In May 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg posited that the individual who packed a Nissan Pathfinder full of explosives and parked it in Times Square was likely a homegrown American “with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something.”

Fortunately, the car bomb did not detonate.

The terrorist turned out to be Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen. And, not surprisingly, Shahzad wasn’t upset about the health care bill. After pleading guilty in court he said, “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim-soldier.” He was upset, as he put it, over “American occupation of Muslim Lands.”

Shortly after the attack, Bloomberg prematurely asserted that there was no evidence suggesting the bomber was part of any recognized terror network. Shahzad later told the court he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to learn bomb-making and other related skills.

Could it be that Bloomberg has underestimated the threat of Islamist terror, or is there another agenda?

The issue has again become relevant in recent days. The New York Times ran a series of articles and editorials blaming the NYPD for using the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America as part of their counter-terrorism training. (more…)

When the story of Tracy Morgan’s “anti-gay” comedy rant originally broke I wrote snarked that we wouldn’t hear anything more about it because Morgan was inoculated. After all, he’s openly hated-on Sarah Palin and did not direct “The Passion of the Christ.” That was my mistake, though not necessarily my fault. Because the pecking order of preciousness keeps changing to suit whatever the Left’s cause du jour is, I had forgotten that as of now “sexuality” trumps being both “black” and “liberal” in the PC-Hierarchy Of Those We Must Never Offend. So now it actually makes perfect sense that Morgan has been sent on a humiliating and very public re-education tour in order to save his career.

Today, we receives yet another disturbing and frightening report that reveals just how little our Entertainment Overlords value the First Amendment and the true concept of artistic freedom:

Tracy Morgan met with a group of homeless gay teens and families who have lost loved ones to hate crimes Friday in New York City. The gathering was organized by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) following homophobic remarks made by the 30 Rock star during a June 3 show in Nashville, Tenn.

Morgan has since apologized for his remarks and announced Friday that he’ll return to Tennessee on June 21 to ask pardon from those offended when he said he’d “pull out a knife and stab” his son if he were gay. …

Morgan’s stage remarks caused an uproar, with NBC Entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt and Tina Fey both issuing statements in response to them. “I speak for NBC and myself personally when I say we do not condone hate or violence of any kind and I am pleased to see Tracy Morgan apologizing for recent homophobic remarks in his standup appearance,” Greenblatt said.

Fey also said she was happy her co-star apologized saying “I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville” in a statement to THR.

If you read the full piece, you’ll see that comedian Chris Rock stood up for Morgan (kind of) and that Wanda Sykes bizarrely blames the State of Tennessee for all of this. Sadly, Morgan’s “30 Rock” co-stars, Alec Baldwin and  Cheyenne Jackson both joined Tina Fey in throwing Morgan under the bus. And by doing so, these artistic cowards have only encouraged the guardians of Hollywood’s New PC-Production Code to keep on keeping on.  How ironic — but in a fascist kind of way.

(more…)

So, NPR canned Juan Williams (yeah, like I wasn’t gunna do this story). If you aren’t familiar with NPR, simply imagine yourself, on a bus, sitting next to Judd Hirsch.

Anyway, it’s all due to comments Juan made on the “The O’Reilly Factor,” last Monday. There Bill asked him to respond to “The cold truth [that] jihad, aided …by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Williams replied, “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot….But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

Racist.

He also brought up the Times Square scumbag – who had no problem saying that the war with America is just beginning.

But as Slate points out, the passage quoted by NPR was a spoon-fed clip that dumps out before Williams says his worry reflects the problem of generalizing about groups of people.

I doubt Media Matters will cover that. (more…)

According to Nikki Finke, Universal sent a trailer of the upcoming film The Dilemma, directed by Ron Howard and starring Vince Vaughn, to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in order to get their blessing. Universal claims that GLAAD had no problem with the trailer, but a press release issued by GLAAD says they did:

After reviewing, GLAAD called on Universal to remove the scene where the word ‘gay’ was used as a pejorative from the trailer. Today, after Anderson Cooper also spoke out against the scene, Universal confirmed to GLAAD that the offensive joke will be removed from promotional campaigns from this point forward, including in the trailer currently playing in movie theatres.

Kind of hilarious, isn’t it, that Anderson Cooper, who made plenty of jokes on television about “teabagging” at the expense of Tea Partiers, would complain about the word “gay” being used as a pejorative? But that’s neither here nor there. And the point of this post is not to debate whether saying “that’s so gay” or whatever is offensive enough to be scrubbed from the American lexicon, and whether one group should have the power to make that decision.

No, the point of this post is to ask some very serious questions: Why did Universal feel the need to send its trailer to GLAAD for their PC benediction in the first place? Does Universal send their trailers to other special interest groups for vetting too? What about other studios? Do they make it a regular practice to send trailers to GLAAD, the NAACP, PETA, NOW, CAIR, and others? And does it stop at trailers? What about scripts? Previews? Merchandising ideas? (more…)

I am curious to see what happens when President Obama invites Molly Norris to the White House for a beer. Oh, wait… Molly Norris can’t go to the White House for beer because Molly Norris no longer exists; any trace of her has been wiped clean.

Norris, a Seattle cartoonist, was the unfortunate, creative mind who conceived of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” Ironically, her satirical comment on the demise of free speech in America led to protests and death threats from fundamentalists Muslims, who apparently take cartooning very seriously. Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who became an al-Qaida leader, then issued a fatwa. According to this man of God, the mere suggestion that people should draw Muhammad was cause for assassination. The FBI then suggested that Norris “go ghost,” which is to say, move from her home, change her name, stop drawing her cartoon—essentially wipe away any trace of her existence. Molly Norris is dead! So too, apparently is the American notion of freedom of speech as well as any vestige of American back-bone. Since when can those living in other parts of the world threaten American citizens with impunity?

It’s too bad that Norris didn’t pick-on Christians. Imagine if, instead of encouraging her fellow cartoonists to draw Muhammad, Norris had implored them to draw Jesus Christ. Sure, she would have been the subject of a few fiery Sunday sermons, received some nasty letters, and even been the object of some loud protests, but she would still have her life. In fact, there are even those Christians that would have prayed for her, rejoicing that drawing Christ might be the first step in coming to Christ. (more…)

Thanks to a heads-up from terrorism expert Steven Emerson and his organization IPT, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, I learned that in late July Nihad Awad, the unctuous executive director and co-founder of CAIR, gave a lecture at Jordan’s Kuta University entitled “The Experience of CAIR in Clarifying the Image of Islam in the West.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has muscled its way into being the go-to Muslim-American mouthpiece for the benefit of the lazy and complicit mainstream media – including The O’Reilly Factor, where Awad recently appeared and attempted to smear the opponents of the planned Ground Zero monument to Islamic supremacism. He works tirelessly to advance the stealth jihad agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, for which CAIR is a front group.

At Kuta, Awad spoke to students, professors, and the dean about “the international image of Islam,” which he claimed had been “subject to insult and distortions since the first Crusade.” He also presented practical steps that Muslims can follow to teach the world about Islam. (more…)

So earlier this week, a mosque was set on fire in Georgia – yet more evidence of the anti-Muslim backlash that’s sweeping the country.

Tamsir Lucien Mendy

At least, if you listened to The Council on American-Islamic Relations. Upon hearing the news of the crime, they reacted the way you’d expect. Says, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper…

“Given the recent wave of incidents targeting American mosques, a possible bias motive for this apparent arson attack must be considered… Unfortunately, there is a vocal minority in our society promoting anti-Muslim bigotry, and that minority is experiencing little or no pushback from mainstream religious and political leaders.”

Uh yeah, I wish he’d expand on all these incidents, but maybe he’ll be too busy removing egg from his face. That’s because fire investigators have pretty much figured out who set fire to the mosque, and it’s a dude named Tamsir Lucien Mendy. Investigators said Mendy belongs to the congregation. (more…)

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.”

That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim mayhem around the world protesting such infidel abominations as the Danish Muhammad cartoons and Geert Wilders’ short film Fitna.

“Red lines” indeed – a phrase chillingly reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s famous observation that “Islam has bloody borders.” Except that the red lines the OIC is referring to aren’t geographical – they are the ever-tightening limits that Muslim fundamentalists are imposing to choke off our freedoms.

The influential OIC is the world’s largest Muslim assembly, consisting of 57 member states (you know, the same number of U.S. states candidate Obama campaigned in). Its primary aim is “conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront Islamophobia.” (As I’ve written here before, Islamophobia is a mythical beast that the OIC and collusive groups like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, use to intimidate us into craven appeasement.) Their goal is to abridge our free speech by making criticism of Islam an international crime; their strategy works because the West has been so emasculated by multiculturalism that we’d rather embrace cultural suicide than offend the tender sensibilities of such violent barbarians as the Danish cartoon rioters. (more…)

So apparently a Michigan defense contractor has pissed off Muslim groups, by inscribing coded Biblical references on rifles it sells to the American military. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations claims these religious references send a “negative message” to the Muslim world.

To quote Dolly Parton, here we go again. Groups like CAIR rarely have their priorities in place -they’re always “reacting angrily” to perceived slights or hypothetical backlashes – when they really should be reacting angrily to those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam.

But you know who really gets my gopher? Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He says the gun sights not only give our enemies a propaganda tool, but adds, “I don’t have to wonder … how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these U.S. armed forces gun sights instead.” (more…)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on HBO to apologize for an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which the main character splattered urine on a painting of Jesus.

SEE: Larry David Blasted for ‘Curb’ Episode Where He Urinates on Jesus Painting http://tinyurl.com/hboepisode

In a letter to HBO Chairman and CEO Bill Nelson, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote:

“It is beyond tasteless to insult the religious sensibilities of billions of people in America and around the world with such a cheap and vulgar publicity stunt. Jesus, peace be upon him, is loved and revered by both Christians and Muslims. Muslims view him as one of God’s greatest messengers to mankind. (more…)

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone who morbidly follows this sort of thing (as I do) knows, enraging Muslim fanatics is hardly an accomplishment of Halley’s Comet-like rarity. It doesn’t take much: books, cartoons, teddy bears named Mohammad, posters of puppies, piggy banks, a Burger King ice cream swirl and the Nike logo (both of which apparently too closely resembled the Arabic script for “Allah”), are just a few of the recent Western offenses that have sparked their frothing outrage worldwide.

Yet despite the Daily Star’s perversely hopeful tone, there was no violent reaction in the UK from said fanatics, nor was there one in the United States after the episode originally aired here last Thanksgiving weekend (in a grimly ironic twist, the same weekend as the devastating mass murder and mayhem committed in Mumbai by a band of – wait for it – Muslim fanatics, or as the culturally sensitive media preferred to call them at the time, “gunmen”). So why no Muslim fury over The Simpsons? (more…)

Recently, I had a very odd experience.  No, I didn’t wake up 30 years younger and with a full head of hair.  That would have been odd but nice, whereas the experience I actually had was merely bizarre.

Like most bloggers, I write for more than one website.  It’s rather like being a syndicated columnist, except that little or no money changes hands.  But, as a writer who hopes to influence public opinion, you want to have as many readers as possible.

The strange event took place on a Tuesday.  It came in the form of an e-mail from Jonathan Garthwaite, who runs Townhall, a website I’ve contributed to for nearly four years.

The message read: “Dear Burt: As everyone is painfully aware, the economy is forcing companies to make difficult decisions.  Townhall.com is no different.  We take our commitment to our readers and our bottom line very seriously.  Similarly, we are constantly reassessing our editorial lineup.  We end up making tough decisions that aren’t always fun. (more…)

For the longest time, I’ve insisted that liberalism is the religion of choice for atheists, agnostics and run-of-the-mill secularists.  After all, be they Christians, Jews, Moslems or Buddhists, the truly devout accept the tenets of their religion on faith.  They can try to have logical debates with the likes of a Christopher Hitchens, but in the end it all comes down to a couple of people getting red in the face, hollering “Is so” and “Is not” at each other. 

But, of late, I’ve decided that referring to liberalism as a religion for non-believers is showing it too much respect.  It far more resembles a cult.  Even the expression about leftists drinking the Kool-Aid refers to an actual cult, the one created by the certifiable loony, Jim Jones.  Having led his flock of deranged sheep from San Francisco to Guyana, one day in 1978, he ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.  (more…)

With “Taken” debuting at the box office today, we’re inching closer to the melting of the post-9/11 “Thou Must Whitewash Islam” commandment.

Since 9/11, Hollywood is taken with the politically correct idea that they’re not allowed to portray Muslims as terrorists, or when they do, it’s to glorify the terrorists and justify their behavior–that America deserves it and made them do it.  Or–a la “24″–that Muslim terrorists are always working for the American White man.  Instead, Hollywood, post-9/11, made terrorists and hijackers, everyone BUT Muslims.  There were Black Men with AIDS from Africa (“The Interpreter“),  Federal Air Marshals and airline stewardesses, er . . . “flight attendants” (“Flight Plan,” exec produced by my uber-leftist cousin, Charles J.D. Schlissel), White Christians (a number of movies and TV shows) and everyone else you can think of . . . except Muslims, who make up the majority of real-life terrorists plotting against America today. (more…)