(Reuters) – As the Syrian civil war got under way, a former electrician who calls himself Sheikh Omar built up a brigade of rebel fighters. In two years of struggle against President Bashar al-Assad, they came to number 2,000 men, he said, here in the northern city of Aleppo. Then, virtually overnight, they collapsed.

Omar’s group, Ghurabaa al-Sham, wasn’t defeated by the government. It was dismantled by a rival band of revolutionaries – hardline Islamists.

The Islamists moved against them at the beginning of May. After three days of sporadic clashes Omar’s more moderate fighters, accused by the Islamists of looting, caved in and dispersed, according to local residents. Omar said the end came swiftly.

The Islamists confiscated the brigade’s weapons, ammunition and cars, Omar said. “They considered this war loot. Maybe they think we are competitors,” he said. “We have no idea about their goals. What we have built in two years disappeared in a single day.”

The group was effectively marginalized in the struggle to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Around 100 fighters are all that remain of his force, Omar said.

It’s a pattern repeated elsewhere in the country. During a 10-day journey through rebel-held territory in Syria, Reuters journalists found that radical Islamist units are sidelining more moderate groups that do not share the Islamists’ goal of establishing a supreme religious leadership in the country.

The moderates, often underfunded, fragmented and chaotic, appear no match for Islamist units, which include fighters from organizations designated “terrorist” by the United States.

The Islamist ascendancy has amplified the sectarian nature of the war between Sunni Muslim rebels and the Shi’ite supporters of Assad. It also presents a barrier to the original democratic aims of the revolt and calls into question whether the United States, which announced practical support for the rebels last week, can ensure supplies of weapons go only to groups friendly to the West.

World powers fear weapons could reach hardline Islamist groups that wish to create an Islamic mini-state within a crescent of rebel-held territory from the Mediterranean in the west to the desert border with Iraq.

That prospect is also alarming for many in Syria, from minority Christians, Alawites and Shi’ites to tolerant Sunni Muslims, who are concerned that this alliance would try to impose Taliban-style rule.

REPROBATES AND OUTLAWS

Syria’s war began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and turned into an armed rebellion a few months later following a deadly crackdown. Most of the rebel groups in Syria were formed locally and have little coordination with others. The country is dotted with bands made up of army defectors, farmers, engineers and even former criminals.

Many pledge allegiance to the notion of a unified Free Syrian Army (FSA). But on the ground there is little evidence to suggest the FSA actually exists as a body at all.

Sheikh Omar told the story of his brigade while sitting in a cramped room at his headquarters, a small one-storey building surrounded by olive tree fields in Aleppo province. Wrapped around his chest he wore a leather bandolier that held two pistols, grips pointing outwards, ready to be drawn by crossing his arms.

He said he was from a poor background in rural Aleppo province. When he and a handful of others had started a rebel group to oppose Assad, fear had made it hard to recruit. The rich and law-abiding were scared. Only outlaws and reprobates would join him at first.

“We were looking for good people. But who was willing to work for me and help me? Those who used to go to bars, to fight with people and steal. Those are the people who allied with me and fought against the regime.” As he spoke some of his remaining fighters tried to interject; he silenced them, saying he wanted to be honest.

LOOTING

Ghurabaa al-Sham started with modest aims, Omar said. They would enter small police stations and negotiate a handover of weapons in return for free passage out of the area for the police.

But their numbers grew to 2,000 men, he said, and they fought battles to take border posts with Turkey and were one of the first rebel brigades to move into Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city with 2.5 million inhabitants.

More than half of the city fell to the rebels, but Assad’s army pushed back, fighting street by street for months. A stalemate ensued. Very little progress has been made from either side for almost a year.

Where the government forces did cede ground, Aleppo’s residents did not welcome the rebels with open arms. Most fighters were poor rural people from the countryside and the residents of Aleppo say they stole. Omar acknowledged this happened.

“Our members in Aleppo were stealing openly. Others stole everything and were taking Syria’s goods to sell outside the country. I was against any bad action committed by Ghurabaa al-Sham. However, things happened and opinion turned against us,” he said as his men squirmed in their seats, uncomfortable with his words.

Ghurabaa al-Sham was not the only group to take the law into its own hands. In Salqin, a town in Idlib province bordering Turkey, fighters from a rebel brigade called the Falcons of Salqin have set up checkpoints at the entrances to the town.

Abu Naim Jamjoom, deputy commander of the brigade, said the rebels take a cut of any produce – food, fuel or other merchandise – that enters Salqin. The goods are distributed to the town’s residents, he said, but some rebel groups steal this “tax” for themselves.

Part of the problem is that the rebel groups are poorly equipped and badly coordinated. Jamjoom said he had 45 men with guns and two homemade mortar launchers but was desperately low on ammunition. “Everything we have has been looted from the regime,” he said, echoing the response of most rebel commanders when asked if they have received any outside support.

Jamjoom, who wore a blue camouflaged outfit and kept a grenade in his left pocket, said he had registered his group with the Supreme Military Council, a body set up by the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition of opposition groups to help coordinate rebel units.

“We haven’t received any help from the military council,” Jamjoom said, drinking sweet tea on the balcony of his headquarters, the house of a pro-Assad dignitary who had fled the area. “We have to depend on ourselves. I am my own mother, you could say.”

He tugged at his uniform. “I bought this myself, with my money,” he said. He also said his group buys weapons from other brigades, “from those who have extra.” Weapons trading by rebel groups raises the risk that arms supplied by Western powers may fall into the hands of Islamist groups.

Western officials say military aid will be channeled through the Supreme Military Council. A Western security source told Reuters the council is trying to gain credibility, but as yet it has little or no authority.

Meanwhile, Jamjoom and his men were largely staying around Salqin, low on ammunition and low on energy. Inside the mansion they have commandeered, rebels lazed about on the gaudy fake-gold furniture in a room full of books, including religious texts and a copy of “The Oxford Companion to English Literature.”

ISLAMIST ARBITERS

The Islamists are more energetic and better organized. The main two hardline groups to emerge in Syria are Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda offshoot that has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings, including several in Damascus in which civilians were killed.

But Islamist fighters, dressed in black cotton with long Sunni-style beards, have developed a reputation for being principled. Dozens of residents living in areas of rebel-held territory across northern Syria told Reuters the same thing, whether they agreed with the politics of Jabhat al-Nusra or not: the Islamists do not steal.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who researches Islamic militants, said the main reason groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have become popular is because of the social provisions they supply. “They are fair arbiters and not corrupt.”

In Aleppo four Islamist brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, have taken over the role of government and are providing civilians with day-to-day necessities. They have also created a court based on Islamic religious laws, or sharia.

The Aleppans call it “the Authority” and it governs anything from crimes of murder and rape to business disputes and distributing bread and water around the city. The power of such courts is growing, Authority members and rebels said, and is enforced by a body called the “Revolutionary Military Police.”

At the police’s headquarters, a five-storey building surrounded with sandbags, a large placard outside read: “Syrian Islamic Liberation Front.” It referred to a union of several Islamist brigades, forged in October 2012, which seeks to bring together disparate fighting groups. Its Islamist emphasis has already alienated some other fighters.

The head of the Aleppo branch of the Revolutionary Military Police, Abu Ahmed Rahman, comes from Liwa al-Tawhid, the largest rebel force in Aleppo. Ostensibly al-Tawhid has pledged its support for the U.S.-recognized Syrian National Coalition, but its role in the Authority alongside Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra shows an alliance with more radical groups.

As Rahman sat at a large desk on the ground floor, people rushed in and out, asking him to stamp and sign documents. He said that the worst problem the police had encountered so far was with Ghurabaa al-Sham, who had clashed with a sub-division of Liwa al-Tahwid for control of Aleppo’s industrial city, a complex of factories and office blocks sprawling over 4,000 hectares on the north-east outskirts of the city.

“Ghurabaa al-Sham fighters were annoying people, looting,” he said. The industrial area offered plenty of plunder. Residents of Aleppo said rebels found machinery and equipment in the factories that could be sold in Turkey.

Rahman said the Authority summoned Ghurabaa al-Sham to a hearing but they didn’t show up. “Then all the brigades went to get them. Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel units,” he said.

Abu Baraa, an employee at the Authority, said: “We gathered a lot of people with guns and everything. We went to the industrial city and we arrested everyone who was there. Then we did the interrogation. Those who did not steal were set free, and the others were put in prison.

“Before this Sharia Authority, every brigade did whatever it wanted. Now they have to ask for everything. We are in charge now, God willing. We are the supervisors. If you do something wrong, you will be punished.”

A POWER STRUGGLE

Members of Ghurabaa al-Sham gave a different version of events and have a different world view. “Why is the Sharia Authority allowed to control us? We didn’t elect them,” said Abdul-Fatah al-Sakhouri, who works in the media center for Ghurabaa al-Sham, an old taxi station in Aleppo where he and some other fighters upload videos of battles against the Syrian army onto YouTube.

Al-Sakhouri, previously a mathematics teacher, said the head of the Ghurabaa al-Sham unit in the industrial city had gone to the Authority to sort out the dispute. “Commander Hassan Jazera was there for three hours and then left. It shows that they didn’t arrest him and there were no real charges against us,” he said.

The dispute, Ghurabaa al-Sham fighters said, was really about power. They said their brigade, made up of fighters ranging from Islamists to secularists but all in favor of a civilian state, was not part of the Islamist alliance formed between Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid.

Another member of Ghurbaa al-Sham, who called himself Omar, said the Islamist alliance wanted to weaken his group because it disagrees with Islamist ideology and seeks democracy.

Illustrating his fear of Islamist cultural restrictions, Omar said he was a fan of the American heavy metal band Metallica and pulled out a mobile phone to show a Metallica music video. The 24-year-old said Syrian businessmen once promised millions of dollars to bring Metallica to Aleppo but, in the end, the government rejected the plan.

“Jabhat al-Nusra wouldn’t want this either,” he said.

So far the Islamist groups have been the ones to attract outside support, mostly from private Sunni Muslim backers in Saudi Arabia, according to fighters in Syria.

With the help of battle-hardened Sunni Iraqis, these groups have been able to gain recruits. “They had military capabilities. They are actually organized and have command and control,” said Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

As moderate rebel groups dithered, so did their backers outside the country. Bickering among the political opposition, a collection of political exiles who have spent many years outside Syria, also presented a problem for the United States about whether there would be a coherent transition to a new government if Assad fell.

But most importantly, Western powers fear that if weapons are delivered to Syrian rebels, there would be few guarantees they would not end up with radical Islamist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, who might one day use them against Western interests.

The moderates are losing ground. In many parts of rebel-held Aleppo, the red, black and green revolutionary flag which represents more moderate elements has been replaced with the black Islamic flag. Small shops selling black headbands, conservative clothing and black balaclavas have popped up around the city and their business is booming.

Reuters met several Islamist fighters who had left more moderate rebel brigades for hardline groups. One member of Ahrar al-Sham, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, said: “I used to be with the Free Syrian Army but they were always thinking about what they wanted to do in future. I wanted to fight oppression now.”

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing By Richard Woods and Simon Robinson)

Barack Obama was born and raised a Muslim. Even he doesn’t dispute this. From the day he entered our White House, he has waged his personal religious crusade to force out of office any secular government in the Middle East, to be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. He has been successful in this and Syria is now in his crosshairs. Even 70% of Americans can’t stop him.  

Recently by John W. Whitehead: If Edward Snowden Is a Criminal, Why Aren’t the Rest of Us Criminals As Well?

There’s a reason George Orwell’s 1984 is a predominant theme in my new book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (available now on Amazon.com and in stores on June 25). It’s the same reason Orwell’s dystopian thriller about a futuristic surveillance society has skyrocketed to the top of book charts in the wake of recent revelations by former CIA employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden that the nefarious spy agency is collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, with the complete blessing of the Obama administration.

Orwell understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan flag-waving, are still struggling to come to terms with: that there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people – even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the desire to maintain power and control at all costs.

The fact that the U.S. government now has at its disposal a technological arsenal so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections null and void, and these technologies are being used by the government to invade the privacy of the American people should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the past decade.

Spearheaded by the NSA, which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the “security/industrial complex” – a marriage of government, military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant surveillance – has come to dominate our government and our lives. At three times the size of the CIA, constituting one third of the intelligence budget and with its own global spy network to boot, the NSA has a long history of spying on Americans, whether or not it has always had the authorization to do so.

What many fail to realize, however, is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy. For example, USA Today reports that five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the homeland security business was booming to such an extent that it eclipsed mature enterprises like movie-making and the music industry in annual revenue. This security spending by the government to private corporations is forecast to exceed $1 trillion in the near future.

We have, so to speak, gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government. In search of terrorists hiding amongst us–the proverbial “needle in a haystack,” as one official termed it–the government has taken to monitoring all aspects of our lives, from cell phone calls and emails to Internet activity and credit card transactions. Much of this data is being fed through fusion centers across the country. These are state and regional intelligence centers that collect data on you.

Wherever you go and whatever you do, you are now being watched–especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint. When you use your cell phone, you leave a record of when the call was placed, who you called, how long it lasted and even where you were at the time. When you use your ATM card, you leave a record of where and when you used the card. There is even a video camera at most locations. When you drive a car enabled with GPS, you can be tracked by satellite. And all of this once-private information about your consumer habits, your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government.

As I document in A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the government has nearly inexhaustible resources when it comes to tracking our movements, from electronic wiretapping devices, traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards, satellites and Internet surveillance.

In such a climate, everyone is a suspect. And you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. To underscore this shift in how the government now views its citizens, just before leaving office, President Bush granted the FBI wide-ranging authority to investigate individuals or groups, regardless of whether they are suspected of criminal activity.

Total Internet surveillance is merely the next logical step in the government’s attempts to predict and, more importantly, control the populace–and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA is now designing an artificial intelligence system that is designed to anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA will feed vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer can then use to detect patterns and predict behavior.

No information is sacred or spared. Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, “citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.”

Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).

Clearly, the age of privacy in America is coming to a close. If Orwell’s predictions prove true, what follows will be even worse. “If you want a picture of the future,” he forewarned, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”

June 18, 2013

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

Copyright © 2013 The Rutherford Institute

All over the United States, frustrated homeowners are banding together, arming themselves and patrolling their own streets.  One of the primary reasons this is happening is because police budgets all over the nation are being slashed at a time when violent crime rates in the United States are increasing and many our our largest cities are being transformed into crime-infested war zones.  So instead of waiting for government to come up with a solution, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands.  For example, one community group in Milwaukie, Oregon has started posting flyers with an ominous message for potential criminals: “This is a Glock block. We don’t call 911.”  You can see a photo of this flyer right here.  One of the founders of the “Glock Block” is a breast cancer survivor named Coy Tolonen.  She decided to arm herself after a thief stole one of her favorite statues out of her front yard while she was watching…

It’s mostly petty crime that neighbors are sick and tired of:  stolen lawn ornaments, vandalism.  But for neighbors like Tolonen, a breast-cancer survivor, that’s enough: “I will defend myself — and my home,” she told KOIN 6 News.

Tolonen recently had a beloved statue she calls “Lilly Rose” stolen off her front porch. She said she even saw the man who stole it and tried to chase him down — but he got away.

This was the last straw for Tolonen, who decided to take a class to get her concealed carry permit.

We are seeing similar things happen in other areas of the nation.  As I wrote about yesterday, the size of the police force has been cut in half in the city of Detroit over the past ten years.  Meanwhile, crime rates have skyrocketed.  So frustrated citizens are now teaming up with the police to patrol their own neighborhoods…

Volunteers given radios and matching T-shirts help officers protect neighborhoods where burglaries, thefts and thugs drive away people who can’t rely on a police force that lost a quarter of its strength since 2009. With 25 patrols on the streets, the city hopes to add three each year. Meanwhile, the homicide rate continues rising.

In some wealthier neighborhoods around the country, citizens are pooling their resources and are hiring private security firms to ward off criminals.  Just check out what is happening in Oakland…

After people in Oakland’s wealthy enclaves like Oakmore or Piedmont Pines head to work, security companies take over, cruising the quiet streets to ward off burglars looking to take advantage of unattended homes.

“With less law enforcement on the streets and more home crime or perception of home crime, people are wanting something to replace that need,” says Chris de Guzman, chief operating officer of First Alarm, a company that provides security to about 100 homes in Oakland. “That’s why they’re calling us and bringing companies like us aboard to provide that deterrent.”

According to Steve Amitay, the executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, this is also happening in other high crime cities such as Atlanta and Detroit.  In fact, it is being projected that the “private cop” business is going to absolutely boom in the years ahead.

But not everyone can afford to hire private cops.  Those with more limited resources are trying to cope with rising crime any way that they can.

In Chicago, firefighters are actually being enlisted to provide security for public school students walking to and from school…

The city of Chicago has ordered its firefighters to provide security for public school students walking to and from class through the city’s gang turf, according to an official memo from the Chicago Fire Department that WND obtained.

The memo, signed by Chicago Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago, states that the fire department will have “a strong physical presence” along student walking routes for three weeks at the beginning of the school year in the fall.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.  As the U.S. economy continues to get even worse, so will crime, gang activity and social decay.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone will be bad.

The truth is that there are still some decent people out there.

Today, someone sent me a story about human decency that made me smile.  In Laguna Niguel, California a man accidentally sold a wooden watch box for $10 that contained his wife’s $23,000 wedding ring.  When his wife found out about it, she was absolutely crushed…

Racquel Cloutier was distraught after her husband, Eric, told her he had sold the wooden watch box in which she had hidden the ring before going to hospital to have their fifth child. “I immediately started crying,” said Mrs. Cloutier, 31, of Laguna Niguel, California. “I just wanted the ring to be in a safe place and out of reach from my two-year-old twins.”

Fortunately, the box had ended up with a very honest couple…

A dozen kilometres away, in Mission Viejo, Alyssa and Andrew Lossau were frantically searching for a set of keys. They looked inside a box that Mrs. Lossau’s mother, Chaundel Holladay, had bought at a garage sale and given them as a gift.

Inside, they discovered the three-carat diamond ring. Mrs. Lossau found an email address for Mrs Cloutier and contacted her. “It is giving me faith in people again,” said Mr. Cloutier, 38. “By the grace of God it ended up with the most honest people,” said his wife.

So that story had a very happy ending.

There are still people out there that are ready and willing to do the right thing.

But not everyone is that way.  It has been said that desperate people do desperate things, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes there are going to be millions of very desperate people out there on the streets of America.

Now is the time to get prepared for that.

www.wnd.com

Garth Kant

Ann Coulter

WND readers know Ann Coulter’s incisive political analysis and keen wit from her weekly columns on this website.

She has warned WND readers about the danger of including an amnesty provision in the immigration bill the Senate is now considering.

We asked her 10 questions delving deeper into the issue to let Americans know just what is at stake and what they can do about it.

Why won’t passing amnesty help Republicans?

Look at California!  The state that gave us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now a state where a Republican cannot be elected statewide. Not even attractive, successful businesswomen like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman can beat a tired old dinosaur like Jerry Brown or a dried-up prune like Barbara Boxer. The most beautiful state in the union is ruined, and the greatest nation in history is about to be.

Why will passing amnesty hurt Republicans?

Amnesty will lead to the immiseration of millions of Americans as low-wage workers will be out of work entirely or working at meaningless low-wage jobs. In either event they’ll be required to depend on government to get by. The 30 million Hispanics who already are citizens or legal residents will be in the same boat as the rest of us. Many of them will be earning less and less, unable to get ahead or to assimilate. It’s not just amnesty, but legal immigration that needs to be curtailed to give the mass of immigrants from the last several decades time to make money, get ahead and assimilate to American culture. That’s how you create a Republican: Give him a job. You create a Democrat by giving him welfare. A lot more Americans of all races will need government assistance, thanks to Rubio’s amnesty/mass immigration bill.

If amnesty won’t help the GOP, why are prominent Republicans pushing it?

Because the plutocrats want it. All the rich Republican donors want cheap labor, and their high-priced lobbyists have convinced the stupidest Republicans that it’s a great idea. As Jorge Borjas of Harvard has pointed out, amnesty transfers wealth from the bottom of society to the top. The rich get cheap labor and the bottom third get crappy, low-wage jobs.

Would those in the House leadership do something that harms America just to help their own careers?

Ha! Ironically, if it helps them at all, it will only help in the next few election cycles when they are paid back in large campaign contributions from the plutocrats – Foster Freize, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, etc., etc. But then they will have created a country where Republicans will be a permanent minority and no Republican can ever be elected nationwide. You will notice the smartest members of Congress – Jeff Sessions, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Steve King – are categorically opposed to the amnesty bill Chuck Schumer has conned Mario Rubio into flacking.

It’s Schumer’s bill! Why is Rubio the one pushing it? Remind me again: Are Princeton and Harvard Law School (Cruz ’92 & ’95) tougher to get into than a non-accredited community college in Florida (Marco Rubio)?

How will amnesty hurt America?

I’d say being a country where the political spectrum runs from Gavin Newsom to Nancy Pelosi is not a country most Americans want to live in. But we weren’t consulted on whether to turn the country into Mexico. And at best it will be Mexico – with the very, very, very rich doing quite well, attended to by hordes of servants, while the rest of us live in huts and scrape by on less than today’s minimum wage. For a preview of this new country, see California.

How will amnesty hurt illegal immigrants already in this country?

See above – it will hurt all low-wage workers by driving down their wages, making it hard for them to find jobs and requiring them to take government assistance. The rich don’t care, as long as they’re making money. The Republicans don’t care, as long as they win their next elections.(Though many won’t.) Democrats don’t care, as long as the newly legalized illegals all vote for the Democrats.

Historically, immigration has helped America – why is it now hurting our country?

That’s nonsense!

1) As Peter Brimelow points out ALL NATIONS ARE NATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS. STOP CALLING AMERICA “A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS!” Do people imagine the British simply emerged from the mud as proper, common law-respecting, tea-drinking Englishmen? The Romans occupied it, the Normans invaded, Germanic tribes replaced the Normans, the Vikings invaded and a thousand of years later, the Muslims came and wrecked the place. I may have gotten some of the invasions mixed up, but that’s it in a nutshell.

2) As Milton Friedman has said: You can’t have open borders and a welfare state. For roughly the first three centuries of America’s existence, anyone could come here – and good luck to them! If they couldn’t make it, they went home. About 30 percent did. We skimmed the cream of the world! By the time of the American Revolution, this had created something distinctive about Americans, as described absolutely beautifully by Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”

Even after the Democrats ginned up the welfare machinery, the country maintained the same national character and stayed largely the same demographically because our immigration policy imposed quotas to replicate the nationalities of the people already here. But in 1965, Teddy Kennedy’s immigration act intentionally changed the ethnicity of immigrants to favor those from the Third World and freeze out people from countries that had traditionally sent us our immigrants. Since the late 1970s, more than 90 percent of the immigrants to America have been from the Third World. This has led to wider income inequality, a higher crime rate, more unemployment and on and on and on. The 1965 immigration act was the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

Rep. Bachmann tells us amnesty would end our constitutional republic – do you agree?

Is Mexico a “constitutional republic”? If not, then yes, I agree.

Is there any way to stop amnesty – what should people do?

CALL CONGRESS! There is no issue on which the elites and the people are so divided – but patriotic Americans have been lulled into a sense of complacency. Right now, there is a good chance this monstrosity will become law.

Call NOW and say:

1) We will primary any Republican who votes for this bill.

2)  We want absolutely no House bill on immigration! Not even a bill to build a fence and enforce E-Verify. Until the Senate is safely in Republican hands – and preferably Rubio-free – the House should not vote on anything resembling an immigration bill. If it does, the House bill will go to “conference” with the Senate … and come out an amnesty bill. An amnesty bill would pass in the House right now. (It will get the votes of 100 percent of Democrats and enough stupid Republicans, e.g., Paul Ryan.)

If amnesty passes, is it time to ditch the GOP and start a new party? (Or would it already be too late?)

Too late. If the Rubio amnesty bill passes, the country will be finished. There will be no point in fighting for anything anymore. All we will have left to do is take revenge on the people who destroyed this country, starting with desecrating Teddy Kennedy’s grave and moving on to primarying every Republican who voted for it.

The tsunami of what are playfully called “scandals” seem to have finally caught up with him despite the fact that our cowards in Congress don’t have the courage to pursue this president to force him to answer all the questions about what has been his participation in these many constitutional killing events. If they did he’d be packing for a trip back to Chicago, not going on a $100 million family outing to Europe.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating is plummeting in the midst of American dissatisfaction with the recent privacy controversies and other scandals.

The president’s approval rating is 45 percent, marking an 8-point drop in the last month, according to a CNN survey. Weighing down on the Obama administration are the revelations of government domestic spying programs, the Justice Department’s secret pursuit of journalists’ phone records, the Internal Revenue Service’s inappropriate scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exemption status, as well as the lingering questions over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, last fall.

“The drop in Obama’s support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30, who, along with black Americans, had been the most loyal part of the Obama coalition,” says Keating Holland, polling director for CNN. “It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama’s standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well.”

The survey, released Monday, also shows that 50 percent of Americans say they don’t believe Obama is “honest and trustworthy,” for the first time in his presidency, according to CNN. His personal trustworthiness was a measure that shined during his re-election campaign, where he continually outperformed Republican presidential opponent Mitt Romney, bolstering his position despite a struggling economy.

Americans are split when it comes to the line they want the federal government to take between balancing civil liberties and fighting terrorism. About 43 percent say the administration has gone too far, 38 percent say it’s about right and 17 percent say it hasn’t gone far enough.

And about half of those surveyed said the National Security Agency’s program to collect phone records is OK and two-thirds approve of the Internet surveillance program.

The poll surveyed 1,014 adults from June 11 to June 13, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.