Why isn't Tom Scheck of Minnesota Public Radio telling the whole story about Keith Ellison, a.k.a. Hakim Muhammad?

Mr. Scheck,

In your article at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/07/20/politics/ellison-denounces-bachmann-accusations/, you write as though Ellison-Muhammad is an innocent victim with legitimate complaints. Are you intentionally deceiving your readers, or are you really so uninformed?

Why aren't you reporting on Ellison-Muhammad's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/07/keith-ellison-d-muslim-brotherhood-whitewashes-his-own-links-to-brotherhood-and-hamas-linked-cair.html)?

Why aren't you warning your audience of the Brotherhood's stated goal of bringing down Western Civilization from within (with its non-Muslim citizens' help)? In "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America" (http://www.investigativeproject.org/document/id/20), the MB states that Muslims should view their lives in the West as:

a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes . . . ."

Why aren't you reporting on the multitude of MB "friends" in the U.S., including CAIR, MSA, ISNA, MPAC, et al.? Why aren't you reporting that CAIR is tied to Hamas, a Muslim terrorist group which in its charter confesses its goal to wipe Israel from the Earth? Why are you printing CAIR's "description" of itself as if it were merely a special interest group without pointing out that it is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a major terrorist funding case (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/10/hamas-linked-cair-is-still-an-unindicted-co-conspirator-so-is-isna.html)?

Please do your duty, Mr. Scheck.

Regards,

Santiago Matamoros

What can you expect from someone who thinks that Muslims have a Constitutional right to his own daughters?

Hello, Tony, and welcome to 2003.
This is the earliest e-mail addressed to a public figure containing the revised signature.

Following is a response to the inveterate liar Anthony Sokolow, who advocates Socialism and Shari'a. In other words, an Obamaphile:

Tony,

How sad. You can't defend your nescient agitating for the bankruptcy of the American Republic, so you resort (again) to absurdity.

You are a liar and a masochist.

I did not select my nom de guerre out of pretention. (How stupid! If I were to do something like that, I'd have to be twelve-years-old and harboring intense feelings of insecurity . . . which goes a long way toward explaining why you thought of that first.) I chose the name to make a point regarding the one and one-half millennia-old existential threat posed by Islam. Unsurprisingly, you don't get it.

And where have I called myself a "scholar"? (Thanks for the compliment, by the way.) All one needs to understand Islam's texts, tenets, and timeline is the ability to read, some free time, and a little intellectual honesty. You have the time to participate in these e-mail exchanges (I'd use "debates," but that implies at least two sides contending more-or-less equally), so you do have some free time on your hands, and . . . .

. . . Well, I guess one out of three isn't too bad. (If this were Major League Baseball, you'd be an All-Star.)

With regard to the Henry quote, shall I remind you of how I disgrace you publicly every time you bring it up? You will recall that I demonstrated conclusively that you were several years late in pointing out its origin and that the only reason it showed up in its older form is because of a quirk in Hotmail.

Is anyone really surprised that you can't be honest? After all, you defend on Constitutional grounds the right of Muslims to exercise the freedom in their religion to behead you and rape and enslave your wife and two daughters.

You really ought to spend less time on the computer. After all, you've got bigger things to worry about. Like how to explain to your daughters your giving them up as sex slaves to the Ikhwan.

A.

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." -attributed commonly to, but inspired by, Patrick Henry

"I know no Savior apart from the One born by the Virgin, died on the cross, and given out at the altar." -Martin Luther

Treacherous Wikipedia

Wikipedia's editors play Judas to the truth.

Everyone has biases, but as Wikipedia's editors prove, not everyone can deal with the facts honestly.

Absurd ad hominems, specious arguments, over-generalizations, diversion, condescension. So much for intellectual integrity at Wikipedia.

A few notes pointing out Wikipedia's fundamental dishonesty from here:

The fact that the Lutheran Study Bible contains devotional content does not mean that its theological, historical, or textual scholarship is in any way questionable. That's poor logic.

Also, the text notes and essays contained in the LSB are written and/or compiled by professionals with earned Master's degrees and doctorates. Dismissing highly-educated Lutheran theologians and editors because they're Lutheran is fundamentally dishonest.

And the Evangelist made no "erroneous attribution," which is shown clearly by the material that was deleted.

Finally, Augustine and Luther are quoted/noted to imply error; their own words and heirs ought to be able to add to the discussion. That they're not indicates strongly a profound bias.

No wonder Wikipedia has the reputation it does.

Infrastructure does not create Prosperity, Liberty does

Offered in response to Anthony Sokolow's defense of Obama's deception on "infrastructure":

Infrastructure -- Government spending -- does not create Prosperity, Liberty does.

You write as if Government is a god, creating ex nihilo. But it doesn't. All that Government "gives" – including infrastructure – is paid for by its citizens through either taxes, debt, or inflation.

Every dollar spent by a politician – which politician knows better than you what to do with your own wealth, Tony? – is a dollar that the one who earned it no longer has to use for his own purposes.

Having a political "elite" decide how everyone else should live is fine as long as you're part of that elite, but it's not Liberty.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama's fundamental dishonesty regarding "infrastructure" (h/t Tom):

Spoken by a man who never created or ran so much as a candy store.

And it's completely a straw man argument — as if conservatives and Republicans are arguing to disband the fire department and the police department so we can all do it individually on our own. The idea that infrastructure is necessary and good is as old as the republic. It's older than that. The Romans had the Via Appia and that wasn't exactly a new idea. And they had the sewers as well.

The question is: What do you do with the money once you build the infrastructure? You heard Obama talking about the moon shot. … in that speech. He went through a list of the great achievements that the government has done. The moon shot. Well, Obama's the guy who shut down the moon program — manned space program so that today we have to outsource our access into space. For any American astronaut who wants to go to the space station we have to pay the Russians $50 million a shot.

He spoke about the invention of the Internet, which he neglected to say was the work of Al Gore. In fact, it wasn't the government that invented it, in general, it was the Defense Department, a part of the government. And what has Obama done as he sprinkled billions of dollars on all the other departments in government? He shrunk the Defense Department and it's now looking at draconian cuts.

This is a man that spent $1 trillion [stimulus] and left not a residue. He could have, for example, done something about the electric grid. He did nothing on that. Instead he sprinkled the money on cronies, pie in the sky ideological fetishes, like solar panels and electric cars…. Money wasted, it's water on the sand. He did not leave behind residue on all that, and yet he speaks of infrastructure.

All of us want infrastructure — but real infrastructure. And leave the rest of life to the private individual and the entrepreneur.

To liberals, "freedom" and "justice" are merely buzzwords useful only for buying votes from the greedy and stealing them from the gullible

You know, if stimuli are so good for terrorist states, corporations, public employee unions, and other campaign contributors, why don't leftists just give every American citizen – and illegals, too, why discriminate? – a billion dollars?

No leftist will answer that, since then they'd have to address why politicians, corporations, thieves, the lazy, and terrorists are more deserving of American dollars than those who actually earn them.

Liberals don't believe in freedom or justice. To them, those are merely buzzwords useful only for buying votes from the greedy and stealing them from the gullible.

Romney prescribing the same socialized arsenic as has President Kevorkian, only in smaller, state-sized doses

In reply to Anthony Sokolow's defense of Obama's mendacity on the proper attitude of government toward its citizens:

Tony,

Obama's performing some more sleight-of-tongue, making the absurd logical leap from the legitimate functions of government to justifying Leviathan and the final undoing of American Liberty. He's running a bait-and-switch on the American people, implying that what he's trying to do is consistent with what Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington did, people whom he defines as "right-wing extremists" and "potential terrorists."

If you refuse to vote for Romney on the basis of his distance from "everyday Americans" (whatever those are, for income should not disqualify one from holding public office, right?) and his secrecy (alleged by the Left; how ironic!), then you must despise Obama (not to mention many other leftists), who refuses not only to reveal anything meaningful about his own past (forget tax returns; how 'bout a birth certificate?) but to deal plainly with his intentions for the Republic's future.

Seriously, making up girlfriends? I'm sure that even if you did that, Tony, it was only to save face in front of your friends and not to create an electable façade, a mask behind which you could work to undermine the Republic.

You know, anyone reading your eager swallowing whole of whatever propaganda Obama and his media whores put out might conclude that you're incapable of intellectual probity; factual accuracy; or critical thinking.

And that's fine. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. And if you chose to have an opinion that is not an informed one, well then you do yourself a disservice by holding it and everyone else a disservice by publishing it.*

A.

P.S.: None of the above is an endorsement of Romney, since he's proven his willingness to say and do whatever he thinks is necessary to win elections, going so far as to prescribe the same socialized arsenic as has President Kevorkian, only in smaller, state-sized doses. Our nation's only hope is that Romney wins and is forced by the American people to keep his promises to reverse the disastrous effects of Obama's only term.

*Tony is a master of Unintentional Irony, the humorous but tragic propensity for tyrants to accuse others of their own perverseness. You'll find the most severe cases in hardcore Leftists and Muslims, as those who hate God the most are least able to recognize truth and most prone to proving His wisdom
. . . and their own folly.

If St. Augustine is going to be used carelessly (or dishonestly) to impugn the integrity of Scripture, then he should be allowed to speak fully

In exploring the possible use of "Iscariot" as an epithet for Judas (the name can mean "man from Kerioth," like Leonardo "da Vinci"), I stumbled upon a discussion of the two apparently-conflicting accounts of Judas' death recorded in the New Testament. But it's not whether he died from hanging or his body fell and burst that is at issue (the Scriptures state that Judas hanged himself and that his body fell and burst; the two are not incompatible)' it's whether or not Matthew erred in citing Jeremiah when quoting Zechariah.

In an article on Judas Iscariot, a contributor notes that no less than Saints Augustine, Jerome, and Luther consider Matthew's citation an "error." Here's the passage in question:

Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood."

They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money." So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me" (Matthew 27:3-10).

The best-informed and most rational explanation for this apparent contradiction is offered by the Lutheran Study Bible in a text note on Matthew 27, verses 9-10 (p. 1645) and the subsequent essay on the reliability of Scripture, "God's Reliable Word" (p. 1646). The text note states that the passage:

"Quotes Zechariah 11:12-13, but adds phrases from Jeremiah 19:11 (a potter's field is used for burial) and an allusion to Jeremiah 32:6-11 (Jeremiah's purchase of land)."

So, did the Evangelist err (at least partially)? Was St. Matthew careless? The essay explains further that (emphases mine):

"critics overlook a number of points on this issue. First, at a time when manuscripts were very rare and expensive, readers resorted to a variety of ways for studying and remembering key passages. Scribes often prepared collections of texts on a topic as a means for exploring and learning the teachings of Scripture. In The Harmony of All Sacred Scripture, Michael Walther provided numerous examples of this practice and the writers' habit of merging quotations (Harmonia Totius S. Scripturae [Strasbourg: Eberhard Zetzner, 1626], 416). Below is Walther's list with some additions:

Matthew 21:5 contains Isaiah 62:11, Zechariah 9:9

Matthew 21:13 contains Isaiah 56:7, Jeremiah 7:11

Mark 1:2-3 contains Malachi 3:1, Isaiah 40:3

Acts 1:20 contains Psalm 69:25, 109:8

Romans 3:10-18 contains Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3, 5:9, 140:3; Proverbs 1:16; Isaiah 59:7-8; Psalm 36:1

1 Peter 2:7 contains Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 8:14

The example from Mark 1:2-3 is especially helpful for understanding Matthew 27:9-10. Mark ascribes his quote to Isaiah, but the full quote is actually a mixture of Malachi and Isaiah -- and Malachi gets quoted first. When we carefully consider Matthew 27:9-10, we see that the first words of the text come from Zechariah 11:13. But there is also wording from Jeremiah 32:6-9. It appears that both Matthew and Mark named their lists by the larger prophetic books cited in the lists. (Zechariah and Malachi were perhaps less likely to suggest themselves for the titling, since they stood in the scroll of the minor prophets.)

And if St. Augustine is going to be used carelessly (or dishonestly) to impugn the integrity of Scripture, then he should be allowed to speak fully:

"If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood . . . For the utterances of Scripture, harmonious as if from the mouth of one man, commend themselves to the belief of the most accurate and clear-sighted piety, and demand for their discovery and confirmation the calmest intelligence and the most ingenious research . . . So that, if any one is perplexed by the apparent contradiction, the only conclusion is that he does not understand" (NPNF 1 4:180).

So, it turns out St. Augustine was right after all. Not about the Evangelist erring, but about our lack of understanding and our need for "the calmest intelligence and the most ingenious research" in our study of Scripture.

Muslims stone Christians . . . in Dearborn

And what do those sworn to protect our God-given, unalienable rights do? Not only do they allow Muslims to commit attempted murder against those exercising their freedom of speech, but they also harass, threaten, and act as accessories to the violation of those victims' rights. All this because, of course, men standing with signs are a "danger to public safety," but Muslims literally stoning (and bottling, concreting, milk-cartoning, and urining) peaceful Christians is "understandable" and "expected."

The consequences of this official cowardice are dire. One of the Christians heard on camera near the end of the video has it right: The authorities are rewarding Muslim rage and violence and contempt for American law.

It's too bad the victims in this case weren't homosexuals protesting Islamic intolerance of their behavioral choices or blacks denouncing the racism inherent to Islam; then the police might have done their job. Or, can you imagine what would have happened if the identities of the two groups in this case were reversed, if this had been a mob of Christians hurling projectiles and expletives at Muslims merely holding signs denying the divinity of Christ or somesuch?

Any bets on when Holder and his Department of Inaction and Enabling are going to ensure that the law is upheld? President Obama? No, you're right; they're too busy giving citizenship and automatic weapons to illegal aliens and Mexican drug gangs. At least they're "trying real hard."

If left unchecked, it's no secret how Islamic intimidation and violence will turn out here, because we've seen it over and over again, year after year, in nation after nation. All you have to do is look at any Islamic -- and Islamizing -- state to see what happens to its non-Muslims when they allow Muslims to gain any sort of significant presence.

Once a Muslim population hits critical mass, it explodes.*

This is Islam in America, and it's only going to get worse. Allah must be proud:

*What pun?

For Obama, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is today, while Romney endorses the liberal half of the Supreme Court as the final word on all things Constitutional

Whether it's King George or King Barry, "tyranny" by any other name would smell as rank.*

Officials have already drafted 13,000 pages of new regulations for the new ObamaTax law.

King Barry will be hiring thousands of new tax people to enforce "the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years." And you won't get your refund until you provide proof of insurance.

It's bad enough that when you're pulled over you have to show proof of auto insurance. That's the government punishing you for driving. This is being pulled over for proof of health insurance. That's government punishing you for living.

If the Obamacare "tax" is really a penalty (which it is), then the law is unconstitutional. The federal government does not have the power to force free people to buy a particular product. Misdefining "penalty" as "tax" is how Chief Justice Roberts justified siding with the deranged half of the Court in upholding Obamacare, and its how Obama's liars lawyers argued it before the Court, all of which is an admission not only that Obama knows that the law is unconstitutional, but that he thinks you're stupid.

Why is Obama changing definitions again? Because he knows that the American people are sick of taxes, and we will not tolerate 13,000 pages of new taxation. If we opposed socialized medicine when it carried with it a "penalty," how much more despised will it be now that the "penalty" is a massive tax increase?

And there is Romney's problem: He's right to call it a "penalty" (liberals, like all tyrants, love to punish those who disobey them) and not a "tax," but his handlers want him to call it a "tax" because they think that will make it easier to defeat Obama. They think that We the People are incapable of understanding Obama's shell game. But if it wasn't obvious before, it should be clear now that Obama's the operator, the politicians, media, and Supreme Court justices are the lookouts, muscle, and shills, and the American people are the mark.

Romney would be best off calling the penalty what it is and not endorsing the liberal half of the Supreme Court as the "final word" on all matters constitutional. We the People, judging in accord with our nation's founding principles as stated in our Declaration of Independence and enumerated in our Constitution, are the final word. Mitt should explain Obama and his fellow Socialists' willful, condescending deception and vow to repeal it.

How will the Republic survive when its only alternative to King George is afraid to state plainly that the emperor is wearing Marxist underwear?

Obama silent while spokesman denies mandate is a tax:

Anchor Soledad O’Brien asked LaBolt: “His spokesman…said it’s a penalty. The Supreme Court has said it’s a tax. What does he believe?”

“That it’s a penalty,” LaBolt answered.  “You saw our arguments before the Supreme Court…”

“So then he disagrees with the Supreme Court decision that says it’s now a tax?” O’Brien asked.

“That’s right,” said LaBolt.  “He said that it’s a penalty.  You saw our arguments before the Court.”

At that point, O’Brien pointed out that the Obama administration’s solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, argued before the Court that if the justices chose not to find the mandate constitutional under the Commerce Clause, they could still uphold it because it is a tax, and Congress has broad power to levy taxes.

*Apologies to Messrs. Ramirez and Shakespeare