Gabrielle Giffords Event Coverage

The CMC Forum wrote a pretty good article about the Gabrielle Giffords candlelight event over  at Scripps College. There is one curious note, though:

The event focused on support, healing and prayer, and contained no allusion to media accusations of  the shooter’s political motives or growing divisiveness. But according to Mullady and Bettison-Varga, politics has not corrupted discussion of the event at Scripps.

Then why did President Bettison-Varga release this highly politicized statement?  

Bassam Frangieh's Anti-American Hate Revealed

Bassam Frangieh, Claremont McKenna College’s resident Hamas, Hezbollah and Saddam Hussein-supporting head of Arabic and Middle East Studies, trains the next generation of Arabic diplomats at one of America’s top colleges. We’ve already exposed his anti-Israel views, but today, we’ll expose his anti-American ones.

I’ve already asked why Kuwait’s government is funding a pro-Saddam Hussein professor on junkets to the Middle East; why the college’s PR director, Richard Rodner, is covering up the pro-terrorism views of a professor ostensibly brought to teach future diplomats by deleting from his Wikipedia page; and why, for that matter, future diplomats are being taught by an avowed supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Saddam Hussein.To date, I’ve heard nothing back. Instead, the college released a toothless response, which I then proceeded to gut.

Today, we’re going to ask a more basic question in the hopes that we will get something of a response: Why is Bassam Frangieh in America if he hates it so much? It can’t be the six figure salary he and his wife – herself also something of an anti-Israel bigot and running all international programming at CMC – each receive, for men work for more than pay.

Take a gander at an interview he gave in 2006 that I had professionally translated from Arabic. In it, Professor Frangieh answers a basic question of his own: Why do you stay in America?

“Life in America has no taste and no life. It is suffocating, but one does not know that he is suffocating, for the suffocation comes by degrees. It’s like the frog who is initially placed in a large bowl of lukewarm water, then starts to feel uncomfortable but does not know why. Then they start heating up the water little by little. You adapt to the increasing temperature, then they continue to increase the temperature gradually until you slowly suffocate.America does not have intimate relationships. Expedience is everything. It has no purity. Everything is superficial, artificial, material. Either the man suffocates, or he turns into a machine—a machine which loses its ability to discern that it is a machine. You stop thinking, and you go places you do not know in convoys of bigger machines. I am amazed by those who have a place to go and yet stay here. If I had a place, I would go there and stay there happily, and would not stay one more day here. “[Emphasis added]

America, he tells us, does not have intimate relationships, but Claremont McKenna’s PR stresses Frangieh’s “intimate” relationships with students in promotional material. Is that intimacy false? Is Professor Frangieh really as duplicitous as he appears?

Now that his views are known, perhaps Claremont McKenna’s alumni – and the friends of real peace in the Middle East – can pay to have him leave. Lebanon’s government was just toppled by Hezbollah without firing a shot, putting the lie to the canard that political wings don’t seek the same thing military wings do – civic disruption. Frangieh once signed a pro-Hezbollah petition whose flyer advertised, “Boycott Israel… We are all Hezbollah now.”

Maybe now he can go live in the Hell his beloved Hezbollah seeks to bring about in Lebanon? By all means, Claremont McKenna alumni should say: “Here’s your ticket.”

All The More Reason To Get A Gun...

I suppose it is time I get a gun in light of all this... 

Four Claremont break-ins reported in one day Lori Consalvo, Staff Writer Posted: 01/18/2011 04:31:06 PM PST Updated: 01/18/2011 05:38:32 PM PST CLAREMONT - Police are investigating several burglaries and home break-ins this past weekend in this city. The burglaries took place in neighborhoods surrounding the West Arrow Highway and Indian Hill Boulevard intersection. Claremont police officers on Tuesday processed fingerprints and DNA from the sites. "We suspect these burglaries are all connected to the same suspects," police Lt. Shelly Vander Veen said. "In at least two of them, witnesses described the suspects as four black males between the ages of 17 and 22 and wearing black-hooded sweatshirts." The incidents on Sunday in Claremont: - About 9:50 a.m. in the 400 block of Notre Dame Road, burglars got into a residence through an unlocked open window, according to a police news release. About $300 and a watch were stolen. No suspects were seen. - About 2:20 p.m. in the 600 block of Cinderella Drive, someone broke into a vacant house through a rear window. No items were taken and no suspects were seen. - About 7:25 p.m. in the 400 block of Marygrove Road, a group of men broke a window of a residence with a rock. The men fled after a homeowner yelled at them, according to police. Four men, including one man who was walking a dog, were seen in the area. "Witnesses saw them ... with a German shepherd," Vander Veen said. "We hope to identify suspects based on evidence, but, in the meantime, we request the public's help." - About 8:55 400 block of St. Augustine Avenue, a group of men used a rock to break through a rear patio door window of a residence. The men went inside and searched the rooms, according to the news release. A handgun was stolen. A neighbor said she saw four people who were wearing dark-hooded sweatshirts walking south on St. Augustine about the time of the burglary. Anyone with information about these incidents, can call the Police Department at 909-399-5411. Staff writer

At Times Square, John-Clark Levin Video!