Chuck Hagel hammered for pro-Iran, anti-Israel statements

(Video H/T American Power Blog)

Fox News reports on the Senate hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Excerpt:

Defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel endured a barrage of criticism Thursday during his all-day confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, challenged repeatedly by Republican lawmakers about his past positions on Israel, Iran, Iraq and other issues he’d be sure to confront at the helm of the Pentagon.

The former Nebraska Republican senator was compelled under questioning to walk back a series of past statements, including one in which he complained about the “Jewish lobby.” He had several sparring partners throughout the day, but was questioned perhaps most aggressively by fellow Vietnam War veteran Sen. John McCain and freshman Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, both Republicans.

Hagel was caught by surprise when Cruz played two tapes from appearances on Al Jazeera — one of which showed him not challenging a caller who accused Israel of war crimes, another in which he appeared to agree with the assertion that America is “the world’s bully.”

Of the Israel interview, Cruz said: “The caller suggests that the nation of Israel has committed war crimes, and your response to that was not to dispute that characterization.” He then asked Hagel directly whether he thinks Israel has committed war crimes.

“No, I do not,” Hagel said, while saying he wanted to see the “full context” of the interview.

Cruz called the war-crimes suggestion “particularly offensive given that the Jewish people suffered under the most horrific war crimes in the Holocaust.”

“I would also suggest,” he continued, “that for … a prospective secretary of Defense not to take issue with that claim is highly troubling.”

Cruz then played the tape of Hagel being asked about the perception and “reality” that America is the world’s bully. Hagel could be heard calling the point a “good one.”

Cruz said the answer is “not the conduct one would expect of a secretary of Defense.”

At other times in the hearings, Hagel was also asked about his previous opposition to sanctions against Iran, his desire to let Iran have nuclear weapons and then “contain” them, and his support for eliminating nuclear arms (note that ours are the only ones he could eliminate). In short, the man is a naive left-wing radical who makes Neville Chamberlain look like George S. Patton. Why would anyone vote for him to have control of our military?

Filed under: News, Afghanistan, Appeasement, Barack Obama, Chuck Hagel, Confirmation, Hearing, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Naive, Naivete, Nominee, Nuclear Arms, Nuclear Weapons, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, Senate, Surge, War

Ex-Planned Parenthood board member confirmed to 9th circuit court of appeals

From Life News.

Excerpt:

Last week, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen to become a member of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,one of the most left-wing federal appeals courts in the nation.

The confirmation has President Barack Obama adding yet another pro-abortion judge to the nation’s judicial system. Although Christen had to wait months to be confirmed, she will now serve on a court that will decide pro-life legislation coming from Pacific Coast states — usually declaring it unconstitutional.

[...]When she submitted her application to become a state Supreme Court justice, Christen made no mention of the fact that she is a former board member of Planned Parenthood and served the pro-abortion group in the mid 1990s.

In his statement announcing Christen’s nomination, Obama said, “I am proud to nominate this outstanding candidate to serve on the United States Court of Appeals. I am confident Justice Morgan Christen will serve the American people with integrity and distinction.”

[...]The Alaska Planned Parenthood organization on which Christen served has been a vocal opponent of pro-life legislation at the state capital — most notably opposing repeated attempts by state legislators to pass parental notification and consent legislation allowing parents to know when their minor daughter is considering an abortion and requiring Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion business, to obtain permission from the girl’s parents beforehand.

Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion President in the history of the United States.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Barack Obama, Court of Appeals, Democrat, Democrat Party, Judge, Judicial Activism, Justice, Morgan Christen, Ninth Circuit, Nominate, Nominee, Planned Parenthood, Senate

Obama’s Supreme Court nominee gave money to pro-abortion group

From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

…Kagan has revealed her pro-abortion loyalties by contributing financially to the pro-abortion National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), reported Americans United for Life Wednesday.

NPWF, according to its own website, works “to increase women’s access to quality, confidential reproductive health services and block attempts to limit reproductive rights and reverse hard-won gains.” The organization goes on to specify “contraceptive services and supplies, sexuality education, [and] abortion services” as among its top concerns.

In addition, wrote AUL, NPWF senior advisor Judith Lichtman “wholeheartedly” supported Kagan’s nomination in a letter, saying the Solicitor General was a “friend and colleague.” Lichtman, a radical supporter of abortion, has said that “efforts to limit coverage of abortion services are really attempts to deny women access to health care services,” according to AUL.

NPWF has deep connections among the most powerful pro-abortion lobby groups in the country: NPWF President Debra L. Ness serves on the Board of Directors at Emily’s List, a group dedicated to helping pro-abortion female politicians win elections, and once worked as deputy director of NARAL. NPWF Board Chairwoman Ellen Malcolm was the founder of Emily’s List.

Obama is the most pro-abortion president we’ve ever had. So it makes sense that he would nominate a radical pro-abortion candidate.

Democrats are the party of abortion. If you don’t like abortion, don’t vote for Democrats.

But is she a socialist, too?

Erick Erickson of Red State has a PDF of her college thesis on socialism. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

This proves Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist. The woman declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates.

Obama the tax and spend socialist picked a socialist to be his nominee to the Supreme Court. Makes sense.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Barak Obama, Democrat, Elena Kagan, Emily's List, John Paul Stevens, Judge, Judith Lichtman, Justice, National Partnership for Women and Families, Nomination, Nominee, NPWF, Pro-Abortion, Republican, SCOTUS, Socialism, Socialist, Solicitor General, Supreme Court

Obama’s TSA nominee withdraws after lying to Congress about abuse of power

Story from Yahoo News.  (H/T Ed Morissey of Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration withdrew his name Wednesday.

In a statement, Erroll Southers said he was pulling out because his nomination had become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda. President Barack Obama tapped Southers, a former FBI agent, to lead the TSA in September but his confirmation has been blocked by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who says he was worried Southers would allow TSA employees to engage in collective bargaining with the government.

Questions have also been raised about a reprimand that Southers received for running background checks on his then-estranged wife’s boyfriend two decades ago. Southers wrote a letter to lawmakers earlier this month acknowledging that he had given inconsistent answers to Congress on that issue.

Ed Morrissey writes:

There were at least three reasons why Southers’ nomination was going nowhere in the Senate.  When Congress created TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, it exempted both from labor laws that allowed unions to organize the workers, in order to avoid having labor problems disrupt national-security efforts.  Southers was seen as an appointee who would push for unionization by Senator Jim DeMint, among others, who held the nomination in order to get clearer answers from the Obama administration on their intentions.  That hold got lifted shortly after the Christmas Day bombing when the Obama administration complained that the Senate had prevented Obama from providing leadership to TSA, but Obama had taken eight months to nominate Southers in the first place.

It was at that time that Southers finally admitted that he had misled Congress during his confirmation process on his involvement in breaching privacy laws to investigate his wife’s boyfriend.  That involved two issues of trust: accountability to Congress and the security of private information being held by the government.  Not only did Southers himself twice breach the data, he also disseminated it — which is a felony, although long past the statute of limitations, presumably.  The Senate should not look kindly on appointees who begin their jobs by lying to Congress, and multiple holds replaced the DeMint hold as a result.  That has nothing to do with “political agendas,” but with Southers’ suitability for the job.

Another one bites the dust. Here’s a few of the previous failures.

Filed under: News, Abuse of Power, Collective Bargaining, Confirmation Hearing, Corruption, Erroll Southers, Fraud, Hearing, Homeland Security, Jim Demint, Lying, National Security, Nomination, Nominee, Transportation Security Administration, TSA, Unions

Safe schools czar says respect for homosexuality begins in kindergarten

Story here at CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration’s safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, has accused the Baptists, the Boy Scouts and sports fans of anti-gay bias, and he has advocated a special high school for gay teens as well as gay-straight alliance clubs for every high school in America.

Jennings, who was a prominent homosexual activist before being named director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, also has called for kindergarteners to be taught to respect all sexual orientations, while insisting that “ex-gay messages” and “Christian values” are ‘misused to isolate or denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people” and have no place in the nation’s public schools.

Recent controversy surrounding Jennings’s role in the Department of Education has revolved around a 1988 conversation in which Jennings told a high school sophomore in a relationship with an older man that he hoped he used a condom–rather than reporting the possible case [of] statutory rape to authorities.

Jennings explains how he gets pro-homosexual messages into the schools:

In a 2000 speech at a GLSEN event Iowa, Jennings argued that students as young as kindergarten should be taught to respect people “regardless of sexual orientation.” The Washington Times has posted an audio of this speech on its Web site.

“Our curriculum at kindergarten, and first grade, and second grade–every grade until students have graduated should be ‘you must respect every human being regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of gender identity, regardless of race or religion or any arbitrary distinctions we make about people,” Jennings said in the 2000 speech. “If we cannot teach this very basic lesson in our schools we will be very surprised at how hard it is for these students to learn French or English or math.”

In a February 2000 speech, Jennings predicted at a GLSEN conference that the cause of making homosexuality acceptable would succeed in elementary school. “Homosexuality will become more acceptable to students, especially elementary ones,” he said, according to an article in The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. “We are at a new moment in our history.”

And he opposes publicly-expressed Christian convictions:

On Nov. 19, 2000, Jennings wrote an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer that was critical of the North Carolina Southern Baptist Convention’s position on homosexuality.

“As a native Tar Heel and a former high school history teacher, I watched in amazement last week as the North Carolina Southern Baptist Convention passed a policy excluding gay people (and anyone who welcomes them) from the denomination. All I could think was of the old aphorism ‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,’” Jennings wrote.

He compared the denomination’s stance on homosexuality with racism during the days of slavery and segregation.

“The same pious members who nodded in agreement as our preacher talked about ‘loving your neighbor’ seemed to believe that this meant loving your white neighbors. Our fellow churchgoers expressed a visceral hatred of blacks (except they didn’t say ‘blacks’), resisted the integration of schools in Winston-Salem, and generally were pretty ‘unChristian’ on the whole subject of race,” the Jennings op-ed continued. “The Southern Baptists of the 1970s were, in fact, just following the traditions and history of our denomination, which had been founded because Southern Baptists wanted to defend the institution of slavery and thus formed their own convention in the 1840s. In 1996, about 150 years after it mattered, the Southern Baptist Convention formally apologized for its role in upholding slavery and racism. Better late than never, I guess.”

This article is long and detailed, and the rest is really good. This not a typical news article, it’s comprehensive and filled with quotes of Jennings own words.

Why did “Christians” vote for Obama?

Some people I know who call themselves “Christian” voted for Obama. (See breakdown here)

Remember that the support of left-wing Christians for the political left led to the loss the loss of free speech and religious liberty rights in Canada. And Obama is already working on that here.

Previous posts

• Obama’s latest radical leftist nominee would curtail religious liberty
• Meet Obama’s school-safety and employment diversity czars
• FRC opposes Obama’s school safety nominee

Filed under: News, Anti-Catholic, Anti-Christian, Barack Obama, Children, Czar, Democrat, Family, Free Speech, Gay Activist, Gay Agenda, Gay Rights, GLSEN, Hate Crime, Homosexuality, Kevin Jennings, Kindergarten, Marriage, Nominee, Obama, Religious Liberty, Safe Schools Czar, School Safety, Secularism, Socialism