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“One of the most influential conservatives in America this weekend gave a sneak peek at a soon-to-be-published book he has written calling for a ‘New Republican Party.’  The author underscored that for the sort of improved GOP we need, ‘national security must be Job #1.” (Emphasis Forum’s.)  - - Frank Gaffney

In a March 5, 2010 letter, the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force chairman James Lafferty asked Virgina delegates - -

“to withdraw the invitation to Imam Johari Abdul-Malik of the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia to open the Thursday, March 11 session with a prayer.”

Lafferty declared - -

“Abdul-Malik was often cited as the spokesman for the Dar Al Hijrah mosque and he used his position there to defend numerous convicted terrorists and question the judicial system in the United States.”

Read activist Lafferty’s entire letter here.

Added Pamela Geller of “Atlas Shrugs” - -

“My friend and colleague, the intrepid James Lafferty, is taking bold action against this pathetically clueless and dangerous act by the Virginia General Assembly.

This incompetence is striking, and our lawmakers must be held to account. It is their job to know. We should sanction, not submit to, our would-be executioners.”

Last month Frank Gaffney in “Big Government” here spelled out what he saw as the recent history of the mosque - -

“Dar Al-Hijrah has been staffed by a series of Imams who  radicalize their members – the members don’t ’self-radicalize,’ as Major Hasan was said to do in the negligent report on the Fort Hood Shooting put out by the Pentagon.  The U.S. intelligence community missed the warning signals from Dar Al-Hijrah’s earlier Imam Anwar al-Awlaki; they should heed the warning signals from the current Imam, Shaker Elsayed.”

Islamists in Fairfax County?

Investigators David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry cited an alarming comment in January 2009 -

“’There’s only three degrees of separation between international terrorism and what happens in Fairfax County,’ observes a senior Fairfax County [Virginia] Police Department detective. ‘Our society here is totally infiltrated by the bad guys.’”  - - Paul Sperry interview January 16, 2009 in Muslim Mafia.

If national security is to be “Job #1″ for Republicans, then they need to pay more attention to it at home. As threat-analyst Stephen Coughlin says,

“You think we are fighting a war over there.

I think we are fighting a war right here.”

Readers may wish to revisit the lamentable tales of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and their 2008 support for extending the lease of the Islamic Saudi Academy here and here and here.

Both Fairfax County’s incumbent Representative in Congress, Democrat Gerry Connolly, the former chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and a Republican member of the Board of Supervisors, Pat Herrity, now a candidate for the House of Representatives, supported the 2008 extension of the Islamic Saudi Academy lease in spite of strong warnings to the contrary. 

What politicians supported and now support the Islamic Saudi Academy should be one of the central issues in the 11th Congressional District primary and general elections this year.

Former Federal Elections Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky tells us all about “the people behind the Department of Justice’s politicization” in his “Radicalizing Civil Rights” post today in National Review on Line (NRO) - - including, we might add, Marylander and Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez.

(Alert Maryland conservatives will want to ask the Republican leader in the Maryland House of Delegates, Anthony O’Donnell, why he supported here and here Mr. Perez’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate, and did so on House of Delegates letterhead suggesting he was speaking for the Republican caucus.)

Reveals Heritage Senior Legal Fellow von Spakovsky - -

“If you want to understand how the Civil Rights Division is being run in the Obama administration, imagine for just a moment what would happen if the most radical, ideologically left-wing advocacy organizations in Washington took control of it. Because that’s exactly what happened.

So who are the players who are responsible for all of this?

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez. Perez is a longtime Democratic activist and a former staffer to the late senator Ted Kennedy. When Perez was running for a seat on the Montgomery County Council in Maryland, he was asked what was the most important thing voters should know about him. His response: ‘I am a progressive Democrat and always was and always will be.’ Once elected, the hyper-partisan Perez made no effort to hide his contempt for Republicans. He once gave a speech claiming that conservative Republicans do not care about the poor. An article in the Washington Post (April 3, 2005) characterized Perez as ‘about as liberal as Democrats get.’”

Perez also served as president of Casa de Maryland, an extreme advocacy organization that opposes the enforcement of our immigration laws. This group has encouraged illegal aliens not to speak with police officers or immigration agents; it has fought restrictions on illegal aliens’ receiving driver’s licenses; it has urged the Montgomery County Police Department not to enforce federal fugitive warrants; it has advocated giving illegal aliens in-state tuition; and it has actively promulgated ‘day labor’ sites, where illegal aliens and disreputable employers openly skirt federal prohibitions on hiring undocumented individuals.”

Please review von Spakovsky’s brief biographies of the entire cabal of attorneys who can affect our voting and other rights here.

In our view, we conservatives should take his appraisal of the Civil Rights Division straight to heart - -

“The overwhelming majority of the individuals who populate the Civil Rights Division have always felt that because they are pursuing a virtuous mission, they are infallible and somehow have license to contravene the law, skirt ethical lines, and participate in acts of deception. Until recently, these leftists were able to act with impunity, and even today, the mainstream media continues to turn a blind eye until the Division’s misconduct becomes so glaring (think New Black Panther Party) that it simply can no longer be realistically ignored. Hopefully, however, those days are beginning to end. Abuses need to be exposed and individuals need to be called to account. And we will all be the better for it.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Delegate Bob Marshall has been among the preeminent fiscal conservatives in Virginia.

Faithful readers will recall his successful suit Marshall v. NVTA [Northern Virginia Transportation Authority] where the Virginia Supreme Court held that

“the NVTA, created in 2002 and given the power to tax in 2007, exceeded its powers when it levied 7 taxes on residents of Northern Virginia.”

Marshall led this year’s liberty charge pioneering Virginia ‘health freedom’ legislation, which would establish a barrier against overreaching in any Obamacare legislation that might be enacted.

Today the Prince William County-based delegate asked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli - -

“Since raising funds whether by taxes or fees is one purpose, and appropriating money is a separate and distinct purpose, would including a provision for raising $76 million in fees to be spent as part of the Appropriations bill, violate the one object rule of the Virginia Constitution if the Governor signed this bill as a law?”

Read Marshall’s entire letter here.

Whatever the constitutional opinion the attorney general renders on “the one-object rule,” we wonder as does lieutenant governor Bill Bolling how many of these and apparently other “fees” are really taxes. 

Readers may recall that when then (Maryland Republican) governor Bob Ehrlich proposed taxes as “fees” in 2004, both Americans for Tax Reform and the National Taxpayers Union drew some clear distinctions between “fees” and “taxes” here and here.

What is the Richmond Tea Party Thinking?

Readers may be as troubled as we were to learn that the Richmond Tea Party has rescinded its invitation to Bob Marshall to speak at its April 15 Tax Day Rally because of “statements made by Delegate Marshall regarding post-abortion pregnancy complications being nature’s punishment.” 

The Richmond Tea Party declares  it is a “non-partisan,grassroots community.”

Presumably, then, they carefully polled their members on the question of Mr. Marshall’s suitability as a Tax Day Rally speaker.

However infelicitous, if unintended, Mr. Marshall’s February 18 remarks may have sounded, would the Richmond Tea Party apply the same rigorous exclusionary standards to those Republicans who actually urged and voted for higher taxes?  And to Republicans who favor reckless spending like high-speed rail? Will the Richmond Tea Party ensure that elected officials invited to speak at their Tax Day Rally don’t include any state incumbents who have failed to sign the no-new-taxes pledge?

In short, if one is going to exclude a Tax Day participant for misspeaking, then one should exclude a participant even more for urging or voting for (or both) bad policies. But maybe it make more sense to avoid knee-jerk purity tests and look at the entire context.  

We may not agree with every one of Bob Marshall’s positions, but he is a courageous, principled conservative who pays attention to fixing the machinery of government. He is not a “no-content” legislator.  We hope other Virginia Tea Parties will not be so quick to throw this valuable lawmaker under the bus.  After all, neither the Congress nor the state legislatures have a surfeit of such men and women.

GOP Senators and Moral Courage:  Michelle Malkin asks “Does the GOP have enough balls to fight the Left or doesn’t it?” - -

“You know about my doubts. You’ve heard my warning about McCain Regression Syndrome.

Now, I want you to read every word of what Andy McCarthy has to say about the GOP leadership’s abandonment of Jim Bunning — and what it says about the lack of Republican fortitude in the war against the permanent, ever-growing Nanny State.”

Columnist Malkin warns us - -

“Like I said this morning, I don’t want to hear the preemptive Republican promises to ‘repeal Obamacare later.’”

Stop. It. Now.

As long as Beltway GOP hacks see this as a cynical marketing campaign and not an ideological battle, we are screwed.”

Geert Wilders - A Voice Finally for the European Middle Class? National Review on Line’s (NRO) Denis Boyles reports - -

“Geert Wilders’ triumph in two important local elections in that seaswamp of a country, where parties sprout like tulips, seems to predict a bigger victory for his Freedom party in June. As Mark pointed out, the Dutch politician, who campaigns against immigration abuses and a government policy of giving comfort to Muslim extremists and Islamic ’street terrorists,’  is often painted by the Euromedia as a right-wing lunatic.”
. . . . .
“Wilders is a roll-back politician. As he points out, far more than in the U.S., Europe has a silenced middle-class, and beneath the predictably off-target press-roar about fascism and all that, a Freedom party victory will bring issues affecting that muted middle to the surface.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

The Weekly Standard’s Adam Brickley gives us more background - -

“But Wilders is totally unlike ‘far-right’ leaders in the rest of Europe. He is a harsh critic of racism and anti-Semitism, and he is no friend of ‘far-right neo-fascist’ leaders such as the French National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen or the British National Party’s Nick Griffin. In fact, while those leaders are broadly anti-Semitic and isolationist, Wilders was actually shaped by years spent in Israel as a young man. Hence, he is one of the Jewish state’s strongest European defenders, an advocate of the war on terror, and a firm critic of Jihad–stances which have won him fans among national security hawks in the U.S. Furthermore, his economic agenda is radically libertarian compared to most Europeans and could be a vanguard for European reform.”

Mark Steyn compares the Wilders prosecution in the Netherlands to that of his own in Canada.

“At a certain level, the trial of Geert Wilders for the crime of ‘group insult’ of Islam is déjà vu all over again. For as the spokesperson for the Openbaar Ministerie put it, ‘It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct. What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.’”

Ah, yes, in the Netherlands, as in Canada, the truth is no defence. My Dutch is a little rusty but I believe the ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ translates in English to the Ministry for Openly Barring People. Whoops, my mistake. It’s the prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice. But it shares with Canada’s ‘human rights’ commissions an institutional contempt for the truth.”

But concerns about Jihad and Sharia are not limited to other countries. For a look at uncongenial neighbors closer to home (in Falls Church, Virginia, for example) readers will find instructive Frank Gaffney’s Big Government article “February Fundraiser for Convicted Terrorist Supporter in Al-Awlaki’s Mosque.”

The bottom line on the Wilders and Steyn experiences are that inhibitions of speech about Jihadists and sharia are right around the corner in the U.S. unless we become outspoken as well as vigilant.

And official speech?  Well, scroll down in this post to Stephen Coughlin’s chart of how the 9/11 Commission’s terms “defining the enemy” all but disappear in two important government guides in the period from 2004 through 2009.

Will CPAC welcome Geert Wilders as a speaker when Wilders becomes Prime Minister of the Netherlands?  Stay tuned.

 “Conservatives target their own fringe” trumpeted the headline in Kenneth Vogel’s “Politico” post last Saturday where he chronicled a mixture of Left assertions, and fears of nervous Republican Party-oriented voices that the Tea Partiers are including some “fringe” activists. (We would not, however, so characterize any of the Maryland or Virginia Tea Parties we have attended.)

Anyone who was at the 2010 CPAC knows, moreover, that the giant conservative gathering had little outrageous rhetoric and was quite color-inclusive.

Again, the Tea Parties we have joined have many older, accomplished participants.  They would view as presumptuous and patronizing this quote from former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson who pontificated in his Washington Post column “A primer on political reality” –

 “Sometimes it takes courage to stand before a large crowd and proclaim that two plus two equals four.”

In his column on the conservative spectrum, Gerson shamelessly lumps together, with isolationists and left-wing extremists, those serious conservatives who opposed the former president’s deafness on immigration and confusion about US sovereignty.  Gerson mocks, moreover, the research of the analysts and investigators here and here and here who have tracked the current president’s hard-left upbringing and political development.

The Tea Parties are a spontaneous uprising against the Political Class. Why invite their voices back in as guides?

The Tea Partiers did fine without “minders” in 2009, and the political sophistication of many local participants may well exceed that of putative national “leaders”and “trainers.”

The underlying theme of the nostrums advanced by voices in the Vogel article amount to a mug’s game: apparatchiks running about to ensure that no Tea Partier says anything politically offensive. That is an approach with an outrageously demeaning implication.

For that says that local Tea Partiers are somehow not savvy enough to present their own case effectively - - and suggests a largely futile course of action because the Left will always contrive to find ways to demonize us.

As Ann Corcoran of Potomac Tea Party Report counsels - -

” . . . [T]o maintain your independence from any supposed NATIONAL Tea Party organization. . . [t]hink nationally but act locally!

There are, however, some troubling omissions Tea Partiers and grass-roots conservatives should worry about: 

• the unwillingness of too many Republican politicians to confront “Jihad” at home (try Fairfax County) and abroad; and
  
• the silence among many self-appointed national Tea Party chieftains about the enormous fiscal costs of illegal immigration, to say nothing of the census consequences.

The Potomac Tea Party Report highlights  a current example of grass-roots focus on illegal immigration:

 “Last Saturday [February 20] the North Central West Virginia Tea Party held a candidate forum for 6 Republican candidates for the 1st Congressional District.  The Times West Virginia reports that 4 issues were at the top of the list of concerns of those attending.  Immigration was one of those.”

In Maryland, a “magnet state” for illegal aliens, there is no question that the grassroots worry about illegal immigration.

We agree with some conservative critics that trying to make the president and his administration go away by arguing that he is not a citizen is, to put it charitably, probably not a productive course. But there should be no subtext to these critics’ message discouraging anyone from looking into the many unanswered questions about the president’s upbringing, education, and Chicago life.  Here for example is respected conservative scholar Stanley Kurtz’s analysis just before last election.  For those - on either side - who want to go beyond a knee-jerk discussion, here is Andrew McCarthy’s article in NRO  “Suborned in the U.S.A. The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born.”

Getting Education and Culture on the Tea Party Agenda

In her pathfinding American Thinker piece *”Conservatives, End the Apology Tour,” (the theme for this post’s title) Mary Grabar tells us - -

“Although various conservative advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity have kicked into high gear in reaction to the threat of government takeover of health care, I have not seen similar action in response to the takeover of education. Most of these groups target citizens already disposed to be wary of large government. But where is the program to instill the idea into a nineteen-year-old’s head that a Washington bureaucrat determining health care decisions is antithetical to our notions of freedom? Where is the program to counter the dominant pedagogy that insists that students make ‘collective’ decisions and write “collaboratively”? Where is the program that encourages independent thought?” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Scholar Grabar sums up her priorities for conservatives - -

“The reaction to the rot in education and culture does not match the reaction to health care, as evidenced by town halls, where one participant told Arlen Specter, ‘You have awakened a sleeping giant.’ Indeed, hard-working, middle-class, middle-aged America has awakened from its stupor on this issue.But wouldn’t it make more sense to try to rescue the values and culture of the West and implant them in the minds of the young in a way that is associated with intellectualism (as in fact it is)?   If we did, we would not be reacting in panic to such issues as government health care (with the fires of Afghanistan, illegal immigration, and free speech popping up too). In other words, we would not simply be reacting according to a script from the Saul Alinsky playbook, but establishing our rightful place as intellectual leaders.  Then Glenn Beck and I will not be seen as isolated Jeremiahs, shouting and weeping.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

But we have one qualification to Mary Grabar’s otherwise sound recommendations on education and culture.

Obamacare must be stopped now or we won’t have much flexibility to address anything else.

Republicans: In Office or In Power?

And Mark Steyn tells us where our weak point lies right now 

“In shoving health care down the throats of the American people in the teeth of overwhelming public opposition and any sense of parliamentary decency, the Democrats are in effect taking a bet on Republican wussiness — that, whatever passes, the GOP will have no stomach to undo, no matter the scale of their victory in November. That seems to me an entirely rational calculation. The Dems will be punished; the Republicans will take over the committee chairmanships and be content, as they often are, to be in office rather than in power; and after a brief time out the Democrats will return to find their new statist behemoth still in place. From their point of view, it makes perfect sense.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

For a look at Truthers, Birthers, Oath Takers, the John Birch Society, Alex Jones, and  Lyndon LaRouche, see long-time conservative investigator Cliff Kincaid’s two posts here and here “The Media, Extremists and Conspiracies, Part One and Part Two” commenting on the same Vogel piece in Politico.

• VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ADDS TO “OUR CURRENT D.C. LEXICON”: “partisan bickering—a period when conservatives are unexpectedly gaining the upper hand. gridlock—a time when liberal legislation polls less than 50 percent among the American people. bipartisanship—triangulating Republican legislators who join liberals on key legislation. filibuster—a sometimes necessary Senate remedy to thwart reactionary excess — in its perverted form, unnaturally turned on progressives. centrist—a Republican who votes for Democratic-sponsored legislation; to be distinguished from an opportunist, who,as a Democrat, votes for Republican-sponsored legislation.”

• ANDREW MCCARTHY: THE “PERMANENT TRANSFORMATION” of America. Former Federal prosecutor McCarthy warned yesterday in NRO  - - “I think our side is analyzing this all wrong: Today’s Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they’re right.” Those of us who have recognized for some time that the president is not an inept liberal academic who fell in with foolish company — but rather a disciplined leftist with a clear and very uncongenial vision for us all — will certainly agree with with McCarthy that - -“In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you’ve calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.” (Underscoring Forum’s throughout.) Last August, we drew readers’ attention to American Thinker’s Rick Moran who had revealed “Dems considering the ‘Armageddon option’ on health care” pointing out “the Republicans could slow down business in the senate by requiring all bills to be read in their entirety, or have constant quorum calls, or pile on amendments to bills - the possibilities are endless.” We declared then  “To defeat Obamacare there under regular procedures and to prevent its approval through the backdoor of the ‘reconciliation’ process (designed only for budget control) will require the Senate Republican leadership to take aggressive stands, risk almost certain demonization, and keep its members together in constant opposition.“

• INHOFE TOP SENATE CONSERVATIVE. National Review on Line’s (NRO) Bob Costa tells us that “Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), Skeptic Man, tops National Journal’s [link added] annual congressional vote ratings as the most conservative member of the Senate. According to NJ, Inhofe was the only senator with a perfect conservative score in 2009.“ Faithful readers will know from a sample of our earlier posts here and here and here why we see the senior senator from Oklahoma as one of the preeminent Senate Republican work horses (as distinguished from, heaven forfend, show horses). Our sense is that senators Jim DeMint (number two spot in overall conservative ranking), Tom Coburn (number four spot),  and Jeff Sessions (number 10 spot) are also among these high-performing Republican senators. The NJ 2009 overall conservative rankings give us perspective on the Senate Republican leadership showing Republican leader Mitch McConnell in the number 8 spot, Republican Whip John Kyl in the number 18 spot, and Republican Conference chair Lamar Alexander in the number 32 spot. Since everyone will want to know the senior senator from Arizona’s place in the 2009 overall conservative ranking, John McCain is in the number 21 spot. How about the overall conservative ranking of members of the House leadership? Republican leader John Boehner is in the number 14 spot, Republican Whip Eric Cantor is in the number 37 spot, and House Republican Conference chairman Mike Pence is in the number 8 spot. In Maryland, Roscoe Bartlett (certainly the only conservative in the Old Line State delegation) was the top ranker in the number 108 spot.  His Congressional neighbor right across the Potomac in Virginia, Republican Frank Wolf, is in the 131 spot.  Other Virginia Republican overall conservative rankings are Bob Goodlatte in the 58 spot, Randy Forbes in the 66 spot, and Rob Wittman in the 108 spot. Here are the key votes used in the NJ’s calculations.
  

SCROLL DOWN TO UPDATES!

Last Saturday afternoon the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) agenda listed the following session directly touching the future of America - - culturally, electorally, and fiscally.

Immigration: The Defining Issue for the Republican Party
Sponsored by American Council for Immigration Reform (1.5 hours)
Robert E. Rector, Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
James G. Gimpel, Professor of Government, University of Maryland

Moderator: Michael McLaughlin, American Council for Immigration Reform
Open to all CPAC attendees

This immigration break-out session also included Representative Steve King of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security &  International Law panel of the House Judiciary Committee.

Since the sponsoring  American Council on Immigration Reform (ANCIR)  has not yet (at press time) posted the videos of this session, we shall have to reconstruct part of the session’s important messages.

Professor James Gimpel’s presentation paralleled his Center for Immigration Studies backgrounder “Immigration, Political Realignment, and the Demise of Republican Political Prospects” -

“A comparison of voting patterns in presidential elections across counties over the last three decades shows that large-scale immigration has caused a steady drop in presidential Republican vote shares throughout the country. Once politically marginal counties are now safely Democratic due to the propensity of immigrants, especially Latinos, to identify and vote Democratic. The partisan impact of immigration is relatively uniform throughout the country, even though local Republican parties have taken different positions on illegal immigration. Although high immigration may work against Democratic policy goals, such as raising wages for the poor and protecting the environment, it does improve Democratic electoral prospects. In contrast, immigration may help Republican business interests hold down wages, but it also undermines the party’s political fortunes. Future levels of immigration are likely to be a key determinant of Republicans’ political prospects moving forward.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Gimpel’s recommendations for Republicans?

“The hope for Republican success with immigrant voters lies mainly with the upward mobility and prosperity of Latinos, Asians, and others, something that will occur only with great difficulty given current levels of low-skill, wage-corrosive immigration. Republicans are right to want to attract Latino voters. They are indisputably a growing share of the population and the electorate. But expanding the future flow of low-skilled immigrants into an economy ill-suited to promote their upward mobility will clearly be counterproductive given the evidence presented here. At the same time, Republican opposition to higher immigration levels can be too easily typecast as racist and xenophobic. This is because the party’s elites have failed to deliver a clear message that they want a pro-immigrant policy of reduced immigration and that these two goals are complementary. Such a policy would also prove to be the best means for moving immigrants toward the middle and upper income status that will promote their geographic and political mobility.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

E-Verify Nationally

Meanwhile the invaluable Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) last Tuesday posted Jessica Vaughn’s “E-Verify Participating Employers” - -

“The Department of Homeland Security recently released the latest figures on E-Verify use by state, specifically the number of employers, worksites, and queries so far this fiscal year (since October 1, 2009), as of February 20, 2010.”

Here is an extract from the entire CIS chart:

State

Total MOUs #

Total Sites *

Queries for FY 10

MARYLAND

3,257

13,120

120,847

VIRGINIA

5,096

28,585

120,965

“# MOU – This represents the number of employers participating in the program. Employers must sign a ‘Memorandum of Understanding.’”

* Total work sites (one employer may have multiple work sites).“

This information will enable Maryland and Virginia  lawmakers and immigration-watchers to gauge the extent of employer acceptance of E-Verify and to take steps along these lines here and here.

Also informative is the CIS  backgrounder by Steven A. Camarota entitled  “Business and Labor on Immigration Contrasting Views of Leaders vs. Rank and File” - -

“A new Zogby poll of senior executives, business owners, and members of union households finds that each of these groups thinks the best way to deal with illegal immigrants in the country is to enforce the law and cause them to return home. This is in stark contrast to lobbyists for large companies, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which argue for legalization. The findings of the survey are consistent with surveys done by the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small enterprises, showing strong opposition to legalization. Among unions, the leadership strongly supports legalizing illegal immigrants, but the survey shows enforcement — not legalization — is by far the option favored by union members and their families.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

A best-for-America U.S. immigration policy is unlikely from the Obama Administration. The conflict between big business and  conservatism, this time on immigration, is once again illustrated by the Camarota backgrounder. Readers will need to hold state lawmakers’ feet to the fire if they wish successfully to pursue the kind of state-level solutions detailed by Heritage fellow Matt Mayer. This latest CIS data on employer use of E-Verify should strengthen the argument for these state-level solutions.

UPDATE FROM MARK KRIKORIAN “The E-Verify Glass Is Half Full” - -

” . . . E-Verify needs a robust ID system underlying it, which is why Congress passed the REAL ID Act, which some states and open-borders interests are still resisting. Finally, the report notes that ‘mandating the use of E-Verify is expected to make the Program more effective in preventing unauthorized employment.’ Yes, it is. And the best example of such a mandate is Arizona, but its experience with the program was not assessed in this report: ‘The evaluation team did not have adequate data for estimating the impact of E-Verify on unauthorized employment in Arizona, the only state that has implemented E-Verify for all employers.’” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Read the entire update here.

• “MARK LEVIN TO GLENN BECK: ‘STOP DIVIDING US’ ” Video via NRO: “Right now [the Republicans] are holding the fort and they deserve reinforcements.” For post-CPAC perspective on Beck, see C. Edmund Wright’s “American Thinker” articles here and here.

• FEDERAL REGULATION OF GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS: “At an EPW [Senate Environment and Public Works Committee] hearing that began at 10, Senator Inhofe has just released this report and called on EPA to reconsider its endangerment finding on the basis that EPA relied on IPCC reports, which have now been revealed to be full of faulty science.” - - Myron Ebell from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Background here.
  

• NATIVE HAWAIIAN GOVERNMENT REORGANIZATION ACT “Aloha Segregation A bill expected to pass the House today with overwhelming Democratic support would accomplish something peculiar for a liberal republic in the 21st century: It would partly disenfranchise a portion of one state’s residents, create a parallel government for those meeting a legislated criterion of ethnic purity, and would portend the transfer of public assets, land, and political power from those who fail to satisfy the standard of ethnic purity to those who do. For these reasons and many more, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act richly deserves opposition.” - -NRO Editors. Background here and here. See House vote tonight [February 23]  here.

• OBAMACARE REVIVED:  “PRELIMINARY POINT #1:  OBAMACARE CANNOT BE PASSED THROUGH RECONCILIATION.”- - Mike Hammond a former general counsel to the Senate Republican Steering Committee, summarizes the most recent Obama health care proposal. And here is the “RSC Policy Brief: President Obama’s Proposal - Still a Government Takeover of Health Care.”

• AIRBORNE LASER: James Carafano declares in the Washington Examiner  “dumping airborne laser leaves America vulnerable,” explaining “At 8:44 p.m. PST Feb. 11, 2010 … for just a second … man made night into day. A short-range ballistic missile launched from a sea-based platform off California’s Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center. Moments later, the Airborne Laser carried aloft in a specially modified 747 detected it.Then it cranked up the high-energy laser. That beam struck home, burning a small hole in the missile. A split-second later, its structural integrity destroyed, the missile vaporized in a tumbling corkscrew.” Comments Cliff May who pointed us to the James Carafano post - - “An ABL could help neutralize the threat of ’scud in a bucket,’ which, Jim says, in many ways is ‘the ultimate weapon.”‘
  

The senior policy-makers in the Obama Administration seek to take advantage of their long-awaited opportunity to carry out a domestic statist as well as an America-disarming agenda.  Last weekend’s CPAC, on the other hand, had some uplifting moments and offered an opportunity to working-level conservatives from around the nation to meet and compare notes.  But conservatives will have to learn to understand policy fine print and how to work the gears of government if they are to slow the Obama Agenda. Today’s danger is so great that we will have to master these details of government not only until November 2012, but for quite some time afterwards.  We all saw what happened while too many of us took a passive role after the Gingrich and Bush victories of 1994 and 2000 respectively. In short, the buck stops with each of us - - however attractive emerging Republican politicians may appear.

SCROLL DOWN TO UPDATE: “NATIONAL SECURITY? WHAT NATIONAL SECURITY”

“There is no greater risk to our security than radical Islamic terrorists.These terrorists do not aim to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their world view on others, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever we have to do, for however long we have to do it, to defeat terrorism.We will punish their allies like Iran and stand with our allies like Israel. We will target and destroy terrorist cells and their leaders.” - - Marco Rubio at CPAC

Of the major Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speakers running for office, certainly Florida U. S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio minced no words in targetting the Islamist menace. (This is to take nothing from Ambassador John Bolton’s fine talk on preserving our sovereignty.)

But a visiting Martian anthropologist might conclude — if the extra-terrestial observer only read the long list of speakers and panels on the CPAC program - - that few CPAC-attending conservatives believe the U.S. faces serious foreign adversaries with nuclear weapons, that CPAC-attending conservatives were largely satisfied with the state of their country’s defenses, and that many of these conservatives did not believe we were engaged in a grave struggle at home as well as abroad with militant Islam. 

“You think we are fighting a war over there.

I think we are fighting a war right here.”

With this as one of his themes, sometime senior Pentagon analyst Steve Coughlin (together with six other experts) gave a standing-room-only crowd at CPAC last Friday morning chapter and verse on Jihad, Sharia, and our Islamic enemies.

CPAC  billed the panel “Jihad: The Political Third Rail | Sponsored by the Freedom Defense Initiative |Speakers: Steve Coughlin, Wafa Sultan, Allen West, Simon Deng, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer.”

Let’s go right to threat-analyst Coughlin’s points about the war we are fighting against Islamists.

• “I believe that we’re fighting the entire War on Terror on narratives. And when we shifted the entire War on Terror to fighting the entire War on Terror on narratives,  we went off the factual template.  You see, the Constitution says we protect and defend against all enemies.  But post-modern America says,  we  protect against all violent extremists.  Think about that.  Because you know, that word gets to  mean just about anything you want it to mean – as long as it’s not ‘enemy.’”

• “MPAC [Muslim Public Affairs Council] was demanding that the 9/11 Commission  [link added] change its language.”  Here is our version of Coughlin’s own findings and chart on how the 9/11 Commission language disappears in subsequent U. S. documents - - -

 

• “So when you’re fighting hearts and minds in Afghanistan, and you don’t have reference to that language – who are you talking about?  And how can you define hearts and minds in Afghanistan when you don’t have a lexicon that makes use of this language?
  

• You know what I call this? The 9/11 commission has been completely undermined. The facts and the factual  context of the 9/11 commission [have] been completely undermined.  This is decisive victory in the information battle space.  The destruction of factual knowledge by removal of words as defined — supplanted by an illusion of knowledge where none exists. ”

• “Political correctness can not only be a cause of losing a war, but a strategy to defeat the United States premised on making it impossible to define him.”

• “You cannot have a strategy to defeat an enemy you will not define. I know we don’t have a strategy, I know they will not define the enemy. So does the enemy know that.” (Underscoring Forum’s throughout.)
  

Readers are strongly urged to view the video of  analyst Steve Coughlin’s CPAC presentation of the Islamist assault on western values ranging from the Netherlands to the state of Maine to Fort Hood.

Historians will have to make the final assessment on how much the policies of the Bush Administration contributed to our current capitulations to Sharia expansion. At the end of April 2008, we wrote in “CONSERVATIVE HEADS-UP : ‘An Anatomy of Surrender’” that - -

“One of the elephants in the Republicans’ national living room is the president’s apparently conflicted attitude on Islamists. Many conservatives who are (properly) quick to jump on the White House for a Harriet Miers nomination or on an entitlement expansion or on signing the McCain-Feingold bill, seem sheepish about calling the White House to account on their attitude toward sharia expansion - - - which is a very real peril.”

As Mark Steyn pointed out after the 2006 elections -

. . . [Y]ou can’t be in favor of assertive American foreign policy overseas and increasing Europeanization domestically; likewise, you can’t take a reductively libertarian view while the rest of the planet goes to pieces. Someone in the GOP needs to do what Ronald Reagan did so brilliantly a quarter-century ago — reconcile the big challenges abroad with a small-government philosophy at home.”

UPDATE: MARK KRIKORIAN “National Security? What National Security?”
“ . . . David Keene and Grover Norquist, who have the biggest voices in planning CPAC, are on Obama’s side against conservatives on many of these areas of [national-security-policy] disagreement. Specifically, the two of them (along with Bob Barr) smeared opposition to closing Guantanamo and to civilian trials for terrorists in the United States as “scaremongering.” When CPAC is run by people sharing the views of the ACLU, CAIR, and Eric Holder, what do you expect?” Read Krikorian’s entire post.

A Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) panel “Saving Freedom Through Technology: Growth of the Online Movement” today underscored how the blogosphere has vastly increased political accountability.

Townhall’s Jonathan Garthwaite declared we have a level of accountability we never had before through the internet. Listen here to this panel’s presentation including Erick Erickson (RedState), Jonathan Garthwaite (Townhall), Mark Tapscott (Washington Examiner), Tucker Carlson (The Daily Caller) as well as moderator Robert Bluey (The Heritage Foundation.)

(Blue Ridge Forum was one of around 100 bloggers present at CPAC today and accredited to the conference.)

The gift of the internet makes it quite possible for the voter to track and compare votes and positions of officials elected to local, state, and Federal  responsibilities and is vital in organizing citizen action like Tea Parties.

Which brings us to the 10th District race for chairman in Virginia.

Dave Schmidt is one of two contenders to replace Jim Rich as chairman of the 10th Congressional District.  The other candidate is Howie Lind.

Mr. Lind’s goals (from his website) — should he be elected chairman — are listed here. He urges ways to increase the accountability of elected officials. 

“Develop and maintain a GOP ’scorecard’ on every political jurisdiction in the 10th Congressional District. This ’scorecard’ would list every single elective office holder at every level of government. School Boards. Town, City and County Councils. City and County Treasurers. Board of Supervisors. City and County Attorneys. State Delegates and Senators.”

Here are Mr. Schmidt’s “core objectives.”  They do not appear to include instituting any kind of mechanism for tracking the record of elected officials from the 10th District.

Yesterday we received an email from Mr. Schmidt asking -

“Do you want a Republican Party we can be proud of, or one you could be embarrassed by?

Do you want a Republican Party that attracts and welcomes new voters, or one that limits Republican participation with arcane litmus tests?

Do you want to focus on electing Republicans to office at all levels or waste time debating resolutions and disruptive tactics in meetings with no end?

Do you want a Republican Party Chairman proud to embrace and endorse our outstanding Rep. Frank Wolf, or do you want one to remain neutral and risk losing our seat to the Democrats?”

Fair enough questions for a political campaign, Mr. Schmidt.  We don’t know what Mr. Lind’s responses — if any — might be, but we have a response of our own:

To begin with, here and here are lists of Mr. Lind’s supporters to date.

10th District delegates can decide for themselves if these Lind supporters, such as Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, National Republican Committeeman from Virginia Morton Blackwell, and delegate Bob Marshall, constitute a “Republican Party we can be proud of, or one you could be embarrassed by.”

But Loudoun County voters will not be able to make their views count in this race unless they meet the filing deadline [click for the form] this Saturday to become a Loudoun County delegate [”candidate”] to the May 22, 2010, 10th District Republican Convention.

The 10th District Convention delegate filing deadline is 5 PM, this Saturday, February 20, 2010 in Ashburn.