Sen. Chris Dodd on FISA

This interview is very good and worth reading all of it. Reflections on Osama bin Laden, and his continuing relevance – Threat Matrix. 7. In the past few years, many people have begun to perceive bin Laden as an uncaring terrorist who has no hesitation about spilling the blood even of fellow Muslims. Does he still enjoy important support among Muslims?  And there is good reason for this perception. In December 2009, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a report finding that only about 12% of al Qaeda’s victims are Western. Those who had to live under the…

Political Islam is here to stay — US must accept and adjust – CSMonitor.com. 2. Political Islam is not hostile to the West, but to its policies. Many Westerners assume that Muslims “hate our freedoms,” but reliable surveys paint a different picture. Drawing sweeping inferences from sound bites or selective “alarming” data isn’t valid, because political Islam is less a monolithic ideology than an outgrowth of each nation’s society. Years of regular polling in the Islamic world suggest that the majority of Muslims hold in high regard core American values such as religious tolerance, meritocracy, individual liberty, freedom of the…

Muslim Woman Sues Religious-Freedom Commission For Discrimination – The Daily Beast. One of the more explosive claims in the suit comes from an internal email that said hiring a Muslim to investigate religious freedom in Pakistan was akin to “hiring an IRA activist to research the UK twenty years ago.”   … In response, USCIRF commissioners claimed they were within their rights to base their decision on her religion, arguing that the anti-discrimination clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not apply to the commission.  Strangely, the commissioners weren’t entirely wrong. Indeed, it’s possible that Ghori-Ahmad’s suit would not…