Editor’s note: The remarks by Joe Biden originally recorded at usembassy.gov have been edited to remove Biden’s comments about the one child policy.

the press never questioned Obama over his support for allowing doctors to kill live babies that survived abortion procedures. Obama’s history with abortion is not pleasant. As a senator in Illinois he argued for a law that would allow survivors of abortion to die without medical treatment.

Obama quoted the Bible and leaned on his supposedly “Christian” faith to support raising taxes on some Americans to give it to others which is theft. At least he didn’t even attempt to use his “phony theology” to try to support the idea of killing babies outside the womb.

From ‘What you need to know about the `Born Alive’ controversy and Barack Obama‘ in a August 20, 2004 article at the Chicago Tribune:

Here’s some of what Obama said on April 4, 2002 during floor debate in the Illinois Senate:

The source of the objections of the (Illinois State) Medical Society (was that this proposal) puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact his is a non-viable fetus; that if that fetus, or child—however way you want to describe it—is now outside the mothers’ womb and the doctor continues to think that it’s non viable but there’s,  let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, (the fetus is) not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved….. The only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor – the attending physician – who has made an assessment that this is a non-viable fetus and that, let’s say for the purposes of the mother’s health, …that labor is being induced, that that physician a) is going to make the wrong assessment and b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she made an error, and, in fact, that this was not a non-viable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that that physician or his own accord or her own accord would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures and practices that would be involved in saving that child. Now if—if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense. But I suspect –and my impression is that the Medical Society suspects as well –that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making those determination and that ,essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physicians to induce labor and perform an abortions. Now if that’s the case… I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births.

Pro life activist Jill Stanek noted then senator Obama’s 10 reasons for supporting infanticide in an article on WorldNetDaily.com in January of 2008. Among the reasons was #10:

“10. Babies who survive abortions are not protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Obama, the sole opponent ever to speak against BAIPA, stated on the Illinois Senate floor on March 30, 2001:

I just want to suggest … that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – child, a 9-month-old – child that was delivered to term. …

I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional.”

More recently Obama has raised the ire of Catholic groups. Cliff Kincaid wrote in a previous article about Obamacare rules violating religious conscience:

The administration claims there is a religious exemption in the mandate, but the bishops say it is so narrow that it fails to cover the vast majority of faith-based organizations, including Catholic hospitals, universities and service organizations that help millions every year. “Ironically,” they say, “not even Jesus & his disciples would have qualified.”

 

The bishops go on, “Now that the Administration has refused to recognize the Constitutional conscience rights of organizations and individuals who oppose the mandate, the bishops are now urging Catholics and others of good will to fight this unprecedented attack on conscience rights and religious liberty.”

 

Interestingly, The Washington Post, as Father Swink indicated, agrees with the bishops. The paper said, “In this circumstance, requiring a religiously affiliated employer to spend its own money in a way that violates its religious principles does not make an adequate accommodation for those deeply held views. Having recognized the principle of a religious exemption, the administration should have expanded it.”

 

So why would the administration pick a major fight with the Catholic Church? There are two main reasons. (1) The administration wants to please its progressive and feminist, secular pro-abortion base. (2) The administration believes Catholics are divided on the issue and will ignore their leaders and follow Obama.

The Obama administration also put its abortion advocacy above sex trafficking victims. Lifesite News reported:

For over a decade, we have achieved an amazing left-right, religious-secular, bicameral, bipartisan consensus, unified in combating sex and labor trafficking at home and worldwide without promoting abortion.

Until today.

In what can only be described as an unconscionable abuse of power, the Obama Administration has engaged in what amounts to bid rigging; denying taxpayer funds to a demonstrably superior organization—the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)—with an exemplary ten year track record of performance that scored significantly higher in independent HHS reviews than two of the three NGOs that got the grant.

The Obama Administration’s discriminatory practice of funding NGOs that provide or refer for abortions even when they fail to win a competitive process is not only unjust, unethical and in violation of conscience laws (Weldon Amendment and Coats-Snowe), but it severely undermines public—and Congressional—confidence and support for what is an otherwise laudable program.

If you are a Catholic, or other faith-based NGO, or a secular organization of conscience, there is now clear proof that your grant application will not be considered under a fair, impartial, and transparent process by the Obama Administration.

The Obama Administration’s bias against Catholics is an affront to religious freedom and a threat to all people of faith.

The Democrat National Committee even went so far as to send a veiled threat to TV stations to keep anti-Obama graphic abortion ads from running.

The gruesome abortions by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell highlight the real world results of what Obama was defending. From a story about Gosnell by Cliff Kincaid:

The D.A. says the doctor killed seven babies after they were delivered alive.”

The report by correspondent Elaine Quijano on the “house of horrors,” which had been operating for 30 years, included these revelations:

• Children were born and then killed by putting scissors in the back of their neck and snipping their spinal cord.
• One woman, 41-year-old Carnamaya Mongar, died in 2009 after receiving an overdose of anesthesia.
• Photos from inside the clinic show unsanitary, squalid conditions with jars and bags of aborted fetuses.
• Fetal remains were found in a refrigerator that the employees used to store their lunches.
• The abortionist, Kermit B. Gosnell, has been named in 46 lawsuits, but his clinic had not been inspected by state officials since 1993.
• None of the employees had any medical training. A high school student was employed as an anesthesiologist.
• The doctor used unsterilized instruments, infecting patients with venereal disease and often punctured uteruses and intestines.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

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By Phyllis Schlafly

The stunning repudiation of Senator Richard Lugar’s (R-IN) bid for a seventh term has sent shock waves through Washington’s internationalist lobby. A former Rhodes Scholar, Lugar has spent his career promoting a globalist agenda since he succeeded the late Jesse Helms as the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

One day after Indiana Republicans handed Lugar his walking papers, an outfit called the Atlantic Council held a forum to promote the discredited Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). As former Republican U.S. Senators Chuck Hagel and John Warner beamed their approval, Obama’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared that “the time has come” for the Senate to ratify the treaty.

Hagel, Warner, and Lugar share an internationalist mindset: all three Senators supported “comprehensive immigration reform” (a.k.a. amnesty) bills that failed to pass Congress in 2006 and 2007. In support of LOST, they are joined by former Republican Senator Trent Lott, now a high-priced lobbyist who no longer answers to his former Mississippi constituents.

Americans today are in no mood for subordinating U.S. sovereignty, plus seven-tenths of the world’s surface area, to another entangling global bureaucracy, so advocates are using Orwellian talking points to pretend that LOST would do the opposite. Panetta’s statement is over the top: “Not since we acquired the lands of the American West and Alaska have we had such an opportunity to expand U.S. sovereignty.”

The coalition for ratification includes three groups whose interests are rarely on the same side: the U.S. Navy, the big multinational oil companies led by Shell, and the radical environmentalist lawyers. That peculiar alliance should make you suspicious.

The Navy says we need LOST to preserve our freedom of transit in dangerous waters such as the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to block, and the South China Sea, where China wants to be the dominant naval power. Panetta said, “How can we argue that other nations must abide by international rules when we haven’t officially accepted those rules?”

In fact, freedom of navigation is recognized by centuries of international law, effectively policed by the British Navy for 400 years, and by our U.S. Navy since 1775. The United Nations has no navy of its own, so American sailors will still be expected to protect the world’s sea lanes and punish piracy.

Big Oil supports LOST because of its provision to extend jurisdiction over the continental shelf beyond the current 200-mile limit. But LOST would require a royalty of 1 to 7 percent on the value of oil and minerals produced from those waters to be paid to the International Seabed Authority based in Kingston, Jamaica.

There’s no need for a 181-nation organization to regulate offshore and deep-sea production everywhere in the world, mostly financed by American capital, and then allow it to be taxed for the benefit of foreign freeloaders. The riches of the Arctic, for example, can be resolved by negotiation among the five nations that border the Arctic.

Environmentalists, the third leg of the unholy coalition to ratify LOST, are salivating over its legal system of dispute resolution, which culminates in a 21-member International Tribunal based in Hamburg, Germany. The Tribunal’s judgments could be enforced against Americans and cannot be appealed to any U.S. court.

This tribunal, known as ITLOS (International Tribunal of LOST), has jurisdiction over “maritime disputes,” which suggests it will merely deal with ships accidentally bumping each other in the night. But radical environmental lawyers have big plans to make that sleepy tribunal the engine of all disputes about global warming, with power to issue binding rules on climate change, in effect superseding the discredited Kyoto Protocol which the U.S. properly declined to ratify.

A paper just published by Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation lays out the roadmap for how the radical environmentalist lawyers can use LOST to file lawsuits against the U.S. to advance their climate-change agenda.

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton warns us that the Law of the Sea Treaty is even more dangerous now than when President Ronald Reagan rejected it: “With China emerging as a major power, ratifying the treaty now would encourage Sino-American strife, constrain U.S. naval activities, and do nothing to resolve China’s expansive maritime territorial claims.” Bolton warns that LOST will give China the excuse to deny U.S. access to what China claims is its “Exclusive Economic Zone” extending 200 miles out into international waters.

The whole concept of putting the United States in the noose of another global organization, in which the U.S. has only the same one vote as Cuba, is offensive to Americans. LOST must be defeated.

Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo. She has been a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization now called Eagle Forum.

From New York Times:

“The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.” [emphasis added]

By Bruce Kasting

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the G8 summit at Camp David this weekend. The final communiqué from the global big shots talks about keeping Greece in the Euro and a shift away from austerity and a move towards growth oriented policies. Forget the Happy Talk, I want to know what they were really saying.

Obama must be praying for a miracle with the other members of the G8. If we get a “Grexit”, there will be months of turmoil in the global capital markets before the dust settles. The last thing the Big O wants to have is a recession in Europe that infects the USA with lower growth and higher unemployment when Americans are going to the polls in six months. For the same reason, Obama needs Japan to keep QEing and spending money it does not have.

Obama may be a slave to what happens outside of our borders during the period prior to the election, but those same foreign leaders are completely at the mercy of the USA and the next President after the election. It won’t matter what the UK, Germany, France or Japan does with stimulus in their countries; what’s on the table in the USA will overwhelm any of those efforts.

The USA is months (220 days) away from initiating fiscal policies that will trigger a recession in the US that will be at least as severe as that experienced in 2008. With the rest of the world already teetering on recession, America is set to push the global economy right into the tank. The non-US members of the G8 are well aware of these facts. They must be crapping in their pants at the prospects.

I think those concerns are completely justified. Any foreign leader who is banking on the hopes that America will end its political stalemate and put forward a credible economic plan that puts the US and global economies on a better footing is a fool. If you want proof of just how far away viable compromises are, consider some legislation put forward by Republican leaders this week.
House Representative “Buck” McKeon (R.Ca) runs the powerful Armed Services Committee. He has come up with a fiscal 2013 spending plan for the military. The CBO looked at H.R. 4310, so did the White House. It’s a joke.

$637 billion! That’s a lot of loot for a country that’s tapped out. This is not a compromise. This is an insult. The following chart shows that the 2013-spending plan proposed by Republicans has no reduction from the historic highs of the past few years.

What does the White House have to say about H.R. 4310?

When it comes to military spending, the Republicans want to bust the law that led to the increase in the debt limit. They propose legislation that would renege on the deal that they fought for last summer. The fight over the debt limit brought the economy and the markets to its knees. It cost the USA its AAA. And now the Republicans propose to kiss it away.

Obama had lunch with House Speaker Boehner last week to discuss the political impasse and the critical issues the country faces. To make it look like B&O are just a couple of regular guys they went for a bite to a local sandwich shop. I’m thinking there must have been 300 Secret Service types outside. There is nothing regular about these guys.

Did the “deciders” at the hoagie shop agree on anything? Not a chance.

There is a near zero chance for America to address the fiscal cliff that is coming on Jan 1 before the election. I think there is also a zero chance that it will get resolved in the six-weeks following the vote. Those G8 leaders have every reason to be worried. So should the markets.

Bruce Krasting

Westchester, NY, United States

I worked on Wall Street for twenty five years. This blog is my take on the financial issues of the day. I was an FX trader during the early days of the ‘snake’ and the EMS. Derivatives on currencies were new then. I was part of that. That was with Citi. Later I worked for Drexel and got to understand a bit about balance sheet structure and corporate bonds from Mike Milken. I was involved with a Macro hedge fund later. That worked out all right, but it is not an easy road. There was one tough week and I thought, “Maybe I should do something else for a year or two.” That was fifteen years ago. I love the markets. How they weave together. For twenty five years I woke up thinking, “What am I going to do today to make some money in the market”. I don’t do that any longer. But I miss it. View my complete profile

Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem has the story:

 
On behalf of American consumers, a slightly edited version of this afternoon’s NY Times article “U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels” Americans Who Purchase Solar Panels Made in China”:”The United States Commerce Department said Thursday that it has decided to impose tariffs (taxes) of more than 31 percent on Americans who purchase solar panels imported from China, after concluding that Chinese producers had generously “dumped” lowered the prices of solar panels on the American market for to less than it costs to manufacture and ship them, saving Americans millions of dollars. 
 
The tariffs, which are retroactive to 90 days before the decision, are in addition to anti-subsidy tariffs (taxes) of 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent that the department imposed on American consumers in March. Since Chinese panels make up a large portion of the American market, the combined anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs are likely to mean a substantial increase in the price of solar panels here for American consumers.
 
SolarWorld Industries America, which led the coalition special interest cartel of domestic solar manufacturers that filed the solar dumping case, welcomed the department’s ruling. The anti-consumer decision “is a very positive step in the process. It’s also in line with what we expected as a special interest group of domestic producers seeking protection from global competition,” said Ben Santarris, a company spokesman. “We consider this a bellwether case of the government protecting the self-interest of domestic producers seeking protection against foreign competitors. It underscores the importance of manufacturing special interest groups to the U.S. economy Congress seeking to increase political power, votes and support by catering to concentrated special interests.”
 
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.  He blogs at Carpe Diem.
 
 

And consider this:

Brightsource DOE Funding Exposes Obama Cronyism

By Romina Boccia at The Foundry

A congressional hearing on May 16 exposed further details on just the kind of political maneuvering that was going on between the Obama Administration and beneficiaries of Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees. Emails revealed during the hearing are the tip of the iceberg in a corrupt federal funding process that first came under congressional scrutiny with the failure of Solyndra.

Solar company BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. In April 2011, the company received $1.6 billion for its Ivanpah project in California—more than triple the size of Solyndra’s loan guarantee of $535 million! BrightSource’s CEO, John Woolard, claims that at its peak, the project would create 1,400 jobs. That would amount to $1.43 million for every job created.

John McArdle reports that in an email sent 15 months before the BrightSource loan was finalized, Woolard wrote an email to Matt Rogers, then DOE’s top adviser on the administration of stimulus funds. Woolard wrote, according to Greenwire:

…that Peter Darbee, head of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., “talked directly to Obama about the program’s challenges and the bad situation it puts him in. DOE credibility is thin and I am currently trying to put off [communication] with the Hill until we talk.” Rogers replied that he appreciated the heads-up and was “working it on this end.”

Merely a month before the BrightSource loan came through, another email exchange occurred between then-BrightSource Chairman John Bryson (who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Commerce Secretary in May 2011 and was confirmed to the post last October) and Jonathan Silver, who was in charge of the DOE loan program. The email was addressed to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley but was never sent to him, over concerns that it might not be appropriate.

“The White House needs to focus on finalizing the loan guarantee for what would be the largest solar thermal project in the world,” Bryson wrote in the draft.

“We need a commitment from the [White House] to quarterback loan closure between [the Office of Management and Budget] and DOE by March 18 to avoid having our project jeopardized by larger budget politics.”

Even before these emails appeared, BrightSource became known as heavily politically connected. In his new book, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer reported that Sanjay Wagle, a major player in BrightSource’s largest shareholder, Vantage Point, and an Obama fundraiser, “was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.”

These revelations demonstrate that federal processes to supply loan guarantees and other subsidies are steeped in political favoritism. The only solution to get this cronyism out of government is to get government out of the business of picking market winners among its political friends. This can be done by ending all energy subsidies and freeing up energy markets for companies to compete to create the most value for consumers.

And this:

Emails show the White House adamantly kept the GSA away from Solyndra right before it illegally restructured the failed loan to protect a big Obama campaign donor leaving taxpayers on the hook for over $500 million.

And this from AFP:

The nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill that President Obama pushed after taking office was supposed to revive the economy, but it was really all about installing the Left’s vision to transform America. A major part of the transformation is an attempt to defy the laws of economics and have politically-connected campaign donors and Washington central planners decide what kind of energy the country should use. The stimulus was packed with giveaways that allowed dozens of so-called “green” energy projects to sap taxpayer funds to advance Obama’s vision. However,they could only ignore market economics for so long and now the projects are starting to collapse. Who’s left holding the bill? Taxpayers.

SOLYNDRA - $535 Million, Bankrupt

The California solar panel manufacturer received the very first stimulus green energy loan guarantee on September 4, 2009. Despite repeated warnings by Obama administration career and political staff that the company was not sound, the loan guarantee was rushed out the door.Two years later the company closed its doors, laid off 1,100 employees, and filed for bankruptcy.Two days after that, agents from the FBI raided the company’s headquarters. Solyndra CEO George Kaiser and other executives bundled more than $100,000 in Obama campaign donations;they also visited the White House over 20 times while the loan was being reviewed.

BEACON POWER – $43 million, bankrupt

The Massachusetts-based company received a $43 million loan guarantee to build a 20-megawattflywheel energy storage plant in Stephen town, New York. Beacon was one of the first three recipients of federal backing. Despite the steep price-tag Obama administration officials estimated that it would “create or save” just 14 permanent jobs and create 20 temporary construction jobs. Citing the “current economic and political climate,” the onerous terms of the federal loan guarantee, and the company’s inability to obtain equity financing due to its recent delisting from the NASDAQ stock exchange, the company filed for bankruptcy on October 30.The company also got $29 billion in federal and Pennsylvania state grants for a 20-megawattplant in the Keystone State.

FISKER – $529 million stimulus for Finland

Collapsing companies aren’t the only green stimulus scandal. The Obama administration has also approved a plan by electric car company Fisker to use part of its $529 million federal stimulus loan guarantee to build its manufacturing facility, and the 500 jobs it supports, in Finland. The company is more than a year behind schedule to roll out its $97,000 luxury electric car, Karma. There have also been questions about the energy savings that Fisker says its electric car would bring. In a free market, companies should seek out the best place to produce their products. However, once politicians start handing out taxpayer dollars to support projects they prefer, sending our money to Finland to support manufacturing jobs is highly suspect.

SEVERSTAL – $730 million, under investigation

In an October 20thletter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa questioned why Severstal North America, a subsidiary of a leading Russian steel and mining company owned by wealthy business tycoon Alexei Mordashov, received a $730 million loan guarantee from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program. The loan supports improvements to the company’s advanced high strength steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Issa questioned the necessity of the loan given the company’s ample ability to self-finance. He also questioned whether it was appropriate to support the project under a program designed to advance clean-energy vehicles, especially given the strong supply of high quality steel already available in the U.S

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Obama’s peace through weakness, appeasement and capitulation may please the leftists who hand out Nobel prizes for hope and change but left the world on the brink of another war.  The “death to America and Israel” Muslims see America as weak and ineffective. They taste the blood of the Jews. In a world of nuclear armed terrorist states Obama uses reset buttons and “harsh words” when confronted with threats to America and its allies.

Obama’s failure in the Middle East and especially with Iran endanger the world for decades to come. With china expressing support for Iran and a fifth of the world’s oil having to come through the straights of Hormuz which abuts Iran, a Middle East conflagration is almost inevitable. Obama’s appeasement and position of weakness only increase the possibility of a disastrous conflict.

Here’s another example of how the Arab spring has turned ugly as these Egyptians hold up a burning banner that says “One Nation for a New Holocaust”:

From IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

Even if he’s not re-elected, the president hopes to leave behind a treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and to which we’d be required to give half of our offshore oil revenue.

The ISA would have the power to regulate 70% of the earth’s surface, placing seabed mining, fishing rights, deep-sea oil exploration and even the activities of the U.S. Navy under control of a global bureaucracy.

Reagan rightly decided the U.S. shouldn’t be a part of this global resource grab and redistribution of wealth. The treaty was co-authored by Elisabeth Mann Borgese, an admirer of Karl Marx and a socialist who ran the World Federation of Canada.

She views the oceans as the “common heritage of mankind” and in a 1999 speech declared, “The world ocean has been and is, so to speak, our great laboratory for the making of a new world order.”

FULL ARTICLE

Dick Morris explains more on Hannity:

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

In the space of two weeks, three European governments have fallen, sending seismic shock-waves across the continent and calling into question the experiment that has consumed its elites for decades: the construction of a centralized, socialist superstate known as “Europe.”

It may just be that the foundering of the coalition government in the Netherlands, the repudiation of Nicholas Sarkozy in France and the plunging fortunes of the two main Greek parties represents more than a rejection of austerity measures dictated by Brussels at the behest of the Germans.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, these political developments are probably not going to end the creeping, sovereignty-crushing European venture or even mark the beginning of its demise. But they may just constitute the end of the beginning of the end of “Europe” as a single, transnational political enterprise.

To be sure, French voters elected socialist Francois Hollande, who favors the European Union and reflexively supports the vision of its founders that has seen it evolve from a trade pact to a community to proto-political union. Still, his electorate, like the Greeks and Dutch, wants no part of the EU’s main project at the moment – fiscal discipline and budgetary austerity.

The trouble is that such rebuffs threaten the wholesale unraveling of various financial houses of cards constructed in recent months by Germany’s Angela Merkel with help from her very-much-junior partner, France’s Sarkozy. They have been aimed at giving the appearance of managing the yawning economic crises confronting EU members far beyond Greece – including Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and, yes, France. But as publics across the continent balk at taking the unpalatable medicine ordered up by Berlin and refuse to give up their unaffordable social services, short work-weeks and long vacations, there seems little hope that the patient will recover.

Unfortunately, several other worrying factors are adding to the economic turmoil afflicting Europe at the moment. These include the following:

• In many nations of the European Union, the chickens are coming home to roost as what has been in some nations a decades-long bid to offset declining birthrates among the native population by importing immigrant laborers transforms the host countries. Sarkozy’s fate was ultimately sealed by the decision of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Front party not to vote for him in the second round of the French presidential election. Similar sentiments saw Greece’s fascist-sympathizing Golden Dawn party garnering roughly 7% of the polling this weekend at the expense of mainstream conservative and leftist parties.
• Closely tied to concerns about the numbers of immigrants in one European country after another is the sense that many of them are Muslims who seek to impose the Islamic supremacist doctrine known as shariah where they now reside. As authors like Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn and Bruce Bawer have observed, the trends are in the direction of such populations exerting disproportionate influence politically and establishing no-go zones and other privileged status. Such developments fuel a sense of inequity and outrage on the part of the natives.
• Rising hostility towards “the other” in some parts of Europe is also bringing to the fore once again widespread antisemitism. Jews are discouraged from wearing their religious garb in public as attacks on them and their synagogues have become more and more frequent and violent. Many are fleeing their native lands and those staying behind are becoming fearful – for good reason – to a degree they have not experienced since World War II.

For all these reasons, Europe may soon be in for another of the horrific cataclysms that have plagued it for nearly all of recorded history. In fact, we have become so accustomed to the tranquility and prosperity the continent has known for the past half-century that most of us forget that such conditions are very much the exception there, rather than the rule.

It is unclear how a new round of disorder or even war might be precipitated in Europe. And the mere threat of such a prospect may – as it has in the past – prompt a redoubled effort to shore up the European Union and its faltering common currency, the Euro. The forces being unleashed at the moment, however, may prove resistant to such exhortations to perpetuate what is increasingly perceived to be a punitive and anti-democratic enterprise.

Needless to say, if Europe once again descends into the vortex of economic privation, religious and/or ethnic “cleansing” and possibly strife that has happened so often there, our own tranquility and prosperitywill be jeopardized, as well. We must, however, resist the temptation to try to prop up the European Union as the solution to such prospects and invest, instead, in efforts to work with national governments there to make them more responsible, accountable and disciplined – something the project known as “Europe” has not been to date and can, as a practical matter, never be.

At the very least, we cannot expect that what emerges from the wreckage of profligate spending and subordination of sovereignty that is Europe will provide the reliable partners and robust militaries that we are told will permit us safely to reduce our own capabilities and burden-share with our allies. If history is any guide, it is as likely that we will wind up fighting in Europe again – perhaps catalyzed by an ever-more-bellicose Russia once again formally led by Vladimir Putin – as that we will benefit from substantially greater help from that quarter.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

The United States should immediately grant asylum to Chen Guangcheng and his family, along with the activist who rescued him, He Peirong. Chen and his wife have both stated that they are in danger.

U.S. officials contend that Chen left the U.S. Embassy yesterday of his own volition to seek medical treatment at a hospital. From the hospital, however, Chen told friends and the media that he was not given full information on which to base his decision. He told Associated Press, moreover, that a U.S. official relayed a threat that if Chen did not leave the Embassy, he wife would be beaten to death. He told CNN, “I am very disappointed at the U.S. government.”

Chen also told CNN that after he escaped, his wife was tied to a chair in their home for two days. Guards carried sticks into their home and threatened to beat her to death. They also moved into their house, eating at their table and using their belongings. They have installed seven surveillance cameras inside their home. These facts convinced Chen that it would not be safe for him or his family to remain in China. He did not learn these facts until he was reunited with his wife in the hospital.

Chen then told CNN, “I would like to say to (President Obama): Please do everything you can to get our whole family out.” He told the Daily Beast, “My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane.”

After Chen’s miraculous, “mission impossible” escape and the risks he and others took to deliver him safely to the U.S. Embassy, why did the U.S. officials press him to leave and hand this noble man back into the hands of those who have been so fiercely persecuting him and his family?

If so, then this action is beyond shameful. Not only have we let Chen down, but we have betrayed those in China that we should most want to support: those who share our values.

Many have regarded the U.S. Embassy as the lone island of freedom and justice in a land filled with repression and injustice. Given their trust, how could the U.S. hand over a deserving citizen who had fled there for protection?

Chen is hugely symbolic in China, widely loved and admired. By challenging the One Child Policy, he is challenging the lynchpin of social control in China. This explains why Chen is not just an ordinary dissident, but rather symbolizes the heart and conscience of the nation. It also explains the ferocity of the Chinese Communist Party’s reaction to him.

When Chen Guangcheng fled to the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. had a golden opportunity to do the right thing — give him and his family asylum and bring them to safety in the U.S. This would have erased a generation of anti-American propaganda and inspired gratitude, admiration and trust among the Chinese people. Instead the U.S. quickly dispatched Chen out the door, shattering our moral credibility before the world and losing the hearts and minds of a generation of Chinese people who share our values. How “strategic” is this?

The only way to redeem the situation is as clear as it is urgent: give asylum to Chen and his family — and to He Peirong as well. Bring them to safety in the United States, whatever it takes, on Hillary Clinton’s plane.