RANT - Former DEA Chief: Hezbollah Eyeing Southwest Border, 'Hell To Pay In The Not Too Distant Future' -- The Iranian-supported Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah has spread its influence all the way to the U.S. border with Mexico, a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere has heard.
Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, said Hezbollah had developed relationships with the powerful Mexican drug cartels to “move their agenda forward.” He cited a plot, recently uncovered by the DEA, involving an Iranian operative in Mexico allegedly planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C.
“Hezbollah are absolute masters at forming close relationships with existing organized crime groups around the world that helps them facilitate what they need to do to move their agendas forward,” Braun said following the hearing. “And if anyone thinks for a moment that they don’t have their eye on the southwest border and all of our country, then they couldn’t be more wrong.”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/former-dea-chief-hezbollah-eyeing-southwest-border-hell-pay-not-too-distant-future
RAVE - Supreme Court Rejects Judge-Drawn Texas Election Maps -- The Supreme Court ruled in a Texas political dispute, rejecting judge-drawn election maps favoring minority candidates and Democrats in the 2012 congressional and state legislature elections.
In its first ruling on political boundary-drawing based on the 2010 U.S. Census, the high court unanimously set aside the interim maps created by federal district court judges in San Antonio.
The high court said it was unclear whether the judges in Texas followed the appropriate standards and sent the cases back for further proceedings.
At issue were the maps that Texas will use in its primary contests set for April 3 that will decide party candidates for congressional and state legislature elections in November.
The dispute had been closely watched because it could help decide whether Republicans or Democrats gain as many as four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-usa-politics-texas-idUSTRE80J16A20120120
RANT - US, EU Spearhead Islamic Bid To Criminalize Free Speech -- The European Union has offered to host the next meeting of the so-called Istanbul Process, an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam.
The announcement comes less than one month after the United States hosted its own Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC.
The Istanbul Process – its explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law – is being spearheaded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries.
Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression about Islam.
But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of religion and belief."
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2734/criminalize-free-speech
RANT - Judges Gone Wild -- Still reeling from the Obama administration’s ongoing socialist makeover of their country, most Americans have understandably focused their outrage on the executive and legislative branches of government, watching a rogue president and radicalized Congress wreak havoc on the freest, most prosperous nation on earth.
Yet, the branch of government arguably most responsible for the “fundamental transformation of America” is neither the executive nor legislative. The most arrogant, unaccountable and transformational branch of government today is the judiciary, which, virtually unshackled from the Constitution, has declared itself the supreme branch of government.
http://www.wnd.com/2011/12/381777/
