 18,000 U.S. troops.

Full Story


THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S MUSLIM OUTREACH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 228, Sep 13, 2011
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S HISTORY OF FAILED MUSLIM OUTREACH
By Patrick Poole

Time and again, the U.S. government has engaged the wrong Muslim partners, legitimizing and empowering the very extremists whose influence should be limited. This has been done despite repeated warnings from counterterrorism and law enforcement officials at virtually every step of the way. Damaging information about the government's outreach partners has been known and intentionally ignored, resulting in a lengthy list of bipartisan fiascos.

If the death of nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens on 9/11 was insufficient to reconsider how our government conducts Muslim outreach, it is too terrible to contemplate how many more lives may eventually be sacrificed before our elected officials decide to reverse course.

Full Story


OUTSTANDING COUNTERTERRORIST AGENCY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 227, Sep 13, 2011
COUNTERTERRORISM: NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

U.S. law enforcement agencies have generally responded to 9/11 with a pretend counterterrorism policy. They still insist that naming the enemy as Islamism causes terrorism, that Islamist violence poses no more threat than that of neo-Nazis, racial supremacists, et al. -- and that counterterrorism primarily involves feel-good measures such as improving civil rights, passing anti-discrimination laws, and displaying goodwill to Islamists.

And, then, there is the New York Police Department, an institution uniquely spurred by 9/11 to abandon its former laxity and get serious. The force that had mishandled prior terrorist incidents (e.g., the assassination of Meir Kahane) quickly transformed itself into an outstanding counterterrorist agency under the remarkable leadership of Raymond Kelly. (Andrew McCarthy calls him a "godsend"). Unlike other law enforcement institutions, NYPD names the enemy, acknowledges the predominant threat of Islamist violence, and built a robust intelligence operation.

Full Story


THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR IV ON AMERICA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 226, Sep 11, 2011
WHAT 9/11 HAS WROUGHT: SEPTEMBER 11 A DECADE LATER
By Dr. Dov S. Zakheim

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans have had to adjust to a host of changes in their lives, from more and more intrusive searches at airports to concrete barriers in front of public places to government sanctioned surveillance of overseas telephone calls.

Americans have become so inured to those inconveniences that they take them in stride. Economically, however, this impact has exceeded a trillion dollars, if the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is added to that of domestic security measures and the primary, secondary, and tertiary effects of the losses incurred on 9/11 itself.

Full Story


OUR NARROW APPROACH TO THE TERROR WAR       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 225, Sep 12, 2011
WINNING THE BATTLE AGAINST AL-QA'IDA,
LOSING THE WAR AGAINST JIHAD
By Raymond Ibrahim

So long as the West focuses on names and faces in the socalled "war on terror" — as opposed to focusing on ideas and motivations — so long will it possibly win battles, even as it slowly loses the war.

Full Story


RECENT GLOBAL WARMING MAINLY NATURAL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 224, Sep 11, 2011
AL GORE & THE LAKES OF MOLTEN LAVA
By Dennis T. Avery

Al Gore returns to your TV screen in a 24-hour telethon September 14. He will presumably warn us about the lakes of molten lava that Mother Nature will pour upon us unless we agree to starve in the dark.

Unfortunately for Al, the evidence that our recent global warming is primarily natural just keeps piling up.

Full Story


MUSLIM ATROCITIES AGAINST CHRISTIANS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 223, Sep 11, 2011
WHY FOCUS ON PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS BY
MUSLIM MAJORITIES IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD?
By Raymond Ibrahim

Some are asking why my new monthly series, "Muslim Persecution of Christians," wherein I collate and assess some of the atrocities committed by Muslims against Christians, does not include the persecution of other religious minority groups; others are suggesting I broaden my scope to include all minorities, for instance, homosexuals.

Of course, other minority groups — essentially any religion other than Islam (or even the wrong kind of Islam, e.g., Shi'ism, Sufism) — experience persecution in the Muslim world. Accordingly, others qualified in the particulars of the various religions and civilizations persecuted by Islam are encouraged to collate and comment on them, monthly or otherwise.

Full Story


FINAL NAIL IN THE GLOBAL WARMING COFFIN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 222, Sep 11, 2011
THE SLOW, CERTAIN DEATH OF THE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY
By Alan Caruba

I have been predicting the death of the global warming theory since late in the last decade, when it became obvious that the Earth had entered into a cooling cycle. By 2009, the leak of thousands of emails between the “scientists” whose computer models the claims were based upon revealed they were in a state of panic regarding this obvious phenomenon.

Employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), those “scientists” have since been protected by the universities who benefited greatly from the huge grants of public funding they received. The issue of whether such men should be prosecuted for deceiving the entire world remains to be decided.

Full Story


OPPOSING THEORIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 221, Sep 11, 2011
A HIGH STAKES CLASH OF ECONOMISTS
By Alan Caruba

It was the view of John Maynard Keynes that, in order to promote recovery from a recession or depression, the government had to spend lots of money on public housing, better roads, and improvements to the electricity grid to get money into general circulation, stimulate the economy, and restore business confidence. The unemployed had to be given work, even if it was the government, not private enterprise, that would provide the capital.

The writings of Friedrich August Hayek reflects the Conservative, or Classical Liberal, view that government should get out of the way and let a recession yield to natural economic forces. History demonstrates that, without government involvement, recessions eventually go away in relatively short order.

Government, Hayek argued, is more likely to make a mess of the economy than fix it.

Full Story


THE CENTRIST APPROACH SHOULD BE REJECTED       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 220, Sep 7, 2011
AMERICA'S ECONOMY IS INTERWOVEN WITH ITS MORALITY
By Christopher G. Adamo

With this week’s Republican debate having gained a major position in the media spotlight and actually a delay in Barack Obama’s over-hyped “Jobs” (read: Deficit spending and pork) speech, it is inarguable that the 2012 presidential campaign season is in full swing. And, though the public is usually loath to once again face all of the pandering, self-absorption, and half-truths of modern campaigning, this election cycle is one that could not come soon enough.

Full Story


ISLAMIST MINORITY IN THE U.S.A. DANGEROUS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 219, Sep 6, 2011
PEW POLL QUANTIFIES THE RADICAL MINORITY OF U.S. MUSLIMS
By Dr. David J. Rusin

Four weeks after the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center released its study of Muslim Americans , the Pew Research Center followed suit by publishing a survey of far greater value, due to its broader range of topics, more direct questioning, and extensive demographic cross tabs. Though the media, like Pew,have emphasized the mainstream attitudes of most U.S. Muslims, the data indicate that radical views are held by a small but important minority that cannot be ignored.

Full Story


"RADICAL" -- AN AGREED-UPON DEFINITION?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 218, Sep 3, 2011
"MUSLIM RADICALIZATION": IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER
By Raymond Ibrahim

Because the phrase "Muslim radicalization" has become increasingly popular in American discourse, it behooves us to establish once and for all what it means. Without an agreed upon definition, it may be that we are each talking about different things — or worse and more likely, nothing at all.

Full Story


POLITICALLY CORRECT ENERGY SYSTEMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 217, Sep 1, 2011
WIND POWER -- OUR LEAST SUSTAINABLE ENERGY OPTION:
From a Land Use, Economic, Environmental, or Raw Materials
Perspective, Wind Power Is Unsustainable.
By Paul K. Driessen

It’s the rare energy or environmental article these days that doesn’t appeal to “sustainability.” We must have a “sustainable” energy system, a “sustainable” economy, a “sustainable” future, we are told. Rarely, though, have any of these authors explained how the wind and solar projects they typically promote actually promote sustainability -- or even what it means for something to be “sustainable.”

The truth is, politically correct wind and solar energy systems may well be the least sustainable options we have – and may well provide by far the least energy bang for our sizable subsidy buck. In this article, I make the case that wind power is THE least sustainable option, and do so primarily because wind is far ahead of solar in terms of projects, acres affected, and environmental impacts inflicted.

I expect the column will stir up a lot of controversy, comment, and soul searching among legislators, regulators, environmentalists of every stripe, and people who are simply concerned about our energy and economic future.

Full Story


LIFE FOR U.S. MUSLIMS NOT VERY BAD AT ALL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 216, Aug 31, 2011
GALLUP'S U.S. MUSLIM SURVEY: NO GREAT BOON TO ISLAMISTS
By Dr. David J. Rusin

Depicting the lives of Muslim-Americans as fraught with suffering is the bread and butter of Islamists, but this grim portrait simply does not square with the data. If Muslims are "thriving" and "no other religious group … expects things to improve as much as do Muslim-Americans," how bad can life really be for them? Not very bad at all.

Full Story


PERRY BENEFITING FROM LEFTIST CRITICISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 215, Aug 31, 2011
LIBERALS & "MODERATES" UNWITTINGLY CAMPAIGN FOR PERRY
By Christopher G. Adamo

All too predictably, the insidious onslaught against Texas Governor Rick Perry is now in full swing. On the heels of the very first rumors last Spring that he might consider a run for the U.S. Presidency, and long before he officially announced, the Democratic Party political hit machine, its collaborators in “mainstream” Liberal media, and even the standard RINO mouthpieces were lining up to cut him down to size. Perry has hit the campaign trail in a big way, and, as such, he poses a threat not only to President Barack Obama, but to the entire “bipartisan” apparatus of Beltway insiders.

Full Story


DECADES OF REPRESSION & DECEIT IN LIBYA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 214, Aug 30, 2011
ASSESSING QADDAFI
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The world's longest ruling head of state, Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi would have been ruler of Libya for exactly 42 years on September 1, 2011. As he leaves the scene, Qaddafi's wretched reign deserves an appraisal.

Full Story


3 DISTINCT COUNTERTERRORISM DEBATES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 213, Aug 29, 2011
MAKING BELIEVE -- U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM NON-POLICY:
Obama's Pretend Counterterrorism Policy
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

With trumpets and drum rolls, the U.S. White House, in early August, released a policy paper on methods to prevent terrorism, said to have beentwo years in the making. Signed personally by President Barack Hussein Obama and with rhetoric vaunting "the strength of communities" and the need to "enhance our understanding of the threat posed by violent extremism," the document looks anodyne.

But, beneath the calm, lies a counter­productive – and dangerous – approach to counterterrorism. The import of this paper consists in its firm stand on the wrong side of three distinct counterterrorism debates, with the responsible Right (and a few sensible Liberals) on one side, and Islamists, Leftists, and multiculturalists on the other.

Full Story


THE SUN IN CHARGE OF OUR PLANET, NOT CO2       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 212, Aug 28, 2011
"CLOUD" MATTERS
By Dennis T. Avery

Regular readers of this column will recall our prediction (July 19, 2011) of a climate debate bombshell in the form of Denmark’s Henrik Svensmarks’ theory on clouds, cosmic rays, and the earth’s temperature standing up to intensivelaboratory scrutiny. We also predicted that the results would not be welcomed by those who have a vested interest in man-made warming.

Well, the verdict is in: More cosmic rays do indeed produce more low, wet clouds that cool our planet -- implying that the sun is in charge of our climate, not CO2. The big new experiment, done by the world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory, CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, is now published in Nature.

Full Story


THE WORLD'S MOST VOLATILE REGION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 211, Aug 27, 2011
MIDDLE EASTERN UPHEAVALS ENTER ROUND TWO
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Round Two of the Middle Eastern upheavals consists of the near-certain overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya and the likely overthrow of the Asad dynasty in Syria, as well as the Saleh regime in Yemen. In all three cases, revolution is underway. Should these leaders fall, so do the institutions of their rule, leading to chaos and the eventual founding of an entirely new government. In the Syrian and Yemeni cases, there could well be no effective central government, but the devolution of power to regions, ethnicities, ideological groups, or tribes.

Full Story


SEEKING TO UNDERMINE THE U.S. OIL INDUSTRY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 210, Aug 26, 2011
SPREADING "BIG OIL SUBSIDY" DISINFORMATION:
Meanwhile, Real Subsidies Are Driving Real
Businesses, Energy, & Jobs out of America
By Paul K. Driessen

This commentary presents three very simple truths. Oil industry “subsidies” and “special tax breaks” are neither subsidies nor special. Ending these basic manufacturer’s tax deductions will cost jobs and kill off far more revenue than eliminating them will generate. And the real subsidies are going to energy sources that are land-intensive, environmentally harmful, and unsustainable, in every sense of the word.

Full Story


THE PERVERSION OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 209, Aug 24, 2011
LIBERALS REDEFINE "EXTREMISM" & "POLITICAL CENTER"
By Christopher G. Adamo

Among the major factors inspiring the Conservative grassroots across America to take action is the seeming inability of those in office to stand fast against the Liberal onslaught. And, while this has always been a problem for career politicians, no matter how sincerely and idealistically they began their terms of office, the situation has clearly gotten worse in recent years. With the recent raising of the debt ceiling, President Barack Obama was granted a veritable green light to shamelessly continue his outlandish spending binge. Worse yet, those relative few in the Congress who sought to hold the line on spending have since been essentially criminalized, and are regularly denigrated in the harshest of terms.

Full Story


CLIMATE CHANGE PROPAGANDA CESSPOOL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 208, Aug 23, 2011
CLIMATE PROSTITUTES, CHARLATANS, & COMEDIANS:
Their "Research" Would Be Hilarious, if it Didn't
Cost Taxpayers & Consumers So Dearly
By Paul K. Driessen

As you are undoubtedly aware, America has spent tens of billions over the past decade on climate change “research” – and tens of billions more on renewable energy and other programs that supposedly will save Planet Earth from the ravages of runaway man-made global warming. The spending, research studies, and “alternative” energy schemes would be hilarious, if they weren’t so costly.

Today’s commentary barely probes the surface of this vast cesspool. But it does provide a glimpse of what lies beneath.

Full Story


A CLUELESS APPROACH TO ECONOMICS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 207, Aug 21, 2011
FOOD STAMPS TO SAVE THE ECONOMY
By Dennis T. Avery

President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture thinks food stamps are an “economic stimulus”! I can’t think of a sadder or more realistic commentary on the Obama administration’s clueless approach to economics. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says that each dollar of food stamp spending generates $1.84 worth of economic activity out there in the “great economic beyond” that he apparently never saw in his legal career.

If food stamps were such an economic stimulus, why haven’t we put everyone on food stamps and made ourselves all filthy rich with the profits?

Full Story


EUROPE TODAY: PROBLEMS & CONTROVERSIES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 206, Aug 20, 2011
THE CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: CAUSES & SIGNIFICANCE
By Dr. Vaclav Klaus

Recent political, social, and economic developments in Europe bother me. Many of us in Europe are aware of the fact that the continent faces serious problem and dangers, which are not short-term or medium-term business cycle-like phenomena. Nor are they the consequence of the recent financial and economic crisis. This crisis only made Europe's problems and dangers more visible. As an economist, I would call them structural problems, which will not, by themselves, wither away. We will not simply outgrow the problems, as some people hope or believe.

Full Story


SOCIAL FAILURES RAMPANT AMONG BLACKS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 205, Aug 20, 2011
BLACK AMERICA'S GAINS & LOSSES
By Alan Caruba

During the past half century, many Black Americans have achieved middle class status and risen to levels of real achievement. However, the vast bulk of the black population in the U.S.A. has not made such progress.

By most indices, the black community has not changed. In U.S. cities, they remain ghettoized, as much from choice, as from external circumstances. Instead of moving forward, integrating and assimilating into the larger white population, Blacks have emotionally remained apart, nurturing a sense of being victims, holding onto an animus for Whites.

Full Story


PANIC SPREADING AMONG LIBERAL LEFTISTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 204, Aug 17, 2011
LIBERALISM'S "NEW" STRATEGY: THE SAME OLD LIES
By Christopher G. Adamo

Perhaps the most profound quality common to Liberals is their ability to keep straight faces (or even look gravely serious) while spewing the most hysterical and laughable lies. In this manner, we have heard them in recent years frantically pontificating about how “global warming” would surely end life on this planet as we know it, unless of course they were allowed to grow government, encroach on our time honored freedoms, and raise our taxes.

Full Story


TENOR OF A FAILED ADMINISTRATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 203, Aug 16, 2011
WHITE HOUSE MISCHIEF
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The U.S. White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration's amateurish, deceitful, and bankrupt Middle East and Islamic policies.

Separately, each of these deceptions warrants condemnation; together, they symbolize the tenor of a failed administration in panic over its lowest-ever poll ratings (43.4 percent approval according to RealClearPolitics.com's aggregation of surveys) and trying to revive its fortunes by whatever means necessary, even if its dishonesty might expose it to ridicule.

Full Story


DISCREDITED GLOBAL WARMING THEORY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 202, Aug 16, 2011
DAVID SUZUKI INSULTS, BUT WON'T DEBATE.
As the Climate Scare Fizzles, Canada's Celebrity
Environmentalist Resorts to Ad Hominem Attacks.
By Dr. David R. Legates

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki, Canadian academic, environmentalist ideologue and political activist, has never met, debated, or even spoken with my colleague, scientist Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon. But, as more people dismiss Dr. Suzuki’s scare stories about global warming cataclysms, Suzuki has resorted to personal attacks against Dr. Soon and others who disagree with him.

Dr. Soon’s brilliant research into the sun’s role in climate change has helped make millions aware that the influence of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is far less than Suzuki wants them to think. In a recent column that was picked up by the Huffington Post and other media outlets, Suzuki attacked Dr. Soon, mostly with a recycled Greenpeace “investigation” that is itself nothing more than a rehash of tiresome (and libelous) misstatements, red herrings, and outright lies. It’s time to set the record straight.

Full Story


A NEW NATURAL, LIFE-SAVING FOOD ADDITIVE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 201, Aug 15, 2011
LUCKY ACCIDENT SLASHES FOOD POISONINGS
By Dennis T. Avery

A new natural food additive, discovered in a laboratory accident, is now ready to slash by half the number of hospitalizations and deaths from food-borne bacterial poisoning across the Western World.

Full Story


OBAMA AS THE FIRST DOWNGRADE PRESIDENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 200, Aug 10, 2011
YOUNG, BLACK, & MALE IN AMERICA TODAY
By Alan Caruba

U.S. President Barack Obama’s economic policies have failed the American nation, but they have been especially adverse on Black Americans. Black unemployment and foreclosures, for example, have skyrocketed under Obama and remain disproportionately high, as compared to other ethnic & racial communities in the U.S.A. In short, Obama has done nothing for Blacks in America, either on the macro and micro level to improve their opportunities or attitudes.

Full Story


THE U.S.A. UNDER OBAMA'S STEWARDSHIP       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 199, Aug 10, 2011
A LITANY OF OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FAILURES
By Christopher G. Adamo

By now everybody who regularly receives e-mail “forwards” has seen the one showing Barack Obama ostensibly standing in front of a devastated landscape that clearly is meant to represent the United States of America under his stewardship. The caption reads, “My work here is done.” Accusations of partisanship and racism aside, the message conveyed is so profound because it succinctly reflects the determined efforts of the Obama White House to radically change America over the past two and a half years.

Full Story


THE MILITARY WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 198, Aug 8, 2011
NEW EGYPT, NEW ERA?
Egypt's Military Holds onto Power
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February, 2011, it's been my contention that (1) this was a military coup d'état against the prospect of Mubarak's son taking power and (2) the military brass intend to hold on to power. On the latter point, I wrote in April, 2011: "The soldiers have become far too accustomed to power and the good life to give up these perks. They will do whatever it takes, be it purging Mubarak, throwing his sons in jail, banning his old political party, changing the Constitution or repressing dissent, to keep power."

Full Story


MAN-MADE EMISSIONS & GLOBAL CO2 LEVELS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 197, Aug 7, 2011
OUR COLOSSAL IGNORANCE ON GLOBAL WARMING
By Dennis T. Avery

“It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.” That’s the incredible message Dr. Murry Salby, Chair of Climate Science at the respected Macquarie University in Australia, presented recently to the Sydney Institute.

Salby suggests that the earth’s own warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age (1680) has produced the higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in our atmosphere today. Not the other way around.

Full Story


ENERGY, ECONOMY, TAXES, & PUBLIC DEBT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 196, Aug 6, 2011
U.S. RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN JOBS, REVENUE, & PROSPERITY:
A Vital Part of the Solution to Our Economic &
Employment Crisis Is Right Under Our Feet
By Paul K. Driessen

A frequent refrain during budget and debt ceiling debates is that we need revenue enhancement: higher tax rates, reduced deductions, eliminated credits. But doing this, especially amid today’s massively expanding regulations, will kill more jobs and further reduce government revenues.

There is a better way. Huge revenue sources are literally under our noses, or, more precisely, under our feet.

Full Story


FINANCIAL FUTURE OF THE U.S.A. IN PERIL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 195, Aug 5, 2011
FLIRTING WITH THE GREAT DEPRESSION 2.0
By Alan Caruba

“Credit rating agency S&P has downgraded U.S. debt from AAA, the first debt downgrade in U.S. history, the Associated Press reported.”

When a nation’s debt equals its entire annual gross domestic product, it is bankrupt. It can still produce goods and services, but it will likely encounter fewer customers worldwide, as they too are drawn deeper into their own debt crises.

When it must borrow billions daily just to meet its obligations to other nations and individuals who have purchased its Treasury Notes, it is has reached a point of “moral hazard” that threatens the wealth of every single citizen.

Full Story


"ARAB SPRING" -- PERCEPTIONS IN IRAN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 194, Aug 5, 2011
MIDDLE EASTERN UPHEAVALS: MIXED RESPONSE IN IRAN
By Ali Alfoneh

It is too early to tell whether the revolutions sweeping across the Arab world will prove the long awaited "third wave of democratization" or will merely substitute Islamist totalitarianism for the existing secular, authoritarian regimes. It is clear, however, that no regional regime is immune to their impact, not even the self-proclaimed vanguard of permanent world revolutions, the Islamist regime in Tehran.

Full Story


PALESTINIANS & THE LAW OF STATEHOOD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 193, Aug 5, 2011
THE PALESTINIANS' IMAGINARY STATE
By Dr. Steven J. Rosen

In a few weeks, an overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly will likely vote for collective recognition of a Palestinian state. But which Palestinian state? Of the three Palestinian states the General Assembly could recognize, two are real and arguably could meet the requirements for statehood. But it is the third, purely imaginary one that the Assembly will endorse, one that neither has a functioning government nor meets the requirements of international law.

Full Story


PA PRESIDENT SUBVERTING RESOLUTION 242       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 192, Aug 5, 2011
LAND FOR WAR
By Dr. Efraim Karsh & Asaf Romirowsky

As September, 2011, approaches, many are waiting with bated breath to learn if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver on his threat to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state and seek recognition of it through the United Nations. But, in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization's longstanding solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict — U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 — with unpredictable results.

Full Story


ISLAMIC DOCTRINES, THE JIHAD, & INFIDELS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 191, Aug 4, 2011
"CHRISTIAN TERRORISM"
By Raymond Ibrahim

In light of the Norway terrorist attack, there has been a hail of religious relativism — the idea that, if a "Christian," such as Behring Breivik, commits terrorism, then it is folly to assert that certain Muslim doctrines inspire violence and terror. All becomes relative.

Full Story


WIDESPREAD PROTESTS IN ISRAEL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 190, August 3, 2011
ISRAEL'S COTTAGE CHEESE REBELLION
By Daniel Doron

This Spring's Arab revolts were ignited by rapidly rising food prices, but they soon mutated into political rebellions protesting decades of brutal oppression. Similarly, rising food prices in Israel have led to widespread protests this Summer — dubbed the "cottage-cheese rebellion" — which could grow into an uprising against a dysfunctional political system and an economic system long controlled by monopolies and cartels.

Full Story


VAST IMPLICATIONS FOR ISLAM IN AMERICA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 189, Aug 1, 2011
ANOTHER ISLAMIST SOLDIER TURNS TERRORIST IN TEXAS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The case of U.S. Army Private First Class Nasser Jason Abdo has vast implications for Islam in America, suggesting that Muslims constitute a fifth column and cannot be loyal U.S. citizens or dependable troops in the U.S. Armed Forces. The Abdo case points to the need for additional, much stricter scrutiny of Muslims residing or traveling in the U.S.A., whether serving in the government or defense-related private industry, boarding aircraft, engaging in or seeking to engage in endeavors that affect public health and safety, or seeking employment in government agencies (military or civilian), in defense-related private business enterprises, or in educational institutions (public or private). Such precautionary policies are unfortunate, distasteful and inconvenient, but U.S. national security -- the common safety and security of the American people -- demands no less.

Full Story


TOUGH NEW POWER PLANT REGULATIONS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 188, Aug 1, 2011
NAACP & EPA INFLICT HEAT PROSTRATION & DEATH
This Kind of "Environmental Justice" We Can Do Without
By Niger Innis & Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr.

We remain bogged down in an interminable recession, with intractable unemployment. We have incurred monumental debt. We have created a morass of legislation, regulation, and litigation that ensures old power plants will be gone, replacements won’t be built anytime soon, and “smart meters” will let bureaucrats shut off AC power anytime electricity demand exceeds supply. We are killing jobs, businesses, investment, and innovation – and will soon be killing our own citizens.

America’s workers, poor, and minorities now face the prospect of skyrocketing energy prices and even more unemployment – accompanied by recurrent blackouts, rolling brownouts, misery, heatstroke, and unnecessary deaths during future heat waves.

Full Story


HIGH-TECH, HIGH-YIELD FARMING IN INDIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 187, Aug 1, 2011
FARMER SUICIDES REDUCED BY BIOTECH
By Dennis T. Avery

The world’s farm pesticide death toll has been cut radically with biotech seeds that carry their own internal pesticide. A new study in India has found that biotech cotton has reduced pesticide spraying by 50 percent, and spraying of the most toxic poisons by 70 percent. The reduced spraying is helping avoid “several million cases of pesticide poisoning in India every year.”

Full Story


OBSTACLE TO CCS & COAL-BASED ENERGY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 186, July 31, 2011
WHAT'S REALLY KILLING CARBON CAPTURE & STORAGE?
Bloomberg's Magazine Bemoans Dying Interest in CCS,
While the Boss Hastens Its Demise
By Paul K. Demise

Carbon capture and storage could ensure abundant electricity from coal, while cutting the CO2 emissions [supposedly] “responsible for climate change.” Yet, barely two years after “a sense of determination and common cause” inspired the Obama Energy Department to launch CCS projects, industry is “pulling the plug.”

What could have gone wrong? Environmentalists had “heralded” the projects. “What’s killing carbon capture?” Bloomberg Businessweek wondered.

Full Story


AMERICA'S CURRENT ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 185, July 30, 2011
UNLEASHING AMERICANS
By Alan Caruba

I was born in the midst of the Great Depression and have now lived long enough to be caught in a new one. I know that economists and others say we are in a Recession, but it feels like a Depression to me and to the millions of other Americans who are out of work and being laid off weekly. It feels like one to those who suffered foreclosure on their homes. It feels like one every time we go to the supermarket and gasp in disbelief at the cost of groceries.

Full Story


ELIMINATE UNRWA & THE THREAT IT POSES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 184, July 28, 2011
UNRWA'S ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS
By Arlene Kushner

The propensity for senior UNRWA staff to make inappropriate, incendiary, and highly politicized statements — in stark contrast to the organization's mandate — has long been documented by the Jerusalem-based Center for Near East Policy Research. The case made by UNRWA staff, that such statements are a necessary element of protecting the Palestinian refugees, can be seen to be without justification: Nowhere is "protection" in the political sense part of the UNRWA mandate; UNRWA was originally charged with providing direct relief and work programs, and this was later expanded to include education. Moreover, even if political protection had been mandated, it would not warrant misrepresentations of fact, let alone incitement.

Full Story


BEHRING BREIVIK: FIGHT & DESTROY ISLAM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 183, July 27, 2011
NORWAY'S TERRORISM IN CONTEXT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Scandinavia may look idyllic from a distance, what with royal families and prime ministers almost without security, but it has endured its fair share of violence, from the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme to two school massacres in one year in Finland, one killing eight, the other ten. Anders Behring Breivik's rampage, in other words, was hardly unprecedented.

Full Story


DISASTROUS REPERCUSSIONS OF LIBERALISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 182, July 27, 2011
AMERICA'S CURRENT FISCAL CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE
By Christopher G. Adamo

Behavioral counselors overwhelmingly agree that people cannot break destructive habits without first being made to recognize the harmful nature of their actions, thereby accepting the responsibility and consequences for them. The same is true of societies and, ultimately, governments. Unfortunately, even with an abundance of worldwide chaos serving as proof of the disastrous repercussions of Liberalism, America’s indoctrinated Leftists are at once too arrogant and too ideologically blinded to concede their errors and change course before society around them reaches a point of no return.

Full Story


DEPOPULATION VIA REDUCED FOSSIL FUEL USE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 181, July 25, 2011
MAKING HEAT WAVES DEADLY AGAIN
By Dennis T. Avery

This last heat wave has been sweltering, but that happens. It was even hotter in 1934, 1911, and other “hot” Summers in the past. That’s not extreme weather, it’s “normally abnormal.”

If we listen to our “best and brightest,” we can make heat waves really deadly again. And our cold waves too. Those death tolls will reduce our fossil fuel usage, not to mention population amongst the poor. Is that the Sierra Club strategy, or just an accidental by-product?

Full Story


IS THE GLOBAL WARMING HOAX DEAD?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 180, July 23, 2011
IT'S JUST A HEAT WAVE
By Alan Caruba

The most surprising thing about the current heat wave affecting much of the United States is that no global warming charlatan is claiming that it is the result of carbon dioxide emissions. Since the late 1980s, Americans were assailed with the global warming hoax, until, in November, 2009, the release of emails between the trolls ginning up false “climate models” were exposed.

Full Story


U.S.A. UNPOPULAR IN THE ARAB WORLD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 179, July 23, 2011
ARAB ATTITUDES
By Alan Caruba

According to a recent Zogby poll taken in Arab nations, “The United States is viewed less favorably in much of the Arab world today than it was during the final year of the Bush administration, and President Obama is less popular in the region than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

Full Story


COSMIC RAYS & GLOBAL COOLING       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 178, July 19, 2011
THE NEXT CLIMATE BOMBSHELL
By Dennis T. Avery

Get ready for the next big bombshell in the man-made global warming debate. The world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory — CERN in Geneva, Switzerland — will soon announce that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in the earth’s atmosphere. More cosmic rays mean a cooler planet. Thus, the solar source of the earth’s long, moderate 1,500-year climate cycle will finally be explained.

Full Story


DISCRIMINATION IN FAVOR OF MUSLIMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 177, July 17, 2011
BERKELEY-CAIR ISLAMOPHOBIA REPORT:
"NO THERE, THERE"
By Stephen Schwartz

As regards fighting ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and discrimination in the U.S.A., Islamists' divergence from American constitutional standards has made the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and its constituency of American Muslims indoctrinated in fear, perfect prey for the ideological operators who have guided identity politics on the West Coast for two generations. In a phrase that CAIR might have thought would delight a University of California-Berkeley audience, the Islamist organization has designated its "vision" as "utopian." On the West Coast, academic Islamist argument against "Islamophobia" gives way to demagogic Islamist propaganda, which will, if history is our guide, soon be employed to justify other, more "positive" pro-Muslim actions, including special compensation, employment quotas, and similar "reparations" for American Muslims. UC-Berkeley Islamist's definition of Islamophobia as a phenomenon requiring a radical response could prevail. In this manner, CAIR's deal with the Berkeley political and cultural Left could pay off handsomely if unopposed.

Full Story


THE U.S.A IS LOSING JOBS BY THE THOUSANDS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 176, July 16, 2011
FLATLINING THE ECONOMY
By Alan Caruba

The U.S. economy is going to flatline all the way through the next election in November, 2012. It’s going nowhere and prospects thereafter are dim as well.

Millions of Americans, including those so deluded to think that a guy who had never run a business in his life could actually run a nation, put him in the White House. Let me rephrase that. He has run a nation…right into the ground.

Full Story


THE RIGHT TO ASSOCIATE & NOT ASSOCIATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 175, July 15, 2011
RIGHT TO WORK: A FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOM
By Marx Mix

Now more than ever, it is time to push home the point that all American workers in all 50 states should be granted the full freedom of association — which includes the freedom not to associate — in the area of union membership.

Full Story


PUBLIC SCHOOLS & AMERICAN LIBERALISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 174, July 14, 2011
ATLANTA SCHOOL SYSTEM SCANDAL: LIBERALISM ON PARADE
By Christopher G. Adamo

In the wake of the horrendous cheating scandal that has been exposed in the Atlanta, Georgia, public school system, in which nearly two hundred teachers and high-level school officials doctored and falsified standardized tests in order to create the impression of teacher competence and student proficiency, the primary focus is on who to blame and how to punish them. But that does not even count as a good start. The aftershocks in Atlanta are only beginning.

Full Story


CONCERNS AFRICANS RAISE ABOUT BIOTECH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 173, July 12, 2011
FARMING, BIOTECHNOLOGY, & FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA:
MORE BOULDERS IN AFRICA'S FARM PATH
By Dennis T. Avery

If Africa puts up insurmountable roadblocks to food security through modern agriculture, it risks starvation of its own people and loss of wildlife habitat. It seems as if First World activists and the African powerful (who aren’t going to starve in any case) are in collusion to keep Africa unstable and hungry. This will, ironically, also keep them burdened with high birth rates driven by the parents’ famine fears.

Full Story


ENVIRONMENTALISM VERSUS HUMANITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 172, July 9, 2011
THE GREENS JUST LOVE US TO DEATH
By Alan Caruba

My general recommendation is to avoid anything that has the word “green” attached to it. You are being conned into spending more for something than necessary. Learn to love the concept of synthetic. Plastic, a product of petroleum, is synthetic, and we use it everywhere for everything. It is one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Full Story


GOVERNMENT SPENDING OUT OF CONTROL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 171, July 7, 2011
DEBT CEILING: AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS
By Christopher G. Adamo

While it is important not to offer excuses that might enable Congressional Republicans to retreat on the debt ceiling battle, the American people need to realize just how much pressure the Liberal Democratic political opposition is putting on them, in hopes of forcing a capitulation. However, the primary reason Democrats are waging this all out war is not merely to ensure a continuation of the current bloat and excesses of government. Rather, they know that a Republican cave-in would be their best central strategy for a Democratic Party rebound in the 2012 federal elections, likely guaranteeing Democratic President Barack Obama’s reelection, as well as major Republican losses in both houses of Congress.

Full Story


ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY IN THE U.S.A.       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 170, July 5, 2011
NO MYSTERY TO NON-RECOVERY
By Dennis T. Avery

I’m tired of reading about the American economy’s “mysterious” non-recovery. The lack of recovery isn’t mysterious at all. The economy hates uncertainty, and President Barack Hussein Obama has introduced more economic uncertainty than we’ve had since Presidents Herbert Clark Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt started violating the law of supply and demand 80 years ago.

Full Story


THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROTECTION RACKET       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 169, July 2, 2011
THE UN'S CLIMATE OF DESPERATION:
Scandals, Deceit, Stable Temperatures, & Real Problems
Minimize Global Concern About Climate
By David Rothbard & Craig Rucker

This commentary underscores what is really going on in Europe and the rest of the world with regard to the Kyoto Protocol and the harmful consequences of continuing to pursue policies that inevitably deprive us of reliable, affordable energy – for no environmental benefit. It explains why the United States should, under no circumstances, agree to any UN or EPA climate change protection racket.

Full Story


THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 168, July 2, 2011
THERE IS NO FIRST AMENDMENT WITHOUT A SECOND AMENDMENT
By Alan Caruba

When we celebrate the Fourth of July, let’s keep in mind that the first Americans won their independence from England with the force of arms. It was, in fact, a British effort in 1775 to confiscate military arms they believed were stored in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, that sparked the War of the American Revolution, or Revolutionary War.

The Founding Fathers were so aware of the need for an armed citizenry that, after ensuring freedom of religion, speech, press and the right to peacefully assemble in the First Amendment, the Second guaranteed their right to bear arms.

Full Story


MEDIA ATTEMPT TO DISCREDIT AN OPPONENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 167, June 30, 2011
MICHELE BACHMANN SHOWS HOW TO ENGAGE MEDIA
By Christopher G. Adamo

Let the pretenders continue with their platitudes about the general sincerity of Fox News reporter Chris Wallace and the “unintentional” nature of his recent insult to Michele Bachmann. Only the hopelessly naive will buy any of it. What viewers witnessed during Wallace’s June 26, 2011, interview of Bachmann was the initial salvo in what the Democrat/media propaganda machine plans to be the total political annihilation of one of its most worthy, and feared, opponents.

Full Story


AMERICA: A NATION IN ITS DEATH THROES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 166, June 26, 2011
SPENDING INSANELY WHILE THE ECONOMY COLLAPSES
By Alan Caruba

The 2008-2009 financial crisis was a wake-up call. The American nation has been through such crises in the past, including the Great Depression from 1929 until the start of World War Two in 1941. The present administration, Congress, and Federal Reserve System have responded in much the same way their counterparts of earlier eras did during their tenures, and, not surprisingly, the economy has not responded to a flood of “quantitative easing,” governmental make-work programs, and similar efforts.

Full Story


PRECEDENT VERSUS ENVIRONMENTALISTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 165, June 26, 2011
PRECEDENT SUPPORTS CLIMATE SKEPTICS
By Dennis T. Avery

The skeptics of man-made global warming have now created an important legal precedent for rejecting man-made global warming alarmism. Last week, the Montana State Supreme Court denied a petition demanding state regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Full Story


EPA "MERCURY & AIR TOXICS" RULES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 164, June 25, 2011
CLEARING THE AIR: TRYING TO CORRECT THE DISINFORMATION
ABOUT "MERCURY & AIR TOXICS"
By Paul K. Driessen

As the Environmental Protection Agency ramps up its campaign to enlist political, religious, minority, and other groups to support its “mercury and air toxics” rules, it is important that knowledgeable persons really clear the air, that they so so by responding to the blatant disinformation disseminated by environmentalist ideologues, government agency bureaucrats, Liberal Leftist politicians, and dishonest university professors engaging in fraudulent research. Also, the attention of the American public needs to be called to the ways the EPA rules will hammer America’s economic, employment, and healthcare systems.

Full Story


ISLAMISM & AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 163, June 24, 2011
GEORGETOWN & THE ISLAMIST MONEY CHANGERS
By Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) at Georgetown University, is the leading defender of radical Islam in U.S. higher education -- if not in the entire Western academy. He and his enterprise have returned to the public eye with the exposure that, in 2006-2007, they were offered $325,000 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to hold a conference on Islamophobia at the University.

Full Story


GENUINE CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE NEEDED       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 162, June 22, 2011
JON HUNTSMAN, JR.: EVERYTHING "REAGAN"
EXCEPT THE SUBSTANCE
By Christopher G. Adamo

How is it that, in 2011, every aspiring Republican presidential contender seeks to cast himself as the new incarnation of Ronald Reagan, a president who in his time was maligned like no other? The reality of the Reagan legacy that ultimately endured is that of a pillar of strength and Conservatism. Ronald Reagan was responsible for the awakening of America to its looming fiscal crisis, along with his pivotal role, abetted by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union. But to his contemporaries, even including many who called themselves “Republicans,” he was regularly characterized as everything from bumbling idiot to bellicose madman.

Full Story


THE "ARAB SPRING" REVOLUTIONS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 161, June 21, 2011
WEAKENING WASHINGTON'S MIDDLE EAST INFLUENCE
By Lee Smith

Trailing the wave of revolutions that began sweeping through the Arabic-speaking Middle East this January, I recently traveled in the region, visiting some of the capitals where what we have come to call the "Arab Spring" has hit.

After a month in North Africa, the Levant and the Persian Gulf countries, I am still unsure what these uprisings have in common, if anything. The regimes that suffered these blows are themselves different from place to place, for all authoritarian regimes are authoritarian in their own way — Husni Mubarak was no Saddam Hussein, nor even a Bashar al-Assad.

Full Story


DID THE ZIONISTS STEAL PALESTINIAN LAND?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 160, June 21, 2011
BUILDING THE STATE OF ISRAEL: THE MOST PEACEABLE
IN-MIGRATION & STATE CREATION IN HISTORY
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Zionists stole Palestinian land: that's the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: "Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist." The accusation of theft also undermines Israel's position internationally.

But is this accusation true?

Full Story


PERNICIOUS ASSAULT ON THE USE OF BPA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 159, June 21, 2011
BANNING BPA WILL KILL PEOPLE:
THE BPA FILE, PART SIX
By Alan Caruba

The lies being told about Bisphenol-A (BPA) via the print and broadcast media -- and via the Internet -- are a destructive tsunami intended to ban BPA's use. If successful, people will die.

Full Story


VIOLENT JIHAD IN THE PATH OF ALLAH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 158, June 20, 2011
AL-QA'IDA'S ZAWAHIRI, BIGGER THREAT THAN OSAMA?
By Raymond Ibrahim

Now that Ayman Zawahiri has assumed leadership of al-Qa'ida, it is important to end the widespread perception that he is a dour intellectual who is disconnected from young, would-be jihadists. The fact is, Zawahiri is a wily, dangerous, and imposing leader who should be considered no less of a threat — and perhaps even more so — than his predecessor.

Full Story


BARACK OBAMA'S MANIFEST INCOMPETENCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 157, June 19, 2011
OBAMA WILL RESIGN & FOR GOOD REASON
By Alan Caruba

I always thought it was creepy the way Barack Hussein Obama has repeatedly referred to the likelihood of his being a one-term President. It is as if he knew, even as he campaigned in 2008, that all the loose ends and unanswered questions about his life would eventually disqualify him.

Full Story


DECADES OF COOLER GLOBAL TEMPERATURES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 156, June 19, 2011
WHERE'S THE "SCIENCE STORY OF THE CENTURY"?
By Dennis T. Avery

Is it the “Science Story of the Century” or the best kept American media secret of the year? Just-announced heavyweight new studies from the U.S. National Solar Observatory tell us to expect a long quiet period for the sun — and decades of cooler global temperatures.

The Register in London headlined, “Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade . . . which could mean that the Earth — far from facing a global warming problem — is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.”

Full Story


HOW TRUSTWORTHY ARE ISLAMIST LEADERS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 155, June 17, 2011
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LEADER CAUGHT LYING
WHILE SWEARING TO GOD
By Raymond Ibrahim

If top Islamist leaders have no problem lying about silly things to fellow Muslims — while swearing to God — how trustworthy are any of their words and promises to Western and Israeli leaders, that is, the hated infidels?

Full Story


TRIPOLI -- A BASE FOR ISLAMISTS?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 154, June 13, 2011
LEBANON'S ISLAMIST STRONGHOLD
By Dr. Hilal Khashan

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has apparently retained the hope of a military return to Lebanon, from where he summarily withdrew in 2005, following the Rafiq Hariri assassination. In a 2008 interview with a Lebanese newspaper, he accused the northern city of Tripoli of becoming a base for Islamists who posed a direct threat to Syria's security. More recently, Rifat Eid, head of Tripoli's Alawite Arab Democratic Party, described the City as the "Lebanese Kandahar."

Full Story


OBAMA & U.S. POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 153, June 12, 2011
NO SHORT-TERM MIDDLE EAST SOLUTIONS
By Alan Caruba

Regarding the Arabs and the Middle East, if you have had the feeling that the Obama administration has been spectacularly inept as it takes its turn dealing with this set foreign policy problems, you’re right.

So long as Obama is President of the U.S.A., the U.S. government will pursue unrealistic and often stunningly stupid policies and actions, as regards Islam and Muslim nations.

Full Story


ONGOING POWER STRUGGLE IN ISLAMIST IRAN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 152, June 9, 2011
ALL AHMADINEJAD'S MEN
By Ali Alfoneh

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's sacking of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has opened another chapter in the ongoing power struggle between the Iranian President and the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamene'i. Interpersonal as it may seem, this confrontation symbolizes the struggle between the Islamic Republic's old elites and Ahmadinejad's burgeoning patronage network, which challenges their authority. How has the President managed to build such a formidable power base? Who are the key members of his coterie, and will they enable their benefactor to outsmart the Supreme Leader to become Iran's effective ruler?

Full Story


GROWING OPPOSITION TO LIBERAL STATISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 151, June 7, 2011
WHY 2012 MAY BE STARKLY DIFFERENT FROM 1996
By Christopher G. Adamo

Ever since the elections of 2010, the propagandists of the political Left have been proclaiming America’s shift back to the “Middle,” meaning away from the fervent Conservatism that undergirded last Fall’s landslide. Sadly, even some on the political Right have accepted such drivel, and, consequently, sought to soften the strident tone of the 2009-2010 Conservative grassroots revolt against the encroaching Leftwing Liberal statist monster that threatens the American nation.

Full Story


YEMEN AS AN EXPORTER OF VIOLENCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 150, June 7, 2011
THE EMPTYING OF YEMEN
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

For the first time in its exceedingly long history, Yemen now threatens the outside world. It does so in two principal ways.

First, even before the current political upheaval began there on January 15, 2011, violence emanating out of Yemen impinged on Westerners. President Ali Abdullah Saleh's weak government controls only a small part of the country. With Saleh's apparent abdication on June 4, when he traveled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, the Yemini central government's writ will further diminish, and Yemen is set to become an even greater exporter of violence.

But it's the second danger that staggers the mind: an unprecedented emptying out of Yemen, with millions of unskilled and uninvited refugees, first in the Middle East, then in the West, many of them Islamists, demanding economic asylum.

Full Story


DECENTRALIZATION OF POLITICAL POWER       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 149, June 7, 2011
A WHIFF OF SECESSION & NULLIFICATION
By Alan Caruba

That a Tea Party movement sprang to life in the midst of the protests against Obamacare and then was instrumental in transferring political power in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 election from the Democrats to the Republicans cannot be dismissed. The American people are increasingly wary of the U.S. central government, particularly since it has burdened them with more debt in the last three years than in the entire prior history of the American nation.

In October, 2011, Pelican Publishing Company will publish Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, in which a number of scholars, edited by Donald W. Livingston, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, examine the implications of secession, possibly by regional groupings of states, from the present Federal Union, the United States of America.

Full Story


WESTERN MINDSET VERSUS SHARIA MINDSET       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 148, June 6, 2011
MUSLIM WOMAN SEEKS TO REVIVE
THE INSTITUTION OF SEX-SLAVERY
By Raymond Ibrahim

Last week witnessed popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini boast about how Islam allows Muslims to buy and sell conquered infidel women, so that "When I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her."

This week's depraved anachronism comes from a Muslim woman — Salwa al-Mutairi, a political activist and former parliamentary candidate for Kuwait's government, no less: She, too, seeks to "revive the institution of sex-slavery."

Full Story


OUTBREAK OF FOOD-BORNE BACTERIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 147, June 5, 2011
WHEN ANTI-TECHNOLOGY KILLS
By Dennis T. Avery

This week’s headlines: Another huge, awful outbreak of food-borne bacteria. This time the worst, so far, in modern history; perhaps 2000 sickened, and about 20 dead. At least 500 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome. That means liver damage, and potential death from kidney failure. More than 1000 cases of severe diarrhea. Usually, it is the very young and the elderly who are most at risk of serious consequences, but this outbreak targeted young adults, mostly women.

Full Story


WHEN THE DOLLAR BECOMES WORTHLESS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 146, June 4, 2011
DESTROYING THE AMERICAN DOLLAR
By Alan Caruba

Something I never thought I would ever see in my former hometown, a wealthy New Jersey suburb of New York City, was a Dollar Store, but one opened recently in a former supermarket. Dollar Stores are giving Wal-Mart, Target, and similar outlets a run for their money and it’s not hard to see why. The local one has just about everything you could need and all for astonishing low prices.

In countless ways, people are looking to save money these days. The looming problem, however, is the question of what happens when Americans wake up to learn that even a dollar can no longer buy anything?

Full Story


PROPAGANDA OFFENSIVE AGAINST ISRAEL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 145, June 3, 2011
MANZAR FOROOHAR: THE CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATION'S
SECRET WEAPON
By Lee Kaplan

When the California Faculty Association (CFA) adopted a resolution in 2009 condemning Israel for its military incursion into Gaza, it reinforced the fear that academic unions would be the next front in an ongoing propaganda offensive against the Jewish State. Amidst the ensuing controversy, one of the key players in the resolution's formation — Manzar Foroohar, an Iranian immigrant and history professor specializing in the modern Middle East and Latin America at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo — came to the fore.

Full Story


RESOLVING THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 144, June 1, 2011
SAREE MAKDISI'S ONE-STATE SOLUTION:
A DELUSIVE "JUST PEACE"
By Gideon Spitzer

Despite his criticism of the two-state solution and its impracticability as a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saree Makdisi suggested few realistic strategies to implement a single state. His lecture rested upon pipe dreams of Israeli-Palestinian unity, all undergirded by the implicit desire to undercut and destroy the Jewish nature of the State of Israel. Like other anti-Israel academics before him, Professor Makdisi has an uncanny ability to propagate double standards and fallacy as fact. The University of Pennsylvania and its Middle East Center would do well to invite specialists in Middle East Studies capable of offering straightforward, unbiased analyses of the region's problems, rather than those from unrelated disciplines whose principal qualification, so to speak, is their hostility to Israel.

Full Story


AMERICA'S DECLINE OVER THE PAST 50 YEARS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 143, June 1, 2011
AMERICA AT ITS PINNACLE
By Christopher G. Adamo

Sadly, President Barack Hussein Obama is but a reflection of America’s orchestrated decline. It is almost inconceivable that a nation which rose to the occasion and accomplished the impossible a half-century ago could so rapidly be reduced to what it is today, a lesser people, with lower expectations for their future. Otherwise, they would never have so disgraced themselves and their heritage by elevating such a man to the nation’s highest office, based on his excess of absurd promises and empty platitudes.

Full Story


CHRISTIANS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 142, June 1, 2011
RAPED & RANSACKED IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
By Raymond Ibrahim

Plundering the possessions, lives, and dignity of Christians in the Islamic world: is this a random affair, a product of the West's favorite offenders — poverty, ignorance, grievance — or is it systematic, complete with ideological backing?

Full Story


DELEGITIMIZATION-OF-ISRAEL CAMPAIGN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 141, May 31, 2011
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS VERSUS ISRAEL
By Ben-Dror Yemini

On January 5, 2011, after months of heated public debate, the Israeli Knesset established a parliamentary committee of inquiry to probe foreign funding of Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the international Israel delegitimization campaign. Was this a draconian, McCarthyist encroachment on the freedom of press, as claimed by Leftwing groups and politicians, or a legitimate attempt by a besieged constitutional democracy to fend off hostile intervention in its internal affairs, as argued by the legislation's proponents?

Full Story


BENT ON DESTROYING THE AMERICAN NATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 140, May 29, 2011
600 MORE DAYS OF OBAMA
By Alan Caruba

As of May 30, 2011, America has 600 days more of rule by President Barack Hussein Obama.

He is the 44th President and, while we have had incompetent Presidents in the past, we have never had one determined to destroy the American nation. It has taken more than two years for most sentient Americans to grasp this extraordinary threat. He has not solved problems. He has exacerbated them.

Full Story


CLIMATE LEGISLATION & ITS COSTLY IMPACT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 139, May 29, 2011
GLOBAL WARMING NEWS FROM THE BRITS
By Dennis T. Avery

Bennie Peiser, of Britain’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, offers some of his latest news, as regards environmentalist claims of man-made global warming and the British plans for governmental action to cope with the "problem," including requiring greater reliance on renewable energy sources and compelling businesses, landlords, and homeowners to drastically reduse emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Full Story


ISLAMISTS USE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 138, May 26, 2011
ISLAMISTS PROJECT ISLAM'S WORST TRAITS ONTO CHRISTIANS
By Raymond Ibrahim

In recent weeks, we saw how the Muslim world's obsession with gaining converts evinces, in the words of one Muslim intellectual, an "inferiority complex" — a deadly one at that.

As it happens, inferiority complex is not the only psychological ailment besetting the Muslim world: some Muslims are also projecting the worst traits of Islam onto the beleaguered Christian communities living among them.

Full Story


THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN 2012       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 137, May 26, 2011
WHY AMERICA NEEDS TEXAS GOVERNOR RICK PERRY
TO RUN FOR U.S. PRESIDENT IN THE 2012 ELECTION
By Christopher G. Adamo

So far in this presidential election cycle, the Republicans are off to a less than rousing start. Primarily, their weakness results from an inability to coalesce around a single believable Conservative candidate. An enormous and highly visible momentum is needed to rally the nation in a coordinated push against the Obama agenda. And while several credible and sincere Conservatives are in the race, none among them has yet been able to convince any major segment of the population of a unique ability to do so.

Full Story


ISLAMIST INSENSITIVITY & ARROGANCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 136, May 24, 2011
MOOSA & THE MADRASSAS
By Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

At the end of a week in which U.S. military forces in Pakistan carried out the execution of Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban declared that the death of "Sheikh Osama bin Laden will give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders in this critical phase of jihad," a stunning display of Islamist insensitivity and arrogance took place at the University of California, Berkeley. On Friday, May 6, 2011, Ebrahim Moosa, a South African Muslim and Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, speaking at a UC Berkeley workshop on "Religious Norms in the Public Sphere," defended Deobandism, the madrassa-based radical ideology that inspires the Taliban.

Full Story


U.S. COURT CIVIL JUDGEMENT AGAINST SYRIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 135, May 24, 2011
DAMASCUS ON TRIAL
By David Schenker

On September 26, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, rendered a $413 million civil judgment against the government of Syria for its provision of support and material aid to the killers of two American contractors in Iraq. The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that Syria "supported, protected, harbored, and subsidized" the Iraq-based terrorist group headed by Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, thus being culpable for the beheading of two U.S. contractors by this group.

Syria's appeal is pending, but should it lose, the victims' families will undoubtedly endeavor to attach Syrian assets in the United States and abroad.

Full Story


THE WEST MUST HELP OVERTHROW AL-ASSAD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 134, May 24, 2011
FIN DE REGIME IN SYRIA?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The revolt in Syria offers great opportunities, humanitarian and geopolitical. Western states should quickly and robustly seize the moment to dispatch strongman Bashar al-Assad and his accomplices. Many benefits will follow when they reach their appointed dustbin of history.

Full Story


CLIMATE CHANGE & FOOD PRODUCTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 133, May 24, 2011
ARE CLIMATE MODELS LYING ABOUT FOOD TOO?
By Dennis T. Avery

Computer models at Stanford University have just “told” us that man-made global warming has already sapped some of the yield potential from our food crops. They say wheat yields would have been 5.5 percent higher since 1980 without the earthly warming; corn yields would have been 3.8 percent higher.

Drought, not temperature, has been the real enemy of food production, around the world and over time. The big droughts have come more often during the “Little Ice Ages” than during the predominantly good weather of the global warmings. The warmings have been the good times, for humans, crops, and wildlife.

Full Story


ISLAMIST ATTACKS ON EGYPT'S COPTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 132, May 23, 2011
CONVERSION, ADULTERY, & SAVAGERY STRIKE EGYPT
By Raymond Ibrahim

All the death and destruction recently visited upon the Copts in Egypt was performed in the name of a "convert" whose only motivation for converting to Islam was to gain an advantage against her Christian husband.

Many Egyptian media commentators have rightly asked: what sort of Muslims are these who kill and destroy on behalf of an adulterous and bigamist woman — two great crimes in Islam? Apparently, for some, gaining converts is more important than actually upholding Islamic principles; for others, any excuse to attack Christians and Churches, even in the name of a nominal Muslim, is good enough.

Full Story


MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD'S ISLAMIST AGENDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 131, May 22, 2011
WHITEWASHING THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
By Janet Doerflinger

How well did Middle East Studies Professors at American universities interpret the Egyptian uprising, particularly the risk of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power? Among fifteen prominent professors who commented publicly on the uprising before and immediately after Mubarak's ouster, fully thirteen believed that overthrowing Mubarak would lead to constitutional democracy, or liberal democracy, in Egypt and that the Muslim Brotherhood would play a constructive role. Instead of explaining the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist agenda to the American public, they naively discounted it.

Full Story


GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TO BAN BISPHENOL-A       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 130, May 22, 2011
BOGUS SEX SCARES USED TO BAN BPA:
THE BPA FILE, PART FIVE
By Alan Caruba

There is a global campaign to ban bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that has been safely used for more than a half century to protect metal and plastic containers for food and liquid against spoilage and the resulting hazard to health.

Every day, somewhere in the nation and the world, there is a constant repetition of lies regarding BPA They frequently target the fears of mothers of newborn infants, but also allege a wide variety of other health threats, including denial of a healthy sex life for men and women.

Full Story


POLITICS OF U.S. TAX & ENERGY POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 129, May 21, 2011
OIL "SUBSIDY" & "TAX BREAKS: NONSENSE:
Think Repealing Oil Industry Tax Incentives
Will Increase Federal Revenues? Think Again!
By Paul K. Driessen

President Obama frequently says Americans “need to end our $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to oil companies.” The latest bill supported by Democrats would have repealed some $2 billion of what Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat - New York) and others call “subsidies” and “special tax breaks” for Big Oil.

That’s baloney – shameless demagoguery that will inflict further damage on our struggling economy.

Full Story


TWISTED SAGA OF ISRAEL'S BIRTH AS A STATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 128, May 20, 2011
ABBAS'S FABLE
By Dr. Efraim Karsh

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Mahmoud Abbas, the socalled "moderate" PLO Chairman and President of the Palestinian National Authority, turns the saga of Israel's birth upside down. He says not a word of the Jewish acceptance of Palestinian Arab statehood, as part of the UN partition resolution of November, 1947, let alone the violent Palestinian response to the resolution. Instead, he reminisces on his childhood in an attempt to turn aggressors into hapless victims and vice versa.

Full Story


A PROBLEM WITH OBAMA'S SPEECH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 127, May 20, 2011
OBAMAS MIDDLE EAST SPEECH: SO BALANCED, IT GOES NOWHERE
By Raymond Ibrahim

One of the problems with Obama's Middle East speech was that parts of it were so deliberately balanced — so meant to appease all sides — that they go nowhere. For example, look at the portions where he discusses democracy in the Middle East versus the alternative — Islamist rule, which he does not name. One sentence seems to say that a "true" democracy is necessary, only to be followed by one that seems open to Islamist rule, and so on.

Full Story


MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS IN TURKEY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 126, May 19, 2011
TURKEY'S CHRISTIANS UNDER SIEGE
By Dr. John Eibner

The brutal murder of the head of Turkey's Catholic Church, Bishop Luigi Padovese, on June 3, 2010, has rattled the country's small, diverse, and hard-pressed Christian community. The 62-year-old Bishop, who spearheaded the Vatican's efforts to improve Muslim-Christian relations in Turkey, was stabbed repeatedly at his Iskenderun home by his driver and bodyguard Murat Altun, who concluded the slaughter by decapitating Padovese and shouting, "I killed the Great Satan. Allahu Akhbar!" He then told the police that he had acted in obedience to a "command from God."

Full Story


"DUMBING DOWN" OF U.S. EDUCATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 125, May 18, 2011
THE UNITED STATES OF STUPID
By Alan Caruba

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report titled A Nation at Risk, a report that documented nationwide failure in American elementary and secondary schools. Not much has changed since then and the federal takeover of school curriculums and testing methods has mercilessly continued with the Bush administration’s "No Child Left Behind" and the Obama administration’s "Race to the Top."

They are the top-down approaches to learning that have played a large part in the continual “dumbing-down” of American education. Once the province of local school boards, innovative schools and individual teachers, the education of children has been taken over by Big Government.

Full Story


GOVERNING ELITES & ACCOUNTABILITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 124, May 18, 2011
REVENGE OF THE "RULING CLASS"
By Christopher G. Adamo

Accountability for all political officeholders, from the national down to the local level in the smallest townships, is key to any restoration of the greatness of America. And those who strive against it, regardless of the party affiliation they find most convenient, must be relegated to the ranks of “unfit” to hold office, whether they be wolves in sheep’s clothing, or are merely naive and sufficiently unprincipled to sacrifice their core values for a proverbial “place at the table.”

Full Story


U.S. POTENTIAL HYDROCARBON ENERGY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 123, May 17, 2011
RANTS, LIES, SUBSIDIES, & JOB-KILLING POLICIES:
How the U.S. Government Pursues Anti-Energy Policies
That Kill Jobs, Wealth, Revenue, & People
By Paul K. Driessen

Oil “reserves” are what can actually be produced at today’s prices, with existing technologies, and under current laws and regulations. America has vast oil, gas, and coal resources – several centuries of potential hydrocarbon energy. We certainly have the technology to extract it, especially at $100 a barrel. What we don’t have are laws and regulations that allow us to do so.

Full Story


WHICH CAME FIRST, BIN LADEN OR THE JIHAD?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 122, May 15, 2011
OSAMA BIN LADEN: CHICKEN OR EGG?
By Raymond Ibrahim

To posit the significance of Osama bin Laden's demise, we must first decide which came first — the chicken or the egg? Quaint as it is, this question is fundamentally an inquiry into the nature of cause and effect. In our context, did Osama bin Laden "create" the idea of jihad, or did the centuries-old doctrine of jihad — supplemented by Koranic verses to "strike terror into the heart of infidels" (8:12) — create him?

Full Story


RAMADAN'S IDEALISTIC PRONOUNCEMENTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 121, May 15, 2011
TARIQ RAMADAN DISCOVERS HIS INNER FLOWER CHILD
By Jonathan Gelbert

It is no exaggeration to say that the world would be better off if everyone adhered to Tariq Ramadan's notions of humility, respect, and consistency. Such idealistic pronouncements, however, only serve to obfuscate the real issues facing the world today. It will take more than words, for instance, to stop the persecution of Christians across the Muslim world, the violence directed at Israel, the export of Wahhabi supremacism from Saudi Arabia, and the brutal Iranian theocracy. Ramadan would have done well to explain how his lofty "philosophy of pluralism" can be brought down to earth and used in real solutions to society's most intractable problems.

Full Story


OBAMA & U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 120, May 15, 2011
OBAMA VERSUS ISRAEL
By Alan Caruba

Is Obama a Muslim? Does Obama hate Israel? Will Israel be attacked again? Will Iran nuke Israel? Has Maghreb and Middle Eastern turmoil flummoxed the U.S. White House? Why did Obama bow to Saudi Arabia’s King? Questions, questions, questions?

Watching U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama try to pick winners and losers in the Middle East would be amusing, if it were not so deadly serious.

Full Story


ISLAMISTS IN EGYPT ATTACK & KILL COPTICS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 119, May 14, 2011
MUSLIM "INFERIORITY COMPLEX" KILLS CHRISTIANS
By Raymond Ibrahim

Days ago in Egypt, throngs of Muslims (henceforth, "Islamists"), estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed — some shot by snipers atop rooftops — 232 injured; three churches were set aflame to cries of "Allahu Akbar," while Coptic homes were looted and torched.

Full Story


PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD VIA UN DECISION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 118, May 11, 2011
ABBAS VERSUS OBAMA
By Dr. Steven J. Rosen

Having sidelined Barack Obama's peace initiative by refusing to return to the negotiations table without apriori Israeli concessions, the Palestinian leadership seeks to secure an international declaration of statehood for Palestine at the next UN General Assembly session in September, 2011. This "date certain" strategy, whereby the Palestinians' entitlement to a state will be fulfilled by the world powers, has long been preferred by the Palestinian leadership to any arduous, bilateral negotiation with Israel, which would require painful concessions. The Palestinians enjoy wide support in many European capitals, and they know that the Obama administration is close to their positions on many of the core issues. So forcing the statehood demand into a multilateral forum can entice governments into satisfying the Palestinian aspirations by a fixed date.

Full Story


FEWER SUNSPOTS PREDICT COLDER CLIMATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 117, May 9, 2011
MAUNDER MINIMUM 1740: REPLAY IN 2020?
By Dennis T. Avery

A reader recently pointed out a fascinating temperature comparison — between 1700 AD and today. He marked two sections of the world’s oldest temperature record -- Central England Yearly Average Temperature 1660–2008: The first section showed our famous recent temperature surge from 1976–1998. He also marked a similar strong temperature surge from AD 1688–1738.

The killer in the comparison is that the temperature surge after 1688 was followed by a sudden plunge into one of the coldest periods in the entire Little Ice Age! The cold of 1739-1740 was called The Great Frost, and it devastated Europe from Italy to Iceland.

The linkage? The Great Frost followed a period of very few sunspots — the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715). Today, we know that fewer sunspots predict colder temperatures, and the modern world has just undergone a similar dearth of sunspots, from 2007 to 2011.

Full Story


ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA FROM ACADEMIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 116, May 8, 2011
RADICAL ISLAM AT UC BERKELY LAW
By Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

The exploitation of the University of California's Bay Area law schools as a platform for Arab and Islamist propaganda continues.

Full Story


PAKISTAN, THE ISI, & OSAMA BIN LADEN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 115, May 8, 2011
THE PAKISTANI PIT OF DECEPTION
By Alan Caruba

Even Pakistanis do not believe that their political and military leaders did not know Osama bin Laden was living, as one columnist put it, “wrapped in the bosom of the Pakistani security establishment.”

Cyril Almeida, writing in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, a few days after the killing of bin Laden, noted that, when the question is asked privately, “No one will say anything but, yes, they knew he was there.”

Full Story


PROMOTING FEAR OF ISLAMOPHOBIA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 114, May 5, 2011
PUSHING "ISLAMOPHOBIA" AT UCLA
By Judith Greblya

Should an academic lecture on Sharia (Islamic law) become a platform for promoting fear of "Islamophobia"? This is exactly what occurred on April 14, 2011, when the University of California, Los Angeles, held the third and final lecture from Khaled Abou El Fadl — Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law and Chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA — in the series, "Sharia Watch: A View from the Inside." The lecture was co-sponsored by UCLA's School of Law, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Journal for Islamic and Near Eastern Law, and Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program.

Full Story


A REALISTIC U.S. POLICY TOWARD PAKISTAN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 113, May 4, 2011
U.S.-PAKISTAN RELATIONS IN DECLINE
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

What we should do about the crisis in relations between the U.S. and Pakistani governments:  Give up on the pretence that the two governments are allies and treat Pakistan – with its many madrassahs, its Islamist military leadership, and its rogue intelligence service – as a danger zone. Adopt a policy of containment vis-à-vis the Islamism coming out of Pakistan, rewarding cooperation and punishing hostile acts. This approach permits Washington flexibly to collaborate or confront, as circumstances warrant and as U.S. foreign and national security policy requires change.

Full Story


UNDERWATER VOLCANOES HEATING THE SEAS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 112, May 4, 2011
VOLCANO HEATS HIGH-MOUNTAIN LAKE TO 108 DEGREES.
Now Imagine What a Few Thousand Underwater Volcanoes Could Do.
By Robert W. Felix

Underwater volcanoes are heating the seas. We still have a lot to learn about underwater volcanoes, but, while we're waiting, please stop blaming humans for heating the seas. We have nothing to do with it.

Full Story


STORMS UNLEASHED BY THE "ARAB SPRING"       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 111, May 3, 2011
WHAT IS ISRAEL'S NEXT MOVE IN THE NEW MIDDLE EAST?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

In recent months, the Middle East has been set aflame by democratic uprisings, popular protests, brutal crackdowns, political upheaval and international military intervention, shattering conventional wisdom about the region. Israel — surrounded by a newly unstable Arab world and confronting a Palestinian march toward statehood — faces uncertainty on every front. How should Israel weather the storms unleashed by the Arab Spring?

Full Story


INDIA'S INTERESTS IN AFGHANISTAN       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 110, May 3, 2011
INDIA'S CHANGING ROLE: THE AFGHANISTAN CONFLICT
By Dr. Harsh V. Pant

India has a range of interests in Afghanistan that it would like to preserve and enhance, notably containment of Islamist extremism, the use of Afghanistan as a gateway to the energy-rich and strategically important Central Asian region, and assertion of its regional preeminence. Yet, the most important goal for New Delhi remains the prevention of Pakistan from regaining its central role in Afghan affairs. The last time Pakistan enjoyed such a position was the 1990s, and Indian security interests suffered to an unprecedented degree. But, then, India was a weaker state, marginal in the strategic equations of the major global powers, and so could be easily ignored. Today, as India considers itself a rising global power, with many more cards to play in Afghanistan than ever before, it is highly unlikely that it would give up on Kabul without a fight. Because India has core interests to protect in its periphery, it will continue to play an important role in Afghanistan, with or without U.S. approval. Washington, therefore, would do well to take Indian concerns into account, as the Afghan endgame looms larger.

Full Story


ISLAMIC CULTURE, ISLAMISM, & JIHADISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 109, May 2, 2011
JOB OPENING: NEW GLOBAL JIHAD LEADER WANTED
By Raymond Ibrahim

With the killing of Osama bin Laden, we return to the age old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Or, in our context, which came first — the jihadist vision or the jihadist? The ideology or the ideologue?

Did Osama "create" the ideology of jihad, or did the ancient ideology of jihad create him — and countless like him, past, present, and future?

Full Story


ATTACK AMERICA, & EXPECT RETALIATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 108, May 2, 2011
JIHAD IS FOREVER
By Alan Caruba

Americans greeted news of Osama bin Laden's death with a celebration of the payback it represents for the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

As former Vice President Dick Cheney said on hearing the news, “Today, the message our forces have sent is clear — if you attack the United States, we will find you and bring you to justice.”

Full Story


U.S. DOMESTIC PETROLEUM PRODUCTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 107, May 2, 2011
PULL YOUR WEIGHT, AMERICA!
You Consume a Quarter of the World's Oil Production.
Its Time You Started Producing it, Too.
By Thompson Ayodele

Rising global demand for oil, coupled with continuing turmoil in the Middle East, is again causing U.S. energy prices to spike. Regular gasoline has topped $4 a gallon in many states, and experts predict it could hit $5 per gallon this Summer. Thousands of former oil patch workers remain unemployed, while the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress refuse to issue leases or drilling permits and, instead, make more and more oil and gas prospects off limits to exploration.

Meanwhile, the world is feted to the usual hand-wringing over how the United States can possibly feed its oil addiction in the years ahead, to keep its vehicle fleet moving and its struggling economy making progress.

Full Story


GLOBAL WARMING -- A DEAD ISSUE?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 106, May 2, 2011
WHY THE PUBLIC WON'T BUY GREENHOUSE LIMITS
By Dennis T. Avery

Passage of climate legislation by the U.S. Congress now hinges on the global temperatures over the next three years or so. A cooling trend will endorse the solar cause of warming. A resumption of warming will re-endorse the greenhouse theory regarding the relationship among human activity, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and rising global temperatures.

Full Story


MOST PROSPEROUS WHEN MOST FREE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 105, April 30, 2011
ECONOMICS -- THE NOT SO DISMAL SCIENCE:
HUMANITARIANS VERSUS ECONOMISTS
By William McGurn

One of the greatest libels in the English language is the description of Economics as “the dismal science.” I hold a different view — that, when it comes to seeing the potential in even the most desperate citizens of this earth, our economists, business leaders, and champions of a commercial republic are often far ahead of our humanitarians, artists, and socalled "Progressives."

Full Story


PROBLEM OF CONFUSING TERMS & CLAIMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 104, April 30, 2011
CARBON & CARBON DIOXIDE -- CLEARING UP THE CONFUSION
Let's Restore Common Sense to Our Public Policy
Debates on Energy & Climate
By Paul K. Driessen

This article addresses the perennial problem of confusing terms and claims in the global warming debate. We must (1) be more careful about using the words carbon, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide almost interchangeably, (2) recognize that there is no “consensus science” about the role of CO2 in climate change, and (3) pay far more attention to the vital roles that carbon dioxide plays in protecting and enhancing life as we know it on Planet Earth.

Full Story


THE RELIGION OF ENVIRONMENTALISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 103, April 28, 2011
ENVIRONMENTALISM AS A SURROGATE RELIGION:
It May Be "Secular," but Environmentalism Makes
"Mother Earth" its Object of Special Devotion.
By Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen

As we reflect on Earth Day 2011 (April 22, 2011) and on passionate appeals that we support environmental initiatives almost too numerous to count, we should also reflect on a fundamental new reality.

Environmentalism has replaced religion for many of its adherents.

Full Story


THE 2012 ELECTION & A TRUMP PRESIDENCY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 102, April 28, 2011
THE UNSHAKABLE APPEAL OF A TRUMP CANDIDACY
By Christopher G. Adamo

If establishment Republicans have their way, the history of 1995 and 1996 will repeat itself, which portends that, despite the Republicans enormous mid-term gains, Barack Obama will be reelected in 2012. While this is an appalling possibility to the mainstream of the country, those at the innermost circles of Republican hierarchy nevertheless seem determined to deny the American people a real alternative to the acceleration of government bloat and encroaching socialism from the political Left. Thus, they give credibility to the abhorrent and extra-constitutional actions of the Democrats and Obama since his inauguration.

Full Story


USE OF FEAR TO ADVANCE SINISTER AGENDAS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 101, April 26, 2011
SCARING MOTHERS & OTHERS -- THE BPA FILE, PART FOUR
By Alan Caruba

A massive campaign has been underway for several years to demonize bisphenol-A, BPA, a chemical in use for more than 50 years to line cans and plastic containers for the precise purpose of protecting their contents against contamination up to and including botulism, a lethal food-borne disease.

One might think that more than a half-century of BPA's use without any evidence that it poses any harm would be sufficient to support its use, but liars who defame BPA are catering to other, more sinister agendas and fear is the means they use to advance them.

Full Story


EGYPT'S PROBABLE POLITICAL COURSE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 100, April 26, 2011
UNDERSTANDING POST-MUBARAK EGYPT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

As Egypt lurches into a new era, what is its likely political course? While the modernity of Tahrir Square and the barbarism of the Muslim Brotherhood both have longterm importance, in all likelihood, the military will continue to rule Egypt, making only cosmetic changes in the governmental system.

Full Story


U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 99, April 24, 2011
THE MIDDLE EAST MESS
By Alan Caruba

Anyone such as myself who lived through the long years of the Vietnam quagmire knows that the United States is repeating the same errors in the Middle East that we did with Vietnam and the Far East. We seem incapable of recognizing a civil war when we see one and incapable of not inserting ourselves in the midst of it.

I speak specifically of Libya and the inchoate decisions and measures taken by the Obama administration. To suggest that the present White House and State Department have a Middle East “policy” is to vastly overstate and misunderstand their ignorance of that region of the world and the forces at work within it.

Full Story


SCIENTIST TARGET OF POLITICAL RETRIBUTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 98, April 23, 2011
POLITICAL PAYBACK -- OREGON STYLE:
Oregon State University Tries to Expell Ph.D. Candidate Children
of Scientist Who Ran Against Congressman Peter DeFazio
By Paul K. Driessen

This column addresses the incredible and despicable actions taking place at Oregon State University – a school that I once came close to attending, to pursue graduate studies in oceanography. I was accepted, but finally decided to go to law school instead. (If I hadn’t made that decision, I would now be another alumnus from this university, rallying in support of these students and their professor, and carrying the shame of being an alum.)

The column explains how someone I have known and admired for a number of years (Dr. Art Robinson) has been the target of retribution by OSU and Congressman Peter DeFazio – or more accurately, and more despicably, Art’s children have been the target – for his “crime” of running against DeFazio in the last election. Now the school is trying to kick all three children out of their Ph.D. programs, even though they are and have always been stellar academics, and have only a short stretch to go before completing all their studies.

Full Story


THE CURRENT STATE OF THE U.S. ECONOMY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 97, April 23, 2011
A DOUBLE WHAMMY FOR CONSUMERS
By Dennis T. Avery

U.S. energy prices have risen to more than 6 percent of consumer spending — which may be a historic “tipping point.” Our food prices, meanwhile, have had their steepest increase in a generation, to about 6.5 percent of spending. That’s a double whammy consumers haven’t suffered since Jimmy Carter’s infamous “stagflation,” a painful mix of weak economic growth, high unemployment, and rising inflation in the late 1970’s.

Full Story


U.S. GOVERNMENT INFLICTING GRAVE DAMAGE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 96, April 21, 2011
REALITY CLASHES WITH OBAMA'S PROMISED UTOPIA
By Christopher G. Adamo

In virtually every situation where the U.S. government should be working on behalf of the country, as well as many that it should leave alone, it is consistently inflicting grave damage. It is virtually impossible to deny the preponderance of concurring evidence. But are Americans ready to face the utter fiasco of the “hope and change” instituted during the Obama administration’s first two years, or will they accept more of the Liberal disease as the purported cure for its symptoms? Whether on the domestic or foreign front, those circumstances in which this overreaching regime has inserted itself are daily yielding catastrophe.

Full Story


FOLLOW THE NEW EUROPE-ADVISED COURSE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 95, April 17, 2011
SHOULD THE U.S.A. FOLLOW EUROPE'S LEAD?
Look at What Europe Is Doing Now to Address
its Energy, Economic, & Employment Woes!
By Paul K. Driessen

This commentary summarizes what is really going on in Europe these days – in the arenas of temperature change, impacts on families and businesses, and public policy decisions on global warming prevention, drilling for oil and gas, and burning coal. These current events and policies are quite different from what the U.S mainstream media have been telling us about Europe and what the Obama administration is trying to impose on our nation.

The article suggests that, in view of these realities, maybe the United States really should follow Europe’s lead on these matters.

Full Story


SEEKING THE COLLAPSE OF HUMAN PROGRESS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 94, April 17, 2011
EARTH DAY & ENVIRONMENTAL INSANITY
By Alan Caruba

Anyone who has been paying any attention to the environmentalist movement has got to have concluded it is insane.

Environmentalism, worldwide, and in the United States of America, is devoted to the collapse of every scientific and technological advance of the past century, along with the capitalist system that made such progress possible.

Full Story


CONTINUING GOVERNMENT SPENDING SPREE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 93, April 14, 2011
DEMOCRATS' OBSESSIVE EFFORTS TO FRACTURE THE TEA PARTY
By Christopher G. Adamo

Sadly for America, as of Friday, April 8, 2011, it has now been irrefutably established that, barring a government shutdown, the ravages of congressional spending will never be brought into line. And, since the current Republican “leadership” has asserted with just as much certainty that no shutdown will occur on their watch, the inescapable conclusion is that the spending spree will continue unabated until the national economy collapses under its weight.

Only one entity stands in the way of business as usual in Washington. And that is the Conservative grassroots uprising known as the “Tea Party.” Since its inception in early 2009, the political establishment and its media propagandists have sought to undermine and ultimately, neutralize this insurgency of the peasantry.

Full Story


TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY OBJECTIVES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 92, April 12, 2011
AMBITIOUS TURKEY
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The ambitions of Turkey in the Middle East must be checked by the U.S.A. and its allies. Less provocatively and more intelligently than the Iranian regime, the Turkish regime aspires to reshape other Muslim countries in Turkey's Islamist image. The opening salvos of this effort have gone well for Turkey, the tactics being both effective and largely unnoticed.

Possible methods to block influence of the AKP-dominated government include: expressing displeasure with Ankara's "neo-Ottomanist" policies; publicly questioning whether Turkish actions are compatible with NATO membership; quietly encouraging opposition parties in the country's June, 2011, elections; and, at this moment of AKP hostility and of Kurdish uprisings in eastern Turkey, reconsidering the delicate question of Kurdish civil rights.

Full Story


IRAN'S APOCALYPTIC END TIMES ASPIRATIONS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 91, April 10, 2011
THE IRANIAN ARMAGEDDON
By Alan Caruba

Today, everyone knows the Iran’s crazed Ayatollahs intend to secure nuclear weapons capability and everyone knows that, when they do, they will attack Israel with them. They have never ceased to call for Israel's destruction. It is not a question of if, but when, Israel will be subject to an Iranian nuclear missile attack.

You don’t have to be a CIA analyst to know that events in the Middle East will be exploited by the Iranians to bring about their apocalyptic End Times aspirations and that the destruction of Israel is, in their view, the trigger. After Israel, the United States and Europe will be next.

Full Story


OUR INCREASINGLY IRRATIONAL WORLD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 90, April 8, 2011
DESTROYING ONE KORAN VERSUS DESTROYING MANY CHRISTIANS:
WHICH IS WORSE?
By Raymond Ibrahim

The now infamous Koran burning by a Florida pastor, Reverend Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Center, Gainsville, Florida, has created hysteria in the Muslim world. In Afghanistan alone, some twenty people, including U.N. workers, have been killed and beheaded to screams of "Allahu Akbar!" Western leaders around the globe — including U.S. President Barack Obama and members of the U.S. Congress — have unequivocally condemned Jones' actions (without bothering to point out that freedom of expression is a prized American liberty). Many are even blaming the deaths in Afghanistan directly on Jones; Bill O'Reilly says he has "blood on his hands."

Full Story


DEMOCRATS & THE U.S. FEDERAL BUDGET       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 89, April 7, 2011
FISCAL ARMAGEDDON LOOMS, WHILE DEMOCRATS PLAY GAMES
By Christopher G. Adamo

By their own words, Washington, D.C., Democrats are daily proving that they are not serious about dealing with the nation’s budgetary crisis. Therefore, it must be concluded that they never have been. Rather, they remain doggedly in the mode of seeking to exploit the present situation for whatever political gain they may glean from it. In so doing, they exhibit complete contempt for the American people and the country’s future. Apparently, among Liberals, apart from any impact on their political standing going into the 2012 elections, nothing else matters.

Full Story


WELFARE ABUSE BY MUSLIMS IN THE WEST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 88, April 6, 2011
ISLAMISTS ON WELFARE:
Paid to Plot the West's Demise
By Kathy Shaidle

Welfare abuse by Muslims appears to have metastasized across the Western world. News stories about radical Muslims — often immigrants — engaged in social benefits scams emerge regularly from Europe, Canada, and Australia. Even when they are not involved in fraud, Muslims frequently are overrepresented on welfare rolls, compared with other religious and ethnic groups. The statistics from around the globe are jaw-dropping, especially in economically uncertain times.

Full Story


U.S. FOREIGN POLICY -- REALITY OR ILLUSION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 87, April 6, 2011
IDEALS TRUMP INTERESTS IN OBAMA'S LIBYA POLICY
By Raymond Ibrahim

President Barack Obama's recent explanation for militarily engaging Libya is yet another example of how U.S. leaders increasingly rationalize their policies via sentimental and idealistic platitudes, rather than reality or the long view — or just plain common sense.

Full Story


THE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD ATTACKED       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 86, April 5, 2011
THE CLIMATE WAR SHOULD BE DECLARED OVER
By Art Horn

There is a compelling demand for more energy production worldwide. In response to the pleas for more energy, to meet basic human needs and lift people out of poverty, many politicians and environmental activists continue to insist that “dangerous global warming” concerns must override even these vital human interests.

Now comes this incredible bombshell from Australia’s top climate change commissioner:

Even if Australia cuts emissions a full 5% in just nine years, by 2020, the change in global average temperature “will be a very, very small increment. . . . . If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.”

Full Story


ENVIRONMENTALISM VERSUS HUMAN HEALTH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 85, April 5, 2011
DOG LOVERS & BABY KILLERS:
If the World Cared as Much About African
Children & Families, as it Does About Dogs
By Cyril Boynes, Jr.

I cannot help thinking it would really be nice if, just once in awhile, animal lovers, environmentalists, journalists, and other people would care half as much about African babies, children and families, as they do about dogs.

Full Story


EVERYTHING IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 84, April 3, 2011
WARNING! JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING WILL KILL YOU
By Alan Caruba

According to the environmentalists, everything is an environmental crisis. Air! Water! Fossil fuels! Nuclear energy! Food! If you believe Al Gore, the seas are rising, the poles are melting, and we just have to reduce carbon dioxide, a gas upon which all life (along with oxygen) depends.

Full Story


ECONOMIC COSTS OF ANTI-ENERGY POLICIES       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 83, April 2, 2011
POWER FOR THE PEOPLE: YOU CANNOT CHAMPION THE POOR,
BUT SUPPORT ANTI-ENERGY POLICIES THAT PERPETUATE POVERTY
By Paul K. Driessen

CFACT’s various conversations with climate change conference attendees and New York Times columnist Andy Revkin have compelled Paul K. Driessen to take another hard look at life in poor developing countries -- the many ways reliable, affordable electricity can transform lives and the hardships perpetuated by anti-energy activists who continue to oppose hydrocarbon, nuclear, and hydroelectric power generation, in favor of wind and solar systems.

This article presents both (1) human interest angles, through the lives of people in South Africa, Rwanda and Zambia, and (2) broader public policy perspectives that U.S. legislators, bureaucrats, judges, journalists, environmentalist activists, and corporate ethics advocates need to ponder much more carefully.

Full Story


PEOPLE! TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR FUTURES!       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 82, March 31, 2011
WHAT REALLY THREATENS OUR FUTURE?
Beware of Anti-energy Policies
Claiming to Prevent Climate Change.
By Dr. Willie Soon & Barun Mitra

Dr. Willie Soon and Barun Mitra have been tireless critics of IPCC climate change claims and strong advocates for improved living standards in poor countries all over the world, emphasizing the essential role of reliable, affordable energy in every aspect of health, opportunity, jobs, and prosperity.

This article is a direct appeal to poor people all over the world. As Willie and Barun emphasize, people need to take charge of their futures by recognizing that the greatest threat they face is not man-made climate change, but anti-energy policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change. The article presents the fundamental issues extremely well and should be required reading for citizens and policy-makers in Third World countries, as well as in developed nations -- especially the United States of America and the various countries comprising Europe -- that, far too often, stand in the way of better futures for less fortunate peoples of the “international community.”

Full Story


ANOTHER BOMBSHELL ON U.S. ELECTRICITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 81, March 30, 2011
AND THE BEAT-DOWN GOES ON:
Proposed EPA Rules Will Do More Harm than Good for
Human Health, Especially for the Health of Minorities
By Paul K. Driessen

The Environmental Protection Agency recently dropped another bombshell on our domestic electricity generation industry: a 10-pound, 946-page cluster bomb of rules targeting our coal-fired power plants. EPA claims they need to reduce emissions of “dangerous” and “toxic” pollutants, especially mercury.

However, as we have seen with many other claims by this agency, neither the real health risks nor the true health benefits bear any resemblance to assertions in EPA press releases, testimony, and proposed rulemakings.

This article focuses on mercury -- the “showpiece” pollutant in the latest EPA regulatory power grab -- and on the electrical power beat-down regime. There is simply no beef in EPA’s beef. And, if the agency is this disingenuous about mercury risks and regulatory benefits, we can certainly assume its claims about the other pollutants targeted by this cluster bomb are equally suspect.

Full Story


SPREADING FALSE INFORMATION ABOUT BPA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 80, March 30, 2011
THE BIG BPA LIE: THE BPA FILE, PART THREE
By Alan Caruba

When I began this series about bisphenol-A (BPA) I instituted a Google Alert for Internet posts that mentioned it. From January through March, 2011, it generated a report each day filled with notifications of newspaper, magazine, and Internet posts, all denouncing BPA for having a hazardous chemical that threatened the health of everyone from infants to adults.

More than one thousand posts were reported. Virtually all spread false information.

Full Story


THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT IN THE U.S.A.       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 79, March 30, 2011
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY & THE ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMN
By Christopher G. Adamo

This past month, Republican Congressman Peter King of New York held hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in the United States. In light of the Islam/Sharia phenomenon that has burgeoned throughout the world ever since the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and the proliferation of attacks against America that ensued, it would only make sense to launch a high-level investigation of the conditions that spawned this mounting danger.

Full Story


REVOLUTION COMES TO THE MIDDLE EAST       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 78, March 29, 2011
FOUR MIDDLE EASTERN UPHEAVALS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

After decades of stasis, the Middle East is in uproar. With too much going on to focus on a single place, here's a review of developments in four key countries -- Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

In Libya, Syria, and Yemen – but less so in Egypt – Islamists have opportunities significantly to expand their power. How well will U.S. President Obama, so adamant about "mutual respect" in American relations with Muslims, protect U.S. and Western interests against the threat of militant Islam in the four Middle Eastern countries and their neighbors?

Full Story


GREENS VERSUS ENERGY PRODUCTION & USE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 77, March 27, 2011
GREENS: AGAINST ALL ENERGY ANYWHERE
By Alan Caruba

One of the great afflictions of the environmentalists — the Greens — everywhere is a profound lack of understanding of the role that energy plays in determining whether a nation prospers or just limps along, barely keeping the lights on.

Dedicated Greens don’t really like any kind of energy, whether it is nuclear power, whether it is provided by burning coal, or is derived from use of natural gas, oil, or hydropower. They think that wind power is trouble-free and cost effective, when it is neither. They feel the same way about solar power. Both wind and solar power are deemed acceptable because they don’t “emit” anything. This viewpoint is not merely naïve; it is profoundly stupid.

Full Story


THE PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTOR       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 76, March 24, 2011
NUCLEAR SAFETY: REACTORS THAT CAN'T MELT DOWN
By Dr. Kelvin Kemm

South African nuclear specialist Dr. Kelvin Kemm’s article offers nuclear industry “insider” perspectives on what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi plant during the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami, explains key aspects of nuclear power plant design and construction, and provides background on what could become a next generation nuclear plant design: the pebble bed modular reactor, which he played an important role in developing.

Full Story


MISREADING THE ISLAMIST WORLDVIEW       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 75, March 23, 2011
THE PINACLE OF INCOMPETENCE
By Dr. Efraim Karsh

It is commonplace for the views of people in power to receive widespread exposure. Having presumably won their stripes in an arduous climb to the top, they are believed to know best what's going on.

This presumption, however, is not only wrong, but is often the inverse of the truth. Given bureaucracy's predilection for conformity, it is rarely the best and brightest who reach the top, but rather the yes-men sycophants – whether by rising to their level of incompetence, as the Peter Principle famously asserts, or by stumbling upward through successive failures, or by simply "being there" long enough.

Full Story


THE ONGOING BATTLE OF THE U.S. BUDGET       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 74, March 23, 2011
TRUTH & LIES OF A GOVERNMENT "SHUTDOWN"
By Christopher G. Adamo

In broad daylight, after having won a landslide victory last November, congressional Republicans are engineering the most embarrassing surrender since Napoleon at Waterloo. And the greatest outrage of it is that such a debacle need not ever take place. To this day, the GOP remains in a prime position to devastate its Democratic Party opposition and strike a fatal blow to the Liberal juggernaut that threatens financial ruin for this country. But, having accepted the standard media diatribe that engaging in such a contest might be politically costly, Republican leaders are, instead, opting to backtrack and capitulate.

Full Story


DEBASEMENT OF THE U.S. CURRENCY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 73, March 21, 2011
THE FLOATING DOLLAR AS A THREAT TO PROPERTY RIGHTS
By Seth Lipsky

The question I invite you to consider for a moment is what would happen if we just let the kilogram float? This is a question that was posed in an editorial last week in the New York Sun. After all, the editorial said, we let the dollar float. The creation of dollars, and the status of the dollar as legal tender, is a matter of fiat. Its value is adjusted by the mandarins at the Federal Reserve, depending on variables they only sometimes share with the rest of the world.This would have floored the Framers of our Constitution, who granted Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value in the same sentence in which they gave it the power to fix the standardof weights and measures — like, say, the aforementioned kilogram.

Full Story


A COMMUNIST HOLDS THE REINS OF POWER       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 72, March 20, 2011
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: AS RED AS IT GETS
By Alan Caruba

Isn’t it about time that the mainstream media and all others begin to examine the record and conclude that a Communist holds the reins of power in the U.S. White House?

Full Story


NUCLEAR & FOSSIL-FUEL POWER PLANTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 71, March 20, 2011
IF "NO NEW NUKES," WIND WON'T KEEP US WARM
By Dennis T. Avery

How many thousands of people would die in a severe winter if Greenpeace's favorite wind turbines don’t have any wind to turn them? Britain last Winter got just 9 percent of the rated generating capacity of its huge wind turbine arrays. What kept Britons from literally freezing to death in their homes were the back-up fossil-fuel plants that have to be kept in “spinning reserve” behind the erratic turbines. But the fossil backup required is why the wind turbines don’t reduce greenhouse emissions. And they provide no protection for the public from weather just cold enough to freeze ice in nearby ponds.

If we won’t build nuclear plants, we had better learn to love coal and oil to keep the lights on and the heat warming.

Full Story


THE ROLE OF ENERGY IN ECONOMIC GROWTH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 70, March 17, 2011
MY DREAM -- A PROSPERIOUS UGANDA:
Developing Uganda's Oil & Gas Resources
Will Create Opportunity & Prosperity
By Cyril Boynes. Jr.

Long-time civil rights and Congress of Racial Equality activist Cyril Boynes, Jr., has written an important column on the vital role of energy for the economic growth and well-being of Uganda, Africa, and the entire Third World.

It points out that laws, freedom, and property rights are essential to bringing health and prosperity to a nation. But they will accomplish very little, unless another vital element is also present: ENERGY, the Master Resource – abundant, reliable, affordable energy, especially electricity to power all the tools and technologies that improve and safeguard human life today.

Cyril’s article is a clarion call to Uganda’s -- and all of Africa’s and the Third World’s -- government, business, and civil society leaders, to help generate health and prosperity, by attracting investors and building the infrastructures that will generate the electricity and other energy that any modern society needs, if it is to join the world’s already developed and affluent nations.

Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Cyril also has a dream: A prosperous Uganda and Africa, powered by reliable, affordable energy.

Full Story


LIBERALS VERSUS THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 69, March 16, 2011
ONGOING EFFORTS TO DERAIL THE TEA PARTY
By Christopher G. Adamo

When the burgeoning Tea Party movement first became apparent in early 2009, the Democratic Party/Leftist media political machine attempted to simply ignore it. Later on, their response was to try to trivialize it as a “fringe movement” or, in the words of then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat - California) as “Astroturf,” an obvious intimation that it was a phony alternative to any true coalescing of grassroots sentiments. And, of course, everybody remembers the perverse pejorative, “Tea Baggers,” which increasingly desperate Liberals invoked as a last ditch effort to demean and denigrate this relentless groundswell of Conservatism from the Heartland, in vain hopes of neutralizing it prior to the November, 2010, elections.

Full Story


"GLOBAL WARMING" RARELY MENTIONED       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 68, March 13, 2011
GLOBAL WARMING, R.I.P.
By Alan Caruba

An early and unrelenting skeptic from the days the term "man-made global warming" first debuted in the late 1980s, I rather instinctively knew that the only warming occurring was the same natural warming that always follows a cooling cycle, in this case, the warming that began in 1850 after the Little Ice Age that began around 1300.

Full Story


SHOULD WE FIGHT A GROUND WAR IN LIBYA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 67, March 10, 2011
BACK TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Recent fighting in Libya prompts a question: Should the Marines be sent anew to the shores of Tripoli, this time to protect not the high seas but the rebellious peoples of Libya rising against their tyrannical government and calling for assistance as they are strafed from the air by troops loyal to Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi?

Full Story


HOW WILL WE PAY OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 66, March 10, 2011
THE PARTY'S OVER
By Alan Caruba

Nobody has any idea how America will pay off the huge national debt it has acquired — the bulk of the debt in just the last two years — and still the politicians in Congress argue over cutting pitifully small pieces of it.

We have huge government departments and agencies that should simply be shuttered, along with their matrix of duplicated and overlapping programs that suck up millions, if not billions, annually. It won’t happen.

There is a lull in the life of the nation. Shops are closing. Homes are going unsold or foreclosed or both. Everything looks “normal,” but it isn’t. The party’s over.

Full Story


CAN CONSERVATIVES HOPE TO PREVAIL IN 2012       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 65, March 9, 2011
HOW DEMOCRATS INTEND TO WIN BIG IN 2012
By Christopher G. Adamo

If the fervency of the past U.S. election cycle, as epitomized by the grassroots Conservatism of the “Tea Party,” can remain on course and unfazed by the derision from the Liberal Leftist political establishment, it can continue forward with unstoppable momentum. Self-assured Conservatives, who are unafraid to trumpet their cause and willing to properly portray those on the political Left whose deeds have damaged the nation, can carry their banner to victory, and offer the nation a reprieve from the disastrous course of the past several years.

Full Story


FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR RESEARCHERS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 64, March 8, 2011
TOXINS MOVE UP ON THE WORRY LIST
By Dennis T. Avery

Forty thousand researchers and clinicians have just written to the journal Science —through their professional societies — asking for broader and quicker testing of “new chemicals in our environment.” Eight societies, including the geneticists, endocrinologists, developmental biologists, and others say that 12,000 new substances are being registered with the America Chemical Society every day. They admit that not many of these “new substances” will ever make it into the environment.

Still, the societies are asking the U.S. national government to broaden testing beyond toxicology, into such unproven dangers as trace levels of bodily toxins and potential endocrine disruption. This would, of course, employ far more of the learned societies’ members.

Full Story


LIBERALS ARE BRINGING SOCIALISM TO US       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 63, March 5, 2011
DUPED! RELENTLESS MARXIST DECEPTION
By Alan Caruba

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘Liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” So said Norman Thomas, former U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate

Full Story


EXPECT INCREASES IN FOOD & FUEL COSTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 62, March 2, 2011
FEARING EPA'S CARBON TAX
By Dennis T. Avery

Farmers, along with the rest of us, could get hit with a triple jolt of regulatory shock if the Environment Protection Agency goes forward with its announced controls on carbon emissions. The EPA is moving to impose tough limits on carbon emissions from the big power plants across the country — and then plans to screw the new carbon limits down tighter and tighter. Farmers’ fuel and electricity costs would go through the roof, along with everybody else’s.

The goal, after all, is to make the coal, oil, and natural gas that power most of our power plants too expensive to use. They need to make all our electricity at least slightly more expensive than the ultra-costly solar panels and wind turbines that have failed to produce “Green power” in Europe and, thus far, fail to provide much energy here at home.

Full Story


THE AGENDA OF PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 61, March 2, 2011
THE LIBYAN NIGHTMARE THAT ALMOST WAS
By Christopher G. Adamo

Since George W. Bush left Office of President of the U.S.A., his successor, Barack Hussein Obama has worked tirelessly to annul and undermine any gains made by America on the world stage, under the absurd and nihilistic premise of establishing international harmony through weakness and subservience. A stark and undeniable contrast is evident between Qaddafi’s ultimate capitulation on acquiring nuclear weaponry, and the intransigence of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is pressing forward in his relentless pursuit of them, with no intention whatsoever of arriving at a peaceful settlement with the current U.S. administration. It epitomizes distinction between international relations based on strength and principle, and those mired in blind idealism and weakness.

Full Story


A NEW ERA IN THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 60, March 1, 2011
MY OPTIMISM ABOUT THE NEW ARAB REVOLT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Pessimism serves as a career enhancer in Middle East Studies and I am known for doom-and-gloom. But, with due hesitation, I see changes that could augur a new era, one in which infantilized Arabic-speakers mature into adults. One rubs one's eyes at this transformation, awaiting its reversal. So far, however, it has held.

Full Story


"DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO HUMANITY"?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 59, Feb 28, 2011
ERDOGAN & THE "AL-QADDAFI PRIZE"
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Accepting "Al-Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights" three months ago says all one needs to know about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Full Story


HYDRAULIC FRACTURING VERSUS WIND POWER       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 58, Feb 28, 2011
WIND POWER -- QUESTIONABLE BENEFITS & CONCEALED IMPACTS:
EPA TRUMPETS DUBIOUS SHALE GAS RISKS, BUT IGNORES
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF WIND TURBINES
By Paul K. Driessen

Energy, shale gas, hydraulic fracturing, and wind power are all much in the news – especially as events in the Middle East continue to unfold, and countries realize new drilling technologies have unlocked previously undreamed natural gas riches in formerly inaccessible formations deep underground. This natural gas is a true game changer.

One important aspect of the ongoing debate over energy and economic benefits versus environmental and groundwater risks has not been addressed before, however. It is the comparison between alleged impacts of hydraulic fracturing on water supplies and the impacts of “environment-friendly” wind turbines on a wide variety of ecological values.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s proposal to apply a “life-cycle” or “cradle-to-grave” assessment of shale gas “fracking” technologies would be equally -- and indeed more -- valuable for evaluating wind power costs and benefits.

Full Story


LIBERALISM & HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 57, Feb 26, 2011
AMERICA'S GAY WHITE HOUSE
By Alan Caruba

Barack Obama, married and father of two girls, may be straight, but he has proven to be the most active President when it comes to efforts that would establish homosexuality as a “normal” lifestyle in America. He is not alone in this; it is the goal of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement (GLBT) in America.

Full Story


REGIME CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 56, Feb 24, 2011
FUTILITY OF MIDDLE EAST EFFORTS AT "DEMOCRACY"
By Christopher G. Adamo

With countless disturbing similarities, Libya is going the way of Egypt. And the burgeoning groundswell of anti-government sentiments throughout the Middle Eastern region strongly suggests that the upheaval will not be limited to the two countries, Libya and Egypt. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen are experiencing their own growing displays of dissatisfaction from commoners on the street, who unmistakably entertain notions of regime change.

Full Story


POLITICS & FEAR NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 55, Feb 23, 2011
USING FEAR TO BAN BPA: THE BPA FILE, PART TWO
By Alan Caruba

Fear tactics, not scientific fact, are the primary drivers being employed to deprive Americans of bisphenol-A (BPA), a necessary and safe component in valuable shatterproof plastics and a proven substance used in protecting food and drink. Only by overcoming a legion of fear-mongers, can BPA continue to do so.

Full Story


RIFT BETWEEN AKP & THE FOREIGN MINISTRY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 54, Feb 22, 2011
TURKEY'S AMBASSADORS VERSUS ERDOGAN
By Dr. Damla ARAS

In June, 2010, the deepening rift between Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) unexpectedly came to the public eye when seventy-two retired Ambassadors and consul-generals issued a written statement protesting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's lack of respect in dubbing them "mon chers" and criticizing the government's foreign policy. Why did the Prime Minister publicly snub his diplomats?

Full Story


ASPIRATIONS FOR A PALESTINIAN STATE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 53, Feb 21, 2011
DOES THE ARAB WORLD TRULY WANT A "PALESTINE"?
A Summary Account of Efraim Karsh's
Briefing to the Middle East Forum
By Alessandra Grace

According to Dr. Efraim Karsh, the Palestine Papers, the documents recently released from Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations shed some light on the position of the Palestinian leadership and neighboring Arab states toward the creation of a Palestinian state. By tracing the history of both parties, Dr. Karsh stated that neither party has ever been, nor is, truly interested in forming a Palestinian state.

Full Story


WHY ALL THIS FOCUS ON BIOFUELS?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 52, February 21, 2011
MORE BIOFUELS, MORE GREENHOUSE GASES
By Dennis T. Avery

Why all of this focus on biofuels? Current U.S. and EU ethanol mandates have already produced two huge food-price spikes in the past three years, causing political unrest around the world. Japan says it has spent $78 billion on biomass projects in the past six years — with no effective impact on its global warming emissions.

Let’s remember that the world’s temperatures have officially increased by a net of only 0.2 degrees over the past 70 years. Even that warming assumes we believe the “adjusted” temperatures in the “official” records kept by James Hansen’s NASA and the discredited University of East Anglia.

Full Story


MATTSON'S COMMITMENT TO ISLAMISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 51, Feb 20, 2011
INGRID MATTSON: NO LONGER LEADING ISNA,
BUT STILL ADVANCING RADICAL ISLAM
By Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

Ingrid Mattson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut, recently ended a term as the first female and first Muslim convert to serve as President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). But she promises to continue her career as a promoter of radical Islam.

Full Story


SHUT DOWN FANNIE MAE & FREDDIE MAC       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 50, Feb 20, 2011
GOOD RIDDANCE TO FANNIE & FREDDIE
By Alan Caruba

The decision by voters in the November, 2010, elections to give majority power to the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and to elect some tough Republican State Governors suggests that progress is being made against the excesses and abuses of power that have brought the American nation to the brink of financial collapse. And that’s a good thing.

Full Story


LETHAL ENVIRONMENTALIST PROPAGANDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 49, Feb 19, 2011
ENVIRONMENTALIST FRAUD & MANSLAUGHTER:
In the Name of Banning DDT, GEF Bureaucrats
Are Consigning Millions to Death from Malaria
By Paul K. Driessen

Environmentalist disinformation, propaganda, and policy demands continue to move at almost breakneck speed on the malaria and pesticide front – with millions of lives at stake.

One of the latest, and most disturbing, developments involves a multi-year “study” conducted by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The most honest and charitable description I can offer is that this "study" is completely fraudulent. And, yet, it is being used to justify a global ban on DDT for disease control purposes, a dramatic reduction in the use of other pesticides to reduce malaria and other insect-borne diseases, and reliance on completely inadequate “environment friendly” interventions approved by radical eco-activist groups. What we are really talking about here is deliberate manslaughter, in the name of protecting human health and the environment from a host of speculative, imaginary, and disproven threats.

Full Story


DEMOCRACY AS A MEANS TO AN END       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 48, Feb 16, 2011
IS AN EGYPTIAN "DEMOCRACY" A GOOD THING?
By Raymond Ibrahim

It is axiomatic in the West that democracy equates liberty and freedom. Say the word "democracy" and images of a free, pluralistic, and secular society come to mind. Recently commenting on the turmoil in Egypt, U.S. President Barack Obama made this association when he said that "the United States will continue to stand up for democracy and the universal rights that all human beings deserve" — as if the two are inseparable.

But are they? Does "democracy" necessarily always lead to "universal rights" — and all of the other boons associated with the word?

Full Story


EGYPT -- EGYPTIAN, ARAB, OR ISLAMIC?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 47, Feb 16, 2011
EGYPT'S IDENTITY CRISIS
By Raymond Ibrahim

With Egypt's "July Revolution" of 1952, for the first time in millennia, Egyptians were able to boast that a native-born Egyptian, Gamal Abdel Nasser, would govern their nation: Ever since the overthrow of its last native pharaoh nearly 2,500 years ago, Egypt had been ruled by a host of foreign invaders — Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Brits, to name a few. After 1952, however, Egypt, it was believed, would finally be Egyptian.

Yet, though Nasser was Egyptian, the spirit of the times that brought him to power was Arab — Arab nationalism, or "pan-Arabism" — the theory that all Arabic-speaking peoples, from Morocco to Iraq, should unify.

Full Story


ASSESSING THE TRUE NATURE OF LIBERALISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 46, Feb 16, 2011
ATTACHING REALITY TO OBAMA'S "SPUTNIK MOMENT"
By Christopher G. Adamo

Perhaps, the best manner in which to properly assess the true nature of Liberalism is to revisit the issues and commentaries of a few weeks past, and compare them to the events of the current day. As any given situation unfolds, the political Left can be expected to pounce on the moral “high ground,” and laud its own virtues at the expense of the Conservative opposition. However, since Liberal pontificating is rarely based in fact, the game changes regularly, in order to continue the facade, irrespective of the annoyances of reality.

Full Story


THE MILITARY & EGYPT'S POLITICAL FUTURE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 45, Feb 15, 2011
EGYPT'S CHANCE FOR CHANGE
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

If developments in Egypt have gone as well as one could hope for, future prospects remain unclear. The exciting part is over, now come the worries.

Let's start with three pieces of good news: Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's strongman who appeared on the brink of fomenting disaster, fortunately resigned. The Islamists, who would push Egypt in the direction of Iran, had little role in recent events and remain distant from power. And the military, which has ruled Egypt from behind the scenes since 1952, is the institution best equipped to adapt the government to the protestors' demands.

Full Story


THREATS TO U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 44, Feb 14, 2011
IT'S NEVER JUST THE ECONOMY, STUPID!
By Brian T. Kennedy

We are often told that we possess the most powerful military in the world and that we will face no serious threat for some time to come. We are comforted with three reassurances aimed at deflecting any serious discussion of national security: (1) that Islam is a religion of peace; (2) that we will never go to war with China because our economic interests are intertwined; and (3) that America won the Cold War and Russia is no longer our enemy. But these reassurances are myths, propagated on the political Right and political Left alike. We believe them at our peril, because serious threats are already upon us.

Full Story


IMMIGRATION POLICY & NATIONAL CULTURE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 43, Feb 13, 2011
MULTICULTURAL SUICIDE
By Alan Caruba

There is an unrelenting tyranny to demographics -- the statistical study of migrations and birth rates of peoples throughout the world. Unless Europe and America address it, putting the breaks on further immigration, they are at risk of falling prey to it and failing as a result of it.

British, French and German leaders have finally begun to speak out about and against it. It may be too late. America refuses to even acknowledge it.

Full Story


PUBLIC DEBATE ON ISLAMIC RADICALIZATION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 42, Feb 12, 2011
CAN AMERICAN VALUES RADICALIZE MUSLIMS?
By Raymond Ibrahim

Recent comments by U.S. officials on the threat posed by "radicalized" American Muslims are troubling, both for their domestic and international implications. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder states that "the threat has changed … to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born." The situation is critical enough to compel incoming Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security Peter King to do all he can "to break down the wall of political correctness and drive the public debate on Islamic radicalization."

Full Story


THE ISLAMIST THREAT & LEFTIST BLINDSPOTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 41, Feb 9, 2011
EFFECTIVELY FORTIFYING AMERICA IN DANGEROUS TIMES
By Christopher G. Adamo

As Egypt continues in turmoil, Liberals, Socialists, and other segments of the political and cultural Left in the U.S.A. and the West remain committed to wallowing in their blind myopia, oblivious to the warnings that cry out to them from the pages of history. Incredibly, the Leftists believe that, by some strange means, the aftermath of an Egyptian coup in which President Hosni Mubarak is removed from office will spontaneously generate “constitutional democracy,” and an outbreak of peace and freedom. The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, and all of the bloodshed and mayhem it spawned throughout the Middle East in the decades since, was perhaps the most extreme example, but it certainly was neither the first nor only such event.

Full Story


A MAJOR CHALLENGE TO REGIONAL STABILITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 40, Feb 7, 2011
WHAT WAZIRISTAN MEANS FOR AFGHANISTAN
By Dr. & Lt. Col Andrew M. Roe

The Afghan conflict has refocused world attention on Waziristan. Once one of the British Empire's most volatile territories, the remote small province in northwestern Pakistan is now home to Taliban insurgents, al-Qa'ida fighters, rogue elements within the Pakistani military, and Western jihadists who use it as a base to rest, heal, rearm, train, and plan before they launch again across the porous border into Afghanistan. It is also the area where Osama bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants are probably hiding and a regular target for U.S. air strikes against key Taliban personnel. Pakistani military operations destroyed insurgent forces and caused mass civilian dislocation, yet efforts to produce a lasting peace deal with the local tribesmen and the Taliban have proved futile. Waziristan remains a dangerous and unpredictable region with the potential to unhinge President Hamid Karzai's fragile regime in Afghanistan, threaten the Pakistani government, and pose a major challenge to regional stability.

Full Story


ARE ISLAM & DEMOCRACY COMPATIBLE?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 39, Feb 7, 2011
ISLAM & DEMOCRACY -- MUCH HARD WORK NEEDED:
Muslims Can Embrace Democracy, But I'm Not Optimistic
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

With anti-regime demonstrations raging in Egypt, and the possibility of a new government led by or involving the Muslim Brotherhood, many are asking whether Islam is compatible with constitutional democracy? The answer is: yes, it potentially is, but it will take much hard work to make this happen.

Present realities are far from encouraging, for tyranny disproportionately afflicts Muslim-majority countries.

Full Story


THE SUBVERSIVE NATURE & GOALS OF HAMAS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 38, Feb 6, 2011
PROFESSORS PUSH ISRAEL TO NEGOTIATE WITH HAMAS
By Janet Doerflinger

Prominent college and university Middle East Studies Professors argue that Israel should conduct negotiations with Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip. Thus, the Professors demand that Israel -- a sovereign state -- negotiate with a terrorist organization responsible for murdering and maiming many innocent Israelis and dedicated to Israel's destruction.

Full Story


ISLAM AS INHERENTLY VIOLENT & WARLIKE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 37, Feb 5, 2011
ISLAM & THE PROSPECT OF ANOTHER WORLD WAR
By Alan Caruba

Almost from its beginning, Islam has been a religion divided by warring camps. The tragedy of Islam is that Muslims are far more likely to die at the hands of their co-religionists than by those outside their faith. All religions have their sects and divisions, but Islam’s history is particularly defined by the violence that began shortly after the death of its founder, Muhammad.

Full Story


PROSPECTS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 36, Feb 4, 2011
WHY EGYPT WILL NOT SOON BECOME
A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Egypt will not boast a constitutional democratic political system at this time next year. Constitutional democracy is more than holding elections; it requires the development of civil society, meaning such complex and counterintuitive institutions as the rule of law, an independent judiciary, multiple political parties, minority rights, voluntary associations, and freedom of expression, movement, and assembly. Constitutional democracy is a learned habit, not an instinctive one, a habit that requires deep attitudinal changes such as a culture of restraint, a commonality of values, a respect for differences of view, the concept of loyal opposition, and a sense of civic responsibility.

Full Story


THE OUTCOME OF THE UPRISING IN EGYPT?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 35, Feb 2, 2011
WHY THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION CAN BE
THE BEST -- OR WORST -- THING TO HAPPEN
By Raymond Ibrahim

It is clear that the media and its host of analysts are increasingly splitting in two camps on the Egyptian revolution: one that sees it as a wonderful expression of "people-power" that, left alone, will naturally culminate into some sort of pluralistic democracy, and another that sees only the Muslim Brotherhood, in other words, that sees only bad coming from the revolution. These extremist views need balancing. The fact is, depending on what the U.S.A. does — or doesn't — the result of this revolt could either be the best or worst thing to happen to the Middle East in the modern era.

Full Story


EITHER CONVERT OR DEFEAT MUSLIMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 34, Feb 2, 2011
WHY ISLAM IS DIFFERENT & DANGEROUS
By Alan Caruba

Islam divides the world into Dar al Islam, the land of Islam, and Dar al Harb, the land of war. Muslims cannot be accommodated. They negotiate only with the end goal of achieving domination. They cannot be deterred except through the use of force.

The translation of the word “Islam” is “submission.”

We share the planet with 1.6 billion Muslims, and we must either convert them or defeat them.

Full Story


LIBERAL MANEUVERS DILUTE CONSERVATISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 33, Feb 2, 2011
WYOMING RINO REPUBLICANS UNDERMINE
CONSERVATIVE MOMENTUM
By Christopher G. Adamo

The year 2010 will likely be remembered in the coming decades as the year when Americans turned back from the brink and reasserted their devotion to the traditional values and principles that have produced the most powerful, most prosperous, and, until recently, the freest nation on earth. The elections of last November were a thunderous refutation of the arrogant Liberal elitists in Washington and an irrefutable declaration from the people of the heartland that they are not ready to relinquish their national inheritance to the counterculture and the political Left.

Unfortunately, in the midst of this triumph, a disturbing confluence of circumstances in Wyoming curtailed the possibility that the waves of national restoration might be likewise enjoyed in the Cowboy State.

Full Story


MORE CONTINUITY THAN CHANGE IN EGYPT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 32, Feb 1, 2011
TURMOIL IN EGYPT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

As Egypt's much-anticipated moment of crisis arrived and popular rebellions shook governments across the Middle East, Iran stands as never before at the center of the region. Its Islamist rulers are within sight of dominating the region. But revolutions are hard to pull off, and I predict that Islamists will not achieve a Middle East-wide breakthrough and Tehran will not emerge as the key powerbroker.

Full Story


TURMOIL IN THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE CONTEXT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 31, Jan 30, 2011
WAITING & WATCHING EGYPT
By Alan Caruba

Today, we watch events unfold in far off places, often in real time. What we lack, however, is context. Most Americans and, I suspect, peoples comprising other Western nation-states are frequently at a loss when it comes to knowing anything about the culture and history, past and recent, of nations in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia.

What we do know about the Middle East is that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, along with the rise of al-Qa'ida and other jihadist organizations, things have not gone well for American and Western interests.

Full Story


OBAMA'S "CLEAN ENERGY" PROPOSAL       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 30, Jan 30, 2011
WHO COULD OPPOSE "CLEAN ENERGY"?
By Dennis T. Avery

President Barack Obama didn’t mention carbon constraints in his State of the Union message. Such carbon constraints would force the nation to give up most of the energy that currently keeps us warm and productive. Instead, the President proposed a new “clean energy” program, which would force the nation to give up most of the energy that currently keeps us warm and productive. A study by the Beacon Hill Institute in Boston estimates the President’s “clean energy” proposal might well cost the economy $4 trillion over 20 years, and force huge numbers of U.S. jobs overseas.

Full Story


U.S. INTERESTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AT STAKE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 29, Jan 28, 2011
LOSING EGYPT
By Alan Caruba

Those of us around at the time of the 1979 Iranian student revolution that deposed the Shah are having strong feelings of déjà vu because that uprising was swiftly co-opted by Ayatollah Khomeini, who hated the Great Satan, America, as much as he hated the Little Satan, Israel.

The U.S.A. lost a major ally in the Middle East. The Shah may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard. The CIA had put him on the Peacock Throne.

The uprising in Egypt, if taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, will severely endanger American interests in the Middle East.

Full Story


U.S.-BASED ISLAMISTS THREATEN FREE SPEECH       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 28, Jan 26, 2011
THE KEVIN BACON OF AMERICAN JIHAD
By Adam Turner

Revolution Muslim, a U.S.-based radical Islamic jihadist organization, has become the Kevin Bacon of Islamic fundamentalism. Whenever jihadist groups threaten free speech in America or Europe, you can bet an associate of Revolution Muslim is somehow involved.

Full Story


THE PATHOLOGICAL MINDSET OF MUSLIMS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 27, Jan 26, 2011
BEWITCHED ANIMALS & THE MUSLIM MEDIA
By Raymond Ibrahim

Because conspiracy theories emanating from the Muslim world are nothing new, they tend to be dismissed in the West. A close examination of these theories, however, reveals pathological trends that need to be acknowledged, especially by Western leaders who stubbornly interact with the Muslim world under the assumption that all Muslims "think just like us."

Full Story


ANTI-CHEMICAL ACTIVISTS AT WORK AGAIN!       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 26, Jan 26, 2011
DEMONIZING BISPHENOL-A: THE BPA FILE, PART ONE
By Alan Caruba

Bisphenol-A, more commonly called BPA, is a chemical that has been in wide, safe use for over 50 years, but has come under a horrendous and unrelenting attack by a variety of specious environmental and consumer groups.

Full Story


CULTURAL RELATIVISM MUST BE UPHELD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 25, Jan 25, 2011
IS THE MEDIA "FAIR & BALANCED ON CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION?
By Raymond Ibrahim

The mainstream media (MSM) has just provided another example of how it ostracizes those who fail to tout its party-line. Context: The "On Faith" blog of the Washington Post posted an article dealing with Muslim-Christian relations, in light of recent attacks on Christians in the Muslim world. Regular contributors were invited to respond. The response of one of these, Willis E. Eliot, retired Dean of Exploratory Programs, New York Seminary, was rejected (Pajamas Media published it here). Up till then, for over three years, Eliot had been publishing almost weekly on that blog; this is his first contribution to be rejected in all that time.

What about it caused the Washington Post to jettison it?

Full Story


NO EVIDENCE OF MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 24, Jan 25, 2011
NEW STUDY AFFIRMS NATURAL CLIMATE CHANGE
By Dennis T. Avery

A new paper affirms the earth’s long, moderate, natural climate cycle. The study is by Dr. U.R. Rao, former Chair of India’s Space Research Organization. He says solar variations and cosmic rays account for 40 percent of the world’s recent global warming.

Dr. Rao says the data between 1960 and 2005 show lots fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth, due to a periodic expansion of the sun’s magnetic field. The bigger solar magnetic field blocked many of the cosmic rays that would otherwise have hit earth. Fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth meant fewer water droplets shattering in our atmosphere, and thus fewer of the low, wet clouds that deflect solar heat back into space. So the earth warmed.

Full Story


THE ISLAMIZATION OF EUROPE & FRANCE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 23, Jan 24, 2011
A FRENCH INTIFADA
By Nidra Poller

A process described by some as the Islamization of Europe, by others as the failure of Europeans to integrate Muslim immigrants, has reached a breaking point in France. One of the most troubling manifestations of this discord is the development of a particular type of violence that is more than the sum of its parts. A sampling of this year's news reports reads like a catalogue of stomping, stabbing, shooting, torching, and sacking; attacks on teachers, policemen, firemen, old ladies, and modest retirees; turf wars, tribal fights, murder over women, over attitude, over nothing; dead youths, murderous youths, bodies scattered across a national battlefield.

Full Story


NEW HOLOCAUST ABROAD IN THE WORLD       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 22, Jan 23, 2011
HATING INFIDELS
By Alan Caruba

There is a new Holocaust abroad in the world, and it is directed at Christians, particularly in the Middle East and throughout Africa, wherever Islam is the dominant religion. Nor is this a new phenomenon; Christians were widely persecuted under the Ottomans (Turks) when their empire encompassed much of the Middle East.

The Islamic holocaust against Christians is clearly manifesting itself again, and with far too little notice.

Full Story


PALESTINIAN ANTI-PEACE SENTIMENTS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 21, Jan 21, 2011
WHAT PALESTINIANS ARE SAYING ONLINE
By Dr. Jonathan Schanzer

During the past decade, Washington has repeatedly failed to gauge the extent of Palestinian anti-peace sentiments, and the consequences of this failure have been devastating. The July, 2000, Camp David summit triggered the worst wave of Palestinian violence since the Israeli-Arab War of 1948 -- the former euphemized as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, or Second Intifada); the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January, 2006, led to a victory for the Hamas Islamist group. Now that U.S President Barack Obama has announced his ambitious timeline for Israeli-Palestinian peace, could the Obama administration be rushing headlong into yet another diplomatic failure?

Full Story


WATCHING TUNISIA IN FEAR, HOPE, SOLIDARITY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 20, Jan 18, 2011
TURMOIL IN TUNISIA
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The sudden and, as yet, unexplained exit of Tunisia's strongman, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, 74, after 23 years in power, has potential implications for the Middle East and for Muslims worldwide. As an Egyptian commentator noted, "Every Arab leader is watching Tunisia in fear. Every Arab citizen is watching Tunisia in hope and solidarity." I watch with both sets of emotions.

Full Story


SOLUTION TO THE FOOD CHAIN TIGHTENING       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 19, Jan 18, 2011
FOOD CHAIN NOT STRETCHED TO LIMIT -- YET
By Dennis T. Avery

The cable network MSNBC is warning that the world food chain “has been stretched to the limit” by rising world demand and a series of crop failures in several countries. The TV network’s warning is premature. The U.S.A., in fact, could ease the current global food price spike with one administrative action — limiting the amount of U.S. corn that gets turned into corn ethanol.

Full Story


LEBANON & MIDDLE EAST POWER POLITICS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 18, Jan 17, 2011
SAAD HARIRI'S MOMENT OF TRUTH
By Dr. Hilal Khashan

Recent developments in Lebanon have shown that the preconditions for restoring its sovereignty have not yet materialized. The demise of the "Cedar Revolution" and the fragmentation of the "March 14 Coalition" have set the country back to the era of Syrian domination. The crisis associated with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the formation of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) afford yet another stark demonstration that the country remains a victim of regional encroachment and that the loyalties of its leaders remain as sectarian as ever.

Full Story


U.S. TAX DOLLARS WASTED ON "RESEARCH"       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 17, Jan 16, 2011
THE GREAT "CLIMATE CHANGE" 2011 TAXPAYER RIP-OFF
By Alan Caruba

The rate of unemployment in the U.S.A. remains high and the foreclosure rate on homes is approaching the level of the Great Depression years. Two major bond rating companies, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s just warned that, if the U.S. federal government doesn’t stop spending and borrowing, America’s Triple-A, highest ranking will be down-graded.

Along with all the other things in the federal budget wish list for 2011, are millions to be spent on policies and programs designed to prevent, control, or moderate -- as well as to do research in order to find out how to prevent, control, or moderate -- catastrophic global climate change, in particular, runaway global warming.

Full Story


THE OBAMA "GREEN" ENERGY POLICY AGENDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 16, Jan 14, 2011
GOING BROKE BY GOING GREEN:
Obama Administration Energy Policies Are
Impairing Our Jobs, Revenues, Economy, & Health
By Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., & Niger Innis

Misnamed “green energy” policies severely undermine our jobs, revenues, health, and any opportunity America may have to rebuild her economy. Perpetuating current jobless rates would be just the tip of the iceberg, if we follow the path that EPA and the White House have laid in front of us. We cannot afford to go broke trying to go green.

Full Story


RETHINKING COUNTERTERRORISM STRATEGY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 15, Jan 12, 2011
RADICAL MUSLIMS IN AMERICA
All the Benefits & Still Turning to Jihad
By Raymond Ibrahim

America needs to rethink its strategy for the war on Islamist terrorism — both at home and abroad. Domestically, this means cracking down without compunction on anything that smacks of Islamist activity, without fear of being "politically incorrect;" it means better monitoring of jihadist websites which play a major role in radicalizing American Muslims; and it means exercising prudence when granting visas to people from dubious backgrounds. Internationally, it means understanding that the one solution promoted by most Western politicians — spreading Western values and ways of governance as the means of solving the problem of Islamist jihadism — is no solution at all.

Full Story


LIBERAL LEFTIST BLITZKRIEG OF ACCUSATIONS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 14, Jan 12, 2011
GIFFORDS EPISODE UNLEASHES LEFTIST VENOM
By Christopher G. Adamo

Within hours after last weekend’s horrendous shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a truly ugly picture of a segment of America has emerged. It does not reflect the isolated actions of a lone, crazed gunman in Arizona, but the monolithic behavior of a reprehensible Liberal political machine and its lapdogs in the major media. Sadly, homicidal maniacs have plagued the human race since Cain. Such shameless propagandizing, in contrast, is a relatively new phenomenon.

Full Story


CIVIL LITIGATION & COUNTERTERRORISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 13, Jan 11, 2011
THE LATEST TERROR TACTIC -- LITIGATION:
Why Not Use this Same Tactic Against the Terrorists?
By Daniel Huff

On December 29, 2010, Scandinavian authorities arrested five Islamist terrorists planning an attack in Denmark. Almost as interesting as what they targeted is what they spared and the lessons it holds for future counterterrorism efforts.

Full Story


EVERY RELIGION HAS PREDICTED A DOOMSDAY       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 12, Jan 9, 2011
APOCALYPSE NOT!
By Alan Caruba

There is no religion, past or present, that has not generated an End Times prediction. As the year 2011 begins, you can be sure that the media will begin to fill up with articles about the Mayan calendar prediction that the world will end on December 12, 2012.

Full Story


PRESIDENT OBAMA'S "GREEN ENERGY" AGENDA       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 11, Jan 8, 2011
THE REAL STORY BEHIND PRESIDENT OBAMA & MICHAEL VICK
By Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., & Niger Innis

As the Packers and Eagles head into the playoffs this Sunday, Michael Vick is much in the news. But he’s garnered some ink recently for another reason.

President Obama used Vick’s MVP-candidate status as an excuse to call Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie – to lobby for Lurie’s support for the President’s “green” energy agenda. Mr. Obama claims his wind, solar, and biofuel programs will create jobs. However, as the Affordable Power Alliance constantly reminds people, and as two of its Co-Chairs again remind them in this article, that agenda will actually kill jobs, hobble our economy, and roll back civil rights progress.

This article is the first of two that will further expand on those points, which were also addressed in the article published last weekend. As Congress begins to tackle energy and climate issues once again, these articles will be vital sources of information for anyone who champions access to reliable, affordable energy for America’s families, especially its poor and minority workers, small businesses, and households.

Full Story


ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST POWER GRAB       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 10, Jan 7, 2011
CALIFORNIA DREAMING, OR NIGHTMARING?
Dictatorial New Delaware Vehicle Rules Impose
California Rules, for No Environmental Gain
By John Nichols

I was tipped off to an outrageous power grab by a recent transplant from California to the head office of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. It poses a nightmare for Delaware car buyers and drivers, and is the sort of thing that would do likewise in any other state that might attempt a similar coup de tat.

In a nutshell, the new Delaware Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has surreptitiously and unilaterally imposed California’s draconian new car emission standards on Delaware’s unsuspecting drivers – without a word of protest or concern or even acknowledgement from the state’s media or legislators – many of whom may have been blindsided themselves.

Full Story


PRESIDENT OBAMA & THE U.S.-ISRAELI BOND       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 9, Jan 7, 2011
OBAMA'S MOMENT OF TRUTH AT THE UN
By Dr. Steven J. Rosen

President Barack Obama has affirmed repeatedly that, under his leadership, America's bond with Israel is absolute, unshakeable, and rock solid. But the Israeli public is not convinced. A Jerusalem Post poll in March, 2010, found that just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think his administration is pro-Israel, against 48 percent who think it is pro-Palestinian. J Street's pollster, Jim Gerstein, looked for a different result, but even his survey found that 55 percent of Israelis do not believe that Obama supports Israel.

Full Story


THE MIDDLE EAST & THE "ARAB COLD WAR"       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 8, Jan 6, 2011
WIKILEAKS REVELATIONS:  MORE GOOD THAN BAD?
LEE SMITH'S BRIEFING TO THE MIDDLE EAST FORUM
By Alessandra Grace

The Wikilieaks have some positive aspects revealing an interesting dynamic in the Middle East. While many define the Middle East according to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the leaked cables expose an "Arab Cold War" paradigm crucial to understanding the region. For example, the concerns of our allies in the Gulf, as well as Jordan and Egypt, towards the Iranian nuclear program are proof of a more complex situation. This is positive; for starters, it evidences that the actions of Middle East actors are determined by considerations far beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict — even if the latter gets most of the attention.

Full Story


MEDIA COVERAGE OF ISRAEL; ARAB TERRORISM       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 7, Jan 5, 2011
THE MIDDLE EAST:  TWO BLOGS BY DANIEL PIPES
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

The mainstream media, even the once-reliable Associated Press, misleads, even as it informs on the subject of Israel.

The area where the Arabic-speaking peoples seem most adept at innovation is terrorism. Airplane hijackings, suicide bombings, and mega-terrorism are among their claims to originality.

Full Story


OBAMA & THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 6, Jan 5, 2011
WHY ISN'T OBAMA PRESSURING THE PALESTINIANS?
By Dr. Steven J. Rosen

For the first time since the Oslo peace process started 18 years ago, Palestinian leaders are openly refusing to negotiate with the government of Israel, and U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is doing very little about it. As Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority President, explained the policy on December 9, 2010, "We will not agree to negotiate as long as settlement building continues." The Arab League is backing Abbas in this refusal, says League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, because "the direction of talks has become ineffective and it has decided against the resumption of negotiations."

Full Story


ELITISM & HYPOCRISY OF THE POLITICAL LEFT       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 5, Jan 5, 2011
LIBERAL POSTURING REVEALS FLAGRANT HYPOCRISY
By Christopher G. Adamo

Sanctimony from Liberal Democrat, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, never plays well with the public, despite media efforts to cast it in a good light, and his latest blunder is true to form. In an effort to go on the offense in the ongoing Obamacare debate, Schumer came up with what he undoubtedly considers a brilliant strategy, blissfully unaware of how completely it highlights his elitism and hypocrisy.

Full Story


ARABIAN DEBATE DESERVES FULL ATTENTION       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 4, Jan 4, 2011
IS SAUDI ARABIA OPENING UP?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes

Arabians are in mid-debate, with the future course of reform, as yet, unpredictable. Not only do elite and public opinion play a role, but, complicating matters, much hangs on the quirks of longevity and personality – in particular, how long Abdullah, 86, remains in charge and whether his ailing half-brother Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdulaziz, 82, will succeed him.

Saudi Arabia being one of the world's most influential Muslim countries, the stakes involved are high, not just within the Kingdom but for Islam and for Muslims generally. This debate deserves our full attention.

Full Story


AMERICANS HEADED FOR ENERGY SHORTAGES?       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 3, Jan 3, 2011
DRIVING U.S. FAMILIES INTO FUEL POVERTY:
Will America Learn in Time from the Price
Being Paid by British Companies & Families?
By Niger Innis, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez,
& Amy Frederick

This is a vital and timely column from three leaders of the Affordable Power Alliance, which represents the interests of poor, minority and senior citizens, employees, and energy consumers.

The column challenges attempts of the Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly, job-killing new regulations on our nation’s energy producers – and warns that those rules could subject Americans to the same devastating consequences that Great Britain’s companies and citizens are suffering in the wake of obstinate climate change, fossil fuel, and renewable power laws.

Congress rejected cap-tax-and-trade and other economy-killing legislation in the last session. For the White House, EPA, and Interior Department to impose equally destructive controls, through a regulatory power-grab, is intolerable and unconstitutional.

Full Story


U.S. ENERGY & ECONOMIC POLICY IN TEXAS       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 2, Jan 1, 2011
EPA'S TEXAS POWER GRAB: HOLLYWOOD CLIMATE MONSTERS
ARE A LOUSY BASIS FOR U.S. ENERGY & ECONOMIC POLICY
By Paul K. Driessen & Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon

The global warming alarmists need to get their computer models, scenarios, scare stories, and climate cops out of Texas. If they don’t, Governor Rick Perry and his Texas Rangers should arrest them for violating Lone Star rights to energy, jobs, health, and the American Dream.

Full Story


HUMAN BEINGS CANNOT CONTROL NATURE       PC, Volume XIII, Issue # 1, Jan 1, 2011
HUMANS! GET OVER YOURSELVES!
By Alan Caruba

The greatest absurdity has been the belief that human beings have any influence over the planet on which they live.

The Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest of the Solar System’s four terrestrial planets. It is the only planet that sustains life as we know it, and humans came late to the party.

So, humans, get over yourselves!

You do not control the biosphere of life on Earth. You do not control its natural calamities. Your attempts at governance are fraught with conflict, conquest, and oppression.

Full Story


RECENT ARTICLES
Next Page Previous Page




Return to Top of Page

Go to the WEBSITE INDEX

Go to the ARCHIVES for
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA:
Volume XIII, 2011
Volume XII, 2010
Volume XI, 2009
Volume X, 2008
Volume IX, 2007
Volume VIII, 2006
Volume VII, 2005
Volume VI, 2004
VolumeV, 2003
Volume IV, 2002
Volume III, 2001
Volumes I & II, 1998-2000

Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies


Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights


Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage

CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION