Another Useful Idiot

A friend posted a video on Facebook of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) speaking at a town hall event sponsored by the Islamic Society of Orange County in February 2012. The title of the event was "Sharia and the Constitution." I'll embed the video below.

Ms. Waters speaks for about 12 minutes. I'm not sure if she was the keynote speaker, or if her remarks preceded or followed those of other speakers. I didn't hear a specific reference to the Constitution in her speech, so perhaps there were other speakers presenting that aspect of the town hall meeting. 

Rather, the gist of Ms. Waters' remarks focused on the attempts by some Republican lawmakers, specifically Peter King and Newt Gingrich, to make Sharia Law illegal in the United States. Her point was that America is a country where all religious expression is a fundamental right; in attempting to criminalize one aspect of religion, in this case, Sharia Law, the GOP is discriminating against Muslims. 

Unfortunately, her argument is undermined by the fact that, implicit in Sharia is the expectation of conversion--voluntary or coerced--to Islam, and its tenets are oppressive, tyrannical, anti-woman (are you listening, Ms. Waters?), and, if we're talking about the American legal system, illegal. For example, according to Sharia law:

•  Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand.
•  Criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death.
•  Criticizing or denying Muhammad is a prophet is punishable by death.
•  Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
•  A Muslim who becomes a non-Muslim is punishable by death.
•  A non-Muslim who leads a Muslim away from Islam is punishable by death.
•  A non-Muslim man who marries a Muslim woman is punishable by death.
•  A man can marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she is 9 years old.
•  Girls' clitoris should be cut (per Muhammed's words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
•  A woman can have 1 husband, but a man can have up to 4 wives; Muhammed can have more.
•  A man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman needs her husband's consent to divorce.
•  A man can beat his wife for insubordination.
•  Testimonies of four male witnesses are required to prove rape against a woman.
•  A woman who has been raped cannot testify in court against her rapist(s).
•  A woman's testimony in court, allowed only in property cases, carries half the weight of a man's.
•  A female heir inherits half of what a male heir inherits.
•  A woman cannot drive a car, as it leads to fitnah (upheaval).
•  A woman cannot speak alone to a man who is not her husband or relative.
•  Meat to be eaten must come from animals that have been sacrificed to Allah.
•  Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.

* Note: I found the above list of Sharia laws on a website called BillionBibles. The link has a picture of a severed hand next to a Koran, so I decided not to link it here.

Today's Los Angeles Times reports that Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL), the Islamic (i.e., religious) terrorist group that is attempting to establish a caliphate in the Middle East and probably aspires to world dominion, is recruiting women to join their cause, marry their soldiers, get pregnant, raise children ("lions"), and cook. At the same time, in Syria, a female militia has been created whose job it is to enforce Sharia among women:

Early this year in the Syrian city of Raqqah, capital of the self-styled caliphate, local women formed the Khansa Militia, an armed morality squad whose job one anti-Islamic State activist summed up as "detaining and whipping." The militia counts many foreigners among its ranks, said the activist, who asked that his name be withheld for security reasons. The women, armed with handguns and rifles, drive around the city looking for violators of Islamic State's severe interpretation of Islam. During one raid, the militia detained several high school students and teachers for such transgressions as wearing niqabs that were too transparent, having visible eyebrows or wearing a hair clip under the hijab. Each one was whipped 30 times, said another activist in Raqqah.

This barbarity is what Ms. Waters considers religious expression and defends as constitutional? She repudiates lawmakers who are trying to prevent such barbarity from creeping into our legal system? 

Ms. Waters is either ignorant of or blind to the oppressive nature of Sharia. Another useful idiot. 

Jonathan Turley on Obama's Power Grab

Every now and again, a "gentleman of the Left" gets it right. 

Here's Jonathan Turley in today's Los Angeles Times Opinion pages, commenting on Barack Obama's imperialist presidency (my words, not his, but the implication is clear). Pointing out that the American system of balanced powers, as established by James Madison and the founders, was designed to protect individuals, i.e., "we, the people" (yes, that includes you and me and Bobby McGee), from "any one branch," he takes Obama to task for his "recent unilateral moves" that have "accelerated at an alarming rate under Obama." 

I like how Turley put it:

James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.

You'd almost think this critique came from the Racist Right. It did not. Turley admits he "happens to agree" with most of Obama's policies. My understanding is that he leans leftward, though apparently he's taken positions over the years that have angered the far left.

Unfortunately, this kind of scrutiny may be "too little, too late" from a left-leaning media that has turned a blind eye to this president's flaws. One can only hope that the tsunami of Obama Adulation that has flooded the dominant media's newsrooms is beginning to recede, leaving in its wake a few good men and women who are willing to sift through the mess and begin the long, hard, sloggy job of cleaning up after Obama once he leaves office. 

Our system is changing in a fundamental way without even a whimper of regret. No one branch in the Madisonian system can go it alone — not Congress, not the courts, and not the president. The branches are stuck with each other in a system of shared powers, for better or worse. They may deadlock or even despise one another. The founders clearly foresaw such periods. They lived in such a period.

Whatever problems we face today in politics, they are of our own making. They should not be used to take from future generations a system that has safeguarded our freedoms for more than 200 years.

 "The President's Power Grab," by Jonathan Turley (Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014).