Obama Enables America’s Enemies

By Robert Spencer
http://pjmedia.com/
July 2, 2012

Mohammed Morsi, centre, waves to supporters after his speech in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

No sooner was Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi elected president of Egypt than he announced his determination ^[1] to work for the freedom of an enemy of the United States: blind sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life term for his role in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not since Jimmy Carter helped usher in the Iranian Revolution has an American president done so much to aid those who are determined to destroy the United States.

In fact, the parallels are numerous. Carter betrayed the shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally who had a dismal human rights record but was generally loyal, and paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that quickly showed its gratitude to Carter by taking U.S. Embassy personnel hostage, and has maintained a war footing against the United States ever since.

Obama, for his part, betrayed Hosni Mubarak, another longtime U.S. ally with a record of repressive rule, paving the way for the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power. And now President Morsi has shown his gratitude to Obama by announcing his determination to free from prison a man who plotted to murder hundreds of thousands of Americans.

It is said that history repeats itself, but it doesn’t do so by means of some automatic, inexorable, deterministic process. History repeats itself because people refuse to study and learn its lessons, and to face the unpleasant facts it presents. Thus, they make the same mistakes their predecessors did. The Obama administration didn’t have to be Carter’s second term, but both Carter and Obama are the products of a political culture that consistently discounts the importance of religious motivations.
Informed sources have noted that at the time of the Iranian Revolution, only one book by the Ayatollah Khomeini could be found in the State Department, and no one had read it: no one thought the rantings of an obscure fanatic exiled to far-off France were important. That was the manifestation of a willful blindness to rival that of James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, who famously labeled the Muslim Brotherhood “largely secular.” In fact, it is the same willful blindness, and it has characterized the Washington establishment’s views on Islam and jihad from Carter’s day until now.

So secular is the Brotherhood that Morsi recently repeated its guiding motto to an enthusiastic crowd: “The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” Last week, Yasser Borhamy, a Salafi leader, declared ^[2] that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to implement Sharia as the main source for Egyptian law. Noting opposition to Sharia in Egypt, Borhamy said: “What is disturbing in the Islamic Sharia law, is Sharia bothering anyone? We do not say ‘our views on Sharia,’ but we say that we want the Sharia law revealed by God. Would anyone be afraid of the Sharia that establishes justice, [public] interest and wisdom? This is very strange. How is it said that people are afraid of Sharia?”

By “Sharia law revealed by God,” Borhamy meant the Sharia that stones adulterers, amputates thieves’ hands, mandates death for apostates from Islam, and institutionalizes subjugation of women and non-Muslims. If the Brotherhood does succeed in implementing this in Egypt, it will have Barack Obama to thank: his applause for the “Arab Spring” uprisings, coupled with the universal misrepresentation of them in the Western media as outpourings of a longing for democracy and pluralism, has brought us to the inception of an Egyptian regime that is almost certain to go to war with Israel and pursue a path of unrelenting hostility toward its erstwhile patrons in Washington.

Yet even the likelihood that Egypt, long a recipient of American largesse, will become an enemy of America is unlikely to shake those entrenched core assumptions in Washington that got us into this fix. The Obama administration rejects, as a matter of repeatedly stated policy, the idea that Islam has anything to do with terrorism, or warfare against unbelievers, or the legal subjugation of non-Muslims. An Obama official who opined that a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt would likely be an enemy of the United States because of Islam’s core doctrines regarding the evil of the society of unbelievers would be reprimanded or fired outright for “Islamophobia.”

And so what was old is new again: a man who owes his seat of power to the United States demonstrates his hostility to the ones who put him in place. Then it was Khomeini, now it is Morsi, but in both cases it is the same. One wonders how many times Washington will have the luxury of making this same mistake before the consequences become too terrible to bear.

URLs in this post:

[1] announced his determination: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/29/mohamed-morsi-sheikh-us?newsfeed=true

[2] declared: http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/salafi-leader-brotherhood-agrees-sharia-not-principles-will-be-source-legislation

Joe Paterno fans must accept that he was flawed

By DAVID JONES, The Patriot-News
June 30, 2012

Penn State University President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno talk before the Iowa game, Oct. 8, 2011. (NABIL K. MARK/Centre Daily Times, file)

Six months ago when Joe Paterno died, I was compelled to write something of a sympathetic tone about him. In a way, it was not easy for me because I’ve always known the man was no deity, as so many for so long have desired to paint him.

But I also knew he was no demon, as some had suggested during the two-month wake of the Sandusky presentment bombshell. I wrote a column about a night when he met my mother and how kind he was to her. It was well-received by the throngs who wished to perceive the coach beneath a halo.

Today, we begin to deal with the man’s dark side. As it was the time then to extol some of Paterno’s virtues, now it is time to examine his liabilities.

We all have both. Our culture seems more and more addicted to the concept of white hats and black hats, to taking sides, to painting the world and its inhabitants as either “good” or “evil.” It’s an infantile way to look at life and people, in my opinion.

And there is a certain sizable segment of the populace in this region who seems desperate to cling to the belief that Paterno was this saintly grandfather of all that’s noble and good about not only college athletics but higher education. That he could not possibly have been involved in the cover-up of a pedophile’s hideous deeds.

Those people will never believe what I have to say here because they are zealots in need of a hero, even if it’s someone they never knew.

I can only tell you that when I read Saturday’s CNN report implicating Paterno in keeping the lid on Sandusky’s activities, I was not in the slightest surprised. I’ve suspected as much for almost two years. I did not print my full sentiments in the interest of fairness.
As a columnist, I did not want to get out ahead of this story, especially when I could not prove what I had heard. I wrote merely that I believed the PSU board of trustees had no choice but to fire Paterno. I believed that on Nov. 9, and I believe it now.

In covering the man and his football program for 21 seasons, the single most dominant thread is this: his ambition and drive. He would allow nothing and no one to disparage the institution he had built without some form of retribution. And he had complete power over his domain.

He could be a vindictive man. At times, he was pointlessly petty and nasty.

Just like the rest of us. Except that in the case of a man who had accumulated such power, the consequences of his actions could take on much greater impact.

In mid-August 2010, I first heard an account of what went on in the Lasch Building shower, the scene we now know as involving then-assistant Mike McQueary and Victim 2. I was floored.

From the beginning, the account that was related to me implicated many who had knowledge of Jerry Sandusky’s “encounter of a sexual nature” with a young boy, including Paterno, then-President Graham Spanier and then-Athletic Director Tim Curley.

They were third-hand stories lacking any documentation. There was no way I could prove them or print anything about them. I told my editor and managing editor what I had heard, and we immediately set about trying to find out if law enforcement authorities knew anything about such accounts or were pursuing a case. We could find no police record of anything. We now know why.

On Sept. 15, 2010, Sandusky quit The Second Mile charity, and alarm bells went off for me. This was it, I thought. Police must know something. But I couldn’t know for certain without confronting Sandusky himself. I drove to State College on Sept. 16, knocked on his door in a rainstorm and was met by his wife, Dottie.

I asked if Jerry was home. No, said Dottie cordially, he wasn’t. I fished out a business card and handed it to her and said he might remember me as a reporter from when he was a coach more than a decade before and please would she have him call me. She pleasantly said she would.

And then, I mentioned police. Had police questioned him about anything lately? The question was that benign. I wanted to test her reaction.

It was not quizzical. Not: “Police? What do you mean, police?”

Instead, it was immediate and forceful. Dottie Sandusky narrowed her eyes and said to me: “If you have any other questions, you can ask the people at The Second Mile. And I do not appreciate you coming to my house.” She slammed the door in my face.

Then I knew. What I had heard about Sandusky had been heard by others. Police were very likely involved, even if no charges had been filed. And that lent credence to everything else I had been told.

Patriot-News Capital Bureau Chief Jan Murphy had simultaneously been trying to get an answer out of Spanier — via email, his preferred avenue of correspondence — about what he knew of any improper conduct by Sandusky. On the afternoon of Sept. 16, 2010, she forwarded me this exchange:

Murphy: “Hi — Are you aware of any police investigation into Jerry Sandusky for suspected criminal activity that occurred while he was a Penn State employee? If so, can you elaborate on what you know. Thanks.”

Spanier: “I haven’t heard this. Can you tell me more?”

Murphy: “By ‘this,’ you are referring to any police investigation into Jerry Sandusky, correct?”

Spanier: “Correct.”

Murphy: “One more clarifying question on your statement. Are you aware of any suspected criminal behavior that Jerry Sandusky engaged in while he was a Penn State employee?”

Spanier: “I think I answered your question. The answer is ‘no.’ ”

Unless you would give Spanier a pass on the technicality that Murphy asked about the time during which Sandusky was a Penn State employee, this is dubious. And if the CNN report is correct and the emails uncovered by the Freeh investigation indicate PSU officials knew about Sandusky’s conduct in 1998 as well, then it’s moot. He was an employee then.

It all points toward an effort to conceal Sandusky’s behavior and preserve the image of Penn State’s football program at the expense of his victims — past and future. If I am wrong and true evil exists in the world, this is pretty close to the real thing. Much closer, I think, than a sick individual irrationally compelled to commit the most hideous acts.

Now, unless you live in some sort of fairyland where Paterno had no influence over anyone but his players, the implication is clear: Spanier didn’t want news of a pedophile to break. And the man who hired the child torturer in the first place, the man Spanier was unable or unwilling to unseat, had no say in this? It’s a preposterous notion.

We don’t know the totality of what the Freeh investigation will uncover. I would just ask those who cannot get their minds around the concept of Joe Paterno acting in self-interest — acting to preserve his institution rather than individuals — to prepare themselves to have their bedtime story disrupted. You don’t get to be as powerful as this man was by sitting idly by and allowing others to call shots.

Such power breeds fame, and vice versa. Soon, we bestow the mantle of greatness on men who do not warrant it, as often as we ignore the anonymously noble, those truly worthy of our praise.

How many times do we instill intrinsic goodness in those we don’t even know? Have the Roman Catholic priest scandals in Boston and Philadelphia taught us nothing?

It does not have to be a lesson of bitter disillusionment, only one of caution. Trust those few you personally know.

The vast majority of you have never known these men at Penn State. You only knew of their station atop your chosen club buttressed by the trappings of their fame.

The most famous of them all was the head football coach. His fame did not make him a saint.

David Jones: djones8681@verizon.net. On Twitter: @djoneshoop.

Related topics: graham spanier, jerry sandusky, joe paterno, penn state

Penn State football: Maybe we didn't know Joe Paterno after all

By BOB FLOUNDERS, The Patriot-NewsThe Patriot-News
http://www.pennlive.com/patriotnews/
July 1, 2012

The story of the Joe Paterno and his considerable impact at Penn State continues to evolve, apparently for the worse, even after he is long gone.

The most recent news report involving Paterno, Penn State, prominent university administrators and child molester Jerry Sandusky could not possibly be more disturbing.

It is news that will likely re-shape the image of Paterno about 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

A damning CNN report on Friday detailed a 2001 email exchange among athletic director Tim Curley, vice president Gary Schultz and president Graham Spanier with regard to a 2001 incident in which then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky, PSU's former defensive coordinator, showering with a young boy in the football building.

According to that report, Curley, Spanier and Schultz were prepared to stop Sandusky, convicted earlier this month of 45 counts of molestation, 11 years ago. The trio devised a plan to talk to Sandusky, contact his Second Mile youth charity and notify child welfare authorities.

And then, according to the report, they called a horrifying audible.

Apparently after discussing the plan of action with Joe Paterno.

The report strongly suggests the Sandusky plan was discussed with Paterno, who died in January at the age of 85 after a battle with lung cancer.

According to CNN, Curley, in an email, admits to "talking it over with Joe" and being "uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps."

The plan was never acted on. PSU officials never reported the 2001 incident to police or welfare authorities.

The CNN report sheds a harsh light on Paterno, who during his testimony to a grand jury in 2011, claimed that when informed of the 2001 incident by McQueary, he forwarded the information to Curley and was no longer involved.

The CNN report opens the door for this question to be asked: Did Paterno influence Curley, Spanier and Schultz not to act on their initial Sandusky plan?

Saturday, the Paterno family released a statement through its attorney maintaining Paterno did not "Interfere with or attempt to compromise any investigation" involving Sandusky.

The CNN report suggests otherwise. It suggests Paterno, Division I's all-time wins leader (409) was in the loop back in 2001.

And this Paterno doesn't jibe with the Paterno many Penn State fans thought they knew. The coaching icon. The father figure. The man behind "The Grand Experiment", the idea that academics and athletics go together for a student-athlete.

It is a report that further damages Paterno's legacy. When the university fired him last November -- by phone -- soon after the Sandusky scandal broke, Paterno admitted he should have done more.

And it's obvious many Penn Staters, past and present, and many former PSU players and many PSU fans forgave him.

Many thought he deserved better than the quick hook the university handed him./p
Thousands mourned him at his viewings in late January.

And there was the Joe Paterno memorial in January at Bryce Jordan Center, attended by a sold-out crowd of 12,000. During it, former players eulogized him, remembered him and praised him. And it was there that Nike founder Phil Knight, a longtime Paterno friend, uttered these words in defense of the former PSU coach:

"If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno's response.''

Maybe not, Phil.

I reached out to a half-dozen prominent former PSU football players for reaction to the CNN report Saturday afternoon and evening. Only one was willing to talk, with the provision that we were off the record.

This latest bombshell brings with it more questions, some of which will never be answered with Paterno gone.

It also brings with it more cries for the NCAA to consider Penn State for the death penalty, which prohibits a school from competing in a sport for a year. It's only been handed down once to a football program once, to SMU in 1987.

"The CNN report re: handling of Sandusky by PSU from Spanier to Paterno, makes me wonder what qualifies program for death penalty these days,'' said ESPN college commentator Desmond Howard, the Heisman winner from Michigan, on his Twitter account Saturday.

Joe Posnanski, one of the country's top sportswriters, is in the process of finishing a book on Paterno. He moved to State College prior to the 2011 season to do much of his reporting.

"Will not comment re: Paterno because I don't think it's my place now,'' Posnanski tweeted Saturday.
"But I will say that all of this and more is in the book.''

Additional media reaction to Paterno and the CNN report was swift Saturday. One national columnist, Gregg Doyel of CBSsports.com, called for Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium to be torn down.

Another, Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel, wrote, "the beloved saint of the Nittany Lions, is left looking nothing like the man everyone believed he was.''

And what about the future of Penn State football?

New coach Bill O'Brien and his staff continue to work long hours making over the Penn State team in their image. O'Brien, the former New England offensive coordinator, is installing a more diverse offense, more aggressive defensive schemes and, most important, he's trying to upgrade the Lions' talent base with a more national recruiting approach.

And seemingly every month, or every week, there is more news coming out about Sandusky or, now, Paterno. Bad news. That can make the process of selling Penn State football challenging at the very least.

But nowhere near as difficult as believing in the former Penn State leader.

Joe Paterno coached at Penn State for more than 60 years, 46 of them as head coach.

He won 409 games.

He brought two national titles to State College.

He's donated millions to Penn State.

He was elected into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The university named a library after him.

He was an icon, a title that was six decades in the making.

Then the Sandusky news broke in November.

And now comes the CNN report involving him, Curley, Spanier, Schultz and the aborted Jerry Sandusky plan. Was there a coverup?

And you wonder, with regard to Paterno, if everything goes out the window after the last two days.

Related topics: cnn report, football, gary schultz, graham spanier, jerry sandusky, joe paterno, mike mcqueary, patriot-news, penn state, pennlive, tim curley

Legal experts: New evidence of cover-up reflects grim future for Penn State football

By STEFANIE LOH, The Patriot-News
http://blog.pennlive.com/patriotnewssports/
June 30, 2012

Former Penn State Officials Gary Schultz and Tim Curley. (AP)

If recent reports that Joe Paterno and Penn State worked together to cover up what they knew of Jerry Sandusky’s shower activities with young boys are true, sports law experts who spoke with The Patriot-News Saturday afternoon say there is merit for the Penn State football program to receive the death penalty.

The death penalty is the harshest punishment the NCAA can mete out. To date, only one Division I football program — Southern Methodist — has been dealt that punishment. It prohibits a program from competition for at least a year and usually is imposed only after repeated rules violations.

University of Toledo sports law professor Geoffrey Rapp said that until Saturday he didn’t think the crimes that resulted from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State fell under the purview of the NCAA.

But that changed with CNN reporting the discovery of an email chain from February 2001 where Penn State officials agreed to speak to Sandusky about “future appropriate use of the University facility” and then contact officials at The Second Mile, Sandusky’s charity, and the Department of Welfare about the case. A day later, after talking to Joe Paterno, they had changed their minds.
According to Rapp, if the football coach talked the athletic director, his direct superior, out of handling the situation a certain way, that presents a problem under NCAA regulations.

"Once you start hearing that the athletic department isn't responding to the chain of authority properly, that's an institutional control problem, and the NCAA is built around protecting that institutional control," Rapp said. "The problem is if Paterno was able to tell the school what to do and the school doesn't have in place the right kind of hierarchy from the NCAA's perspective."

"Right hierarchy" meaning the football coach reports to the athletic director, who reports to the university administration.

"If the coach has the final say, that's against NCAA rules," Rapp said. "The president has to be in charge of athletics, not the other way around."

"If they were trying to put something in place, and Paterno stopped it, that's a big problem."

This presents a very different scenario from what the NCAA appeared to be facing before: a situation where Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach, had broken the law.

In that case, as long as it's not connected with the program, it's not the NCAA's concern," Rapp said.

Michael McCann, Director of the Sports Law Institute at the University of Vermont, saw another potential violation of NCAA bylaws.

"There's language in the NCAA regulations that requires ethical behavior by coaches," McCann said. Have we seen that enforced? No. But there's always a first time, and this could be a situation where the language of the regulations could be used in a way that it hasn't in the past." At this point, McCann said, the death penalty is a legitimate worst-case scenario for the Penn State football program.

If these emails are correct, athletic administrators knew about it but chose to not do the right thing or the legal thing, McCann said. I think, for the NCAA, this could be a defining moment.

WHAT WILL THE NCAA DO?

Even though the sports law experts contacted by The Patriot-News agree that the NCAA would be within its rights to impose the death penalty on Penn State at this point, they also say that this probably won't happen.

Rapp said he thinks the university probably will avoid the death penalty as long as it cooperates with the NCAA in its investigation and volunteers to institute self-imposed penalties.

Alan Milstein, a sports lawyer at the Moorestown, N.J.-based law firm Sherman Silverstein, who has represented athletes such as former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett and NBA star Allen Iverson, said HE believes those penalties can't be retrospective in nature, such as an order to vacate wins.

Instead, he says they must affect the program going forward perhaps bowl suspensions or scholarship restrictions.

Regardless of what the NCAA does, the consensus is that it cannot afford to sit and do nothing.

With the email chain that has just surfaced, the argument that the Penn State scandal falls outside NCAA jurisdiction because it is criminal in nature no longer holds water.

I don't know how anybody can even make that statement, Milstein said. At the time [Sandusky] was charged and convicted, he's just been terminated as coach emeritus, using Penn State facilities as lord to these kids, taking them to bowl games and introducing them to players.

This took place in the Penn State locker room. You have an assistant coach who saw it and reported it to the vice president of finance. This was integrally a part of the Penn State football empire.

LOH ON TWITTER: @StefanieLoh

Related topics: jerry sandusky, joe paterno, penn state, penn state football, tim curley


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