I'm just reminding myself about the dangers of the Tea Party and catering to politics that works merely in economic theory. These types of charades are just asking for wolves in sheep skin. While I prefer small government, there is no doubt that corruption often comes in small government packaging.
Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist: 1/2 of the Islamo-Sleazebag-a-Palooza Goes to Prison. The Other Half is in the Tea Party.
I’m talking about Grover Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform is a major sponsor of the Tea Party launch event, Tea Party Patriots’ manifesto, at today’s start of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference). Norquist bragged to Politico that he is behind the tea party activists’ presence at CPAC. That’s braggadocio the tea party people would run away from if they truly abhor anti-Semitism, anti-Israel activism, and Muslim extremism. But they aren’t running the other way. They are embracing Norquist. And Norquist isn’t just embraced by Tea Partiers in Washington or in town for CPAC, but by key Tea Party leaders, organizers, and activists in every state, whom he’s traveled to meet and who also embrace him and ask him for guidance.
Many in the know refer to his organization as “Arabs for Tax Reform,” for good reason. Even Norquist’s ATR business cards are bilingual, with everything in Arabic on the flip side (or perhaps the main, with English on the flip side).
Norquist, a founder and board member of the Islamic Institute (which operated out of his offices), was on the take from Gulf state emirates and laundered money for his buddy Jack Abramoff. At Islamic Institute (which operated out of Abramoff’s Americans for Tax Reform offices), he employed Khalid Saffuri, an admitted funder of “the martyrs”–he adopted HAMAS homicide bombers’ families and funded them. And Norquist and Islamic Institute accepted cash from several “charities” which laundered money for the Saudi government to Al-Qaeda. Norquist got a top Bush White House job for Suhail Khan, whose father, Mahboob Khan, twice brought Al-Qaeda biggie Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the country to raise money for Al-Qaeda at the elder Khan’s mosque. The younger Khan proceeded to invite extremist Muslim clerics, such as one who described Jews as a “dirty little tribe,” to hang out with President Bush.
And then there is my own experience with the Islamic McCarthyism that is the Norquist brand:
Norquist got the spineless Heritage Foundation (and its Islamic lobbyist chief, Edwin Feulner, whom he took on a trip to meet the emir of Qatar) and the Town Hall site, which Heritage then owned, to remove my columns, because he was upset that I wrote about Republican Congressman Darrell Issa’s embrace of Hezbollah, terrorist state Syria, and anti-profiling laws for Arabs and Muslims. Norquist, a National Rifle Association board member, who got the NRA to revoke a written invitation to me to speak at its annual national convention because he was upset that I wrote about his close friend, Sami Al-Arian’s founding, involvement in, and terrorist fundraising for Islamic Jihad (a bombing he funded murdered New Jersey college student, Alisa Flatow, a friend of my sister’s). The NRA revoked the dis-invitation only when I was about to discuss their behavior on the Howard Stern syndicated radio show.
Yes, this is the man the conservative movement embraces, and whom Karl Rove shielded from Justice Department prosecution, even though he laundered money for Jack Abramoff through Americans for Tax Reform and defrauded U.S. taxpayers who gave up the taxes on the millions Norquist laundered through his tax-deductible organization for Indian Tribes Abramoff represented and who wanted to protect their gambling fiefdom. There is no difference between ACORN’s tax fraud and misuse of its tax deductible status and that of Norquist and his ATR. Yet conservatives continue to embrace him, and Norquist brags to Politico about how he got away with it:
Norquist said he’s worked to bring on board tea party activists and hasn’t faced any backlash from those who see him as part of the establishment or who hold against him his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal.Yup, Grover Norquist one of the not-so-know, same-old-establishment faces of the Tea Party movement.
via debbieschlussel.com
yes this is old news, but before any Conservative is supported we need to know what his connections were to Norquist.
yes this is old news, but before any Conservative is supported we need to know what his connections were to Norquist.
Sami al-Arian. [Source: Chris O'Meara]In 1995, investigators raid two groups in Tampa, Florida, associated with Sami al-Arian, a university professor who some claim has been a supporter of terrorist groups. These raids alert investigators to a group of Muslim charities in Herndon, Virginia, known as the SAAR network (see July 29, 1983). An investigation into that network’s alleged terrorism financing begins. In 1998, National Security Council aides in the Clinton White House push the FBI to intensify the SAAR investigation. However, the FBI declines, claiming that an aggressive probe would be seen as ethnic profiling. The SAAR network will not be raided until early 2002 (see March 20, 2002). [Washington Post, 10/7/2002] Al-Arian will not be arrested until 2003, largely on the basis of activities from 1995 and before. He will eventually be sentenced to almost five years in prison and will admit to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (see December 6, 2005), which the US has officially designated as a terrorist group.
