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Phyllis Schlafly has been going all out in opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, warning that would be “suicide for the GOP” and that it’s all part of President Obama’s plan to “destroy our system.”

So it makes sense that this month’s "Phyllis Schlafly Report" is devoted entirely to opposing immigration reform. In particular, Schlafly is worried that immigration authorities aren’t “vetting” immigration applicants to “make sure that the applicant really wants to become an American.” This, she claims, is more necessary than in the past because “the immigrants of earlier generations, Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc., certainly did want to be Americans; like Irving Berlin, their attitude was God Bless America.”

Schlafly is concerned as well that immigrants be made to “accept the rule that disputes in our courts must be decided according to U.S. law, not any foreign law,” a nod to the Right’s bogus “Sharia law” conspiracy theory.

But don’t read too much into this. After all, Schlafly has explicitly assured us that her opposition to immigration reform is “not racist, isolationist, nativist, or xenophobic.”

The vetting of immigrants should make sure that the applicant really wants to become an American. The immigrants of earlier generations, Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc., certainly did want to be Americans; like Irving Berlin, their attitude was God Bless America.

There is plenty of evidence that legal and illegal immigrants of various nationalities, in contravention of our citizenship pledge, retain their loyalty to the land they came from. Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism at the New America Foundation in Washington, says, “I think there’s often a sense of divided loyalties in these cases where Americans turn to violent jihad — are you American first or are you Muslim first?”

Our government should investigate thoroughly and reject those who do not want to become Americans, obey our Constitution and laws, speak our language, and salute our Flag. And they have to accept the rule that disputes in our courts must be decided according to U.S. law, not any foreign law.

With the ultraconservative Ken Cuccinelli as their candidate for governor, it only makes sense that Virginia Republican delegates picked far-right pastor and failed U.S. Senate candidate E. W. Jackson as their nominee for Lt. Governor.

Jackson is running on a “message to inspire and unite Virginia,” which apparently includes uniting Virginians around bigotry towards gays and lesbians, comparing Democrats to slave masters and the Antichrist and warning that President Obama is a secret Muslim.

Jackson on gays and lesbians:

• Referred to gays and lesbians as “perverted,” “degenerate,” “spiritually darkened” and “frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally.”
• Said regarding homosexuality: “it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of.”
• Argued that gays seek to “sexualize [children] at the earliest possible age” and use “totalitarian” tactics.
• Claimed gays are hurting black women: “I’ve heard a lot of young black ladies that a lot of young black men seem to be gay. I’ve heard them complain about it, they say ‘so many of these guys are homosexuals’ and they are frankly frustrated by it.”
• Demanded the reinstitution of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell : “The military has been decimated by this lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender policy that has now been implemented. It’s an abomination and it’s only going to weaken us militarily and they need to undo it,” warning that the policy’s repeal is a “disaster of historic proportions.”
• Contended that homosexuality is “killing black men by the thousands” and said of gay rights advocates: “what they’re promoting is killing people.”
• Called GLSEN founder and anti-bullying activist Kevin Jennings a “radical homosexual activist” who should have been “imprisoned” in a letter demanding he resign as head of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.
• Said there is a “direct connection” between gays and pedophilia.

Jackson on Obama and Democrats:

• Wondered how the Democratic Party “managed to hold on to black Christians in spite of an agenda worthy of the Antichrist.”
• Proclaimed that “the Democrat Party has shown itself to be anti-Christian, anti-Bible, anti-family, anti-life and anti-God… We're calling people to come out of the Democrat Party and not support candidates who represent its values and the rebellion that it represents against God. That certainly would include President Barack Obama.”
• Claimed that Democratic Party supporters are “insulting their faith and blaspheming their God” by supporting a “coalition of the godless.”
• Warned that ministers who support Obama “are going to have to answer to God” if they encourage “their congregations to support this abomination.”
• Said Democrats believe “that the Bible is a lie and indeed they are saying that God is a liar.”
• Argued that “liberalism and their ideas have done more to kill black folks whom they claim so much to love than the Ku Klux Klan, lynching and slavery and Jim Crow ever did, now that’s a fact.”
• Maintained that Obama “seems to have a lot of sympathy for even radical Islam” and “clearly has Muslim sensibilities,” arguing that Obama “certainly does have a lot of affection and favor for Islam, that seems to be his priority…Christianity, I don’t really think about that with him, I really don’t, that’s a joke.”   
• Compared Democratic leaders to “slave masters” who make sure that black people who disagree with them are “punished.”
• Insisted that Planned Parenthood “has been far more lethal to Black lives than the KKK ever was.”
• Predicted that African Americans will “overwhelmingly” vote against Obama as a result of his endorsement of marriage equality and a move of God to “stir the hearts of His people” and push them against the Democrats.
• Maintained that the President and First Lady are both Communist sympathizers who dislike America.

Updated 5/21.

Rep. Steve King attacked the proposed immigration reform legislation during an appearance on The Steve Deace Show last night, warning that the bill will do great damage to “American liberty” and “the underpinnings of the pillars of American exceptionalism.” He said that undocumented immigrants, whom he believes are approximately 33 million in number, and their children and grandchildren will “be taught to disrespect” the rule of law and collect tens of thousands of dollars in welfare benefits.

King maintained that Democrats are only pushing the reform bill in order to create a voting bloc “similar to that bloc that they have created out of African Americans,” describing Hispanics as a “special interest group” that will become part of the Democrats’ “powerful political base.”

It destroys the rule of law with regard to immigration and if that happens the generations of people who would follow, those beneficiaries of amnesty, would not be taught and raised to respect the rule of law, they’d be taught to disrespect it and they would be rewarded for disrespecting the law. The only claim that this 11.5 million people that’s more legitimately projected to be 33 million people, the only claim to the welfare benefits that range up into the area of $46,000 a year for typical benefits for a household, the only claim that the people have for that is that they broke American law. That is the wrong reason, it’s the wrong thing, it’s wrong economically, it’s wrong culturally, it’s wrong for the underpinnings of the pillars of American exceptionalism such as the rule of law and there’s no way that Americans benefit from this. When we ask the question, why? There is no real reason except Barack Obama and the Democrat Party [sic] for a long time have been seeking to create a monolithic voting bloc out of Hispanics that is similar to that bloc that they have created out of African Americans and they have designs to go right on down the line with each special interest group, creating a more powerful political base at the expense of our American liberty.

Upon news that Republicans altered emails from government officials to make it appear that the State Department was engaged in a cover-up of the attack in Benghazi, Sen. Rand Paul attempted to revive the non-scandal in his column for the Washington Times.

Paul writes that “[Gregory] Hicks testified that he spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the night of the attack and that a special-forces unit was stopped from deploying.”

I think Mr. Obama has failed that test of power. From the cover-up in Benghazi to letting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) target the Tea Party to First and Fourth Amendment violations in obtaining records from the press, Mr. Obama has shown disregard for the Bill of Rights and his responsibilities as commander in chief.

The handling of the tragedy in Benghazi continues to raise more questions than it produces answers. The White House’s original story, that no one was told to “stand down” on the night of the attack, was contradicted last week by Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens‘ deputy, Gregory Hicks. Mr. Hicks testified that he spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the night of the attack and that a special-forces unit was stopped from deploying.

But Hicks actually testified that the order came from Special Operations Command Africa, not the State Department or anyone in the Obama administration, and that the security team in question was not organized to intervene in the attack but to secure the airport for evacuation.

PolitiFact explains:

But Hicks’ testimony and a State Department review board report show it was clear the “people that were getting killed” were already dead when the security team was ready to go.

…

“We determined that we needed to send a second team from Tripoli to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack,” he said.

…

During Hicks’ testimony last week, Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., read from a Defense Department press release explaining the security team was directed to stay in Tripoli because those in Benghazi “had shifted to evacuation.”

"We continue to believe that there was nothing this group could have done had they arrived in Benghazi, and they performed superbly in Tripoli," she read. "In fact, when the first aircraft arrived back in Tripoli, these four played a key role in receiving, treating and moving the wounded."

…

But it’s clear from Hicks’ testimony that four Americans "getting killed" in Benghazi were already dead when the decision was made to keep the special forces team in Tripoli. The mortar attack was over. A Defense Department drone watched overhead in Benghazi as Libyan militia members helped Americans get to the airport.

Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner says that the real political scandal isn’t about the IRS, Benghazi or the Associated Press, “but the president himself.” Kuhner, who has been demanding Obama’s impeachment for several years, calls the scandal “Obamagate,” which he believes best expresses his belief that “Mr. Obama is the root cause of the White House’s woes” and “is a political thug masquerading as a progressive reformer.”

President Obama is facing a perfect storm of scandals, cover-ups and criminality that threatens to sweep him from power. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first Watergate hearings. They eventually brought down President Nixon, forcing him to resign. Mr. Obama is the liberal Nixon — a corrupt chief executive, who is presiding over a lawless administration.

…

Beyond the IRS, AP and Benghazi lies a deeper scandal: Obamagate. Ultimately, Mr. Obama is the root cause of the White House’s woes. The problem is not the president’s men (and women). It is the president himself. He has no respect for the Constitution or for legal constraints on his power. He has presided over a scandal-ridden administration — Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the open bribery and abuse of parliamentary procedures to pass Obamacare, suing states seeking to uphold our immigration laws, enabling the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens simply if they’re accused of being “terrorists,” and now the use of government power to suppress dissent, persecute opponents, spy on the press and cover up the jihadist slaughter of Americans. Mr. Obama is a political thug masquerading as a progressive reformer. He is worse than Nixon: No one died as a result of Watergate.

Republicans should insist that several special prosecutors be appointed to investigate the administration’s purported crimes. In the end, Nixon was unable to run from the truth. Mr. Obama is now running as fast as he can. It is our responsibility to catch and expose him.

Minnesota-based Religious Right activist/rock star Bradlee Dean went ballistic on his radio show yesterday in response to his state’s new marriage equality law. Dean warned that Gov. Mark Dayton, who signed the same-sex marriage bill into law, is at “war with God” and is “about to find out what it’s like as to what the fallout is when you throw rocks towards God, he’s going to learn how gravity works.” He added that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who backed his state’s marriage equality law, and other pro-gay rights “criminals” will face divine justice as well: 

Dean even seems to believe that every gay person in the country showed up for yesterday’s celebration of the marriage equality law in order to “push their propaganda and their agendas on the American people,” just as Saul Alinsky commanded.

“They come from all over the country to do this so what you’ve seen was probably the whole lump of the population of the homosexual community in the United States of America,” Dean said.

After lamenting about the “pansies” in the Minnesota legislature, Dean and his co-hosts began discussing the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act,” an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill, which he said is proof that “radical homosexuals” are part of a “UN global agenda” to “destroy the family.”

Dean then channeled his inner-Antoine Dodson and claimed that gays are coming after your wife and kids: “Go home, look at your wife and look at your kids, because now that’s what they’re coming for.”

He even lashed out at “my good friend Alex Jones,” who is apparently not anti-gay enough for Dean, despite his belief that chemicals in juices are turning kids gay.

Dean concluded the show by warning that gay rights advocates are creating a “totalitarian system” by pushing the anti-bullying legislation, fearing that “pharmaceutical giants” might diagnose anti-gay activists as mentally ill.

“The conservatives on the airwaves in Minneapolis are sitting there playing games with the homosexuals because they think it’s a puppy to be played with when in fact it’s a stinking water rat filled with rabies,” he concluded.

Thanks to RWW reader Matthew for the tip!

While the rest of the conservative movement is already several conspiracy theories ahead of him, Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt is still hung up on Fast and Furious, the troubled Justice Department operation started under the Bush administration that Pratt and others believe was actually orchestrated by President Obama to promote gun control.

So Pratt is elated by the scandals – some legitimate and some not so much – plaguing the Obama administration this week because, he says, they might finally allow for the chance to impeach the president over Fast and Furious. “If this isn’t the time when you can get him both politically and legally,” he told host Stan Solomon of the Talk to Solomon Show, “I don’t know when.”

Pratt and Solomon then had a baffling exchange about how to remove the president from the White House after his impeachment, involving forcing him to dangle from the bottom of a helicopter and something about gangrene:

Pratt: This last week has been a spectacular spinning out of control of the future of the president. He is no longer the big guy in town. I don’t know who that might be to take his place yet, but it sure is not he. And he’s gonna be doing well not to end up just exactly like Richard Nixon. They still have helicopters that can fly you out of the White House on that last flight.

Solomon: Yeah, right, and of course, with a little luck he can be dangling from the bottom of one.

Pratt: Gangrene One!

Solomon: Yeah.

Next time Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent Erick Stakelbeck talks about religious liberty, just remember that he doesn’t seem to extend that freedom to Muslims. During a conference call with the group Tea Party Unity, Stakelbeck attacked the Obama administration for having “literally” intervened in cases to defend the construction of mosques.

Stakelbeck said he is outraged that the Obama administration is trying to stop residents from blocking the construction of mosques because how dare the Justice Department defend the First Amendment!

He was also livid that Muslims may want to build “a $5 million mega-mosque,” just as we are sure he is angry that a Southern Baptist congregation in Dallas constructed a $130 million megachurch.

But then again, what do you expect from a sports reporter-turned-terrorism “expert” who has championed anti-Muslim activists like “mosque buster” Gavin Boby?

Caller: How is it we can get these facilities, because I’m not going to call it a church or a religion, how can we get them shut down?

Stakelbeck: Well look under this administration, good luck, because I’m just working on a chapter in my new book about how this administration when locals, in places like Murfreesboro, Tennessee, when local residents are up in arms about a mosque being built, the Obama Department of Justice literally intervenes, files amicus briefs in support of the mosque, we’ve seen this time and time again. Here’s a statistic for you, folks, in the year 2001 there were 1,200 mosques in America; now, just twelve years later after 9/11, that number has doubled to over 2,000 mosques, that’s a 74 percent increase since 9/11 alone, that is astounding and it is not a coincidence. Under the Obama administration the floodgates are open even more; they are literally intervening in these mosque cases around the country, in small towns with very small Muslim populations. I’m sorry, if you have a 200-strong Muslim population, why do you need a $5 million mega-mosque? And where is the money coming from? Look no further than Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. So getting mosques shut down in this era, in the age of Obama? Good luck. What you’re going to see is more mosques built.

Stakelbeck told another caller that “there is a concerted effort by Islamists to infiltrate the very heartland of American society,” particularly the Bible Belt.

Just to be clear, Muslims represent just 1% of the population of Tennessee and less than 0.5% in other Bible Belt states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Arkansas.

But maybe they’re all just hiding in national parks….

Caller: We are seeing so much Saudi in middle Tennessee, I mean they have the best health care in the Saudi embassy, we have classes at the university, so we are just seeing a major, major influx of Saudi nationals here in middle Tennessee.

Stakelbeck: Folks, it’s not a coincidence. Middle Tennessee is the buckle of the Bible Belt. This is not just in New York City, Boston, Chicago, LA, traditional gateway cities for immigrants, anymore; there is a concerted effort by Islamists to infiltrate the very heartland of American society. I write about this in my book “The Terrorist Next Door,” I call it “Southern Inhospitality,” and that’s what we’re seeing, and you’re seeing it in a major way in that Nashville area where you have tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants in Murfreesboro and Shelbyville.

Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, has spent his first few months in office making enemies on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps this is because the Tea Party hero employs a potent mix of of sanctimonious rhetoric and hatchet-job politics that led one of his fellow GOP senators to call him “Jim DeMint without the charm.” His particular brand of smarminess was on display, for instance, when he delivered a condescending, elementary school-level lecture about the Constitution to Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Or when he explained that he was for gun sales background checks but opposed a bill to expand them because the very real gun-show loophole “doesn’t exist.” Or when he mocked his Republicans colleagues who did support the background check bill, calling them weak “squishes.”

So it was a treat today to stumble across this interview that Cruz gave earlier this month to Red State, in which he explains that if anybody has a problem with him it’s their own fault because, “When others have chosen to insult me, to throw rocks at me, I have not and will not respond in kind.”

“Washington is a place where people often shy away from speaking the truth,” he explained. “And so my focus will remain on the substance...and I think there’s some that don’t like a consistent and explicit focus on the substance of the issue.”
 

We thought we’d help Sen. Cruz out by highlighting just a few examples of times when he has refrained from throwing rocks and displayed “a consistent and explicit focus on the substance of the issue”:

• When he accused John Kerry and Chuck Hagel – both combat veterans – of being “less than ardent fans of the U.S. military.”
• When he baselessly speculated that Hagel was laundering money from the North Korean government.
• When he warned that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in the United States.
• When he claimed that when he attended Harvard Law School, there were twelve professors “who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”
• When he called President Obama “the most radical” president “ever to occupy the Oval Office.”
• When he claimed that the United Nations and George Soros are conspiring to eliminate golf.
• When he objected to a symbolic resolution commemorating International Women’s Day because it acknowledged the existence of climate change.
• When he attacked a fellow Republican Senate candidate for marching in a gay pride parade.
• When he called President Obama “the single biggest obstacle to passing immigration reform”…which Cruz opposes.
• When he falsely claimed that expanding Medicaid would actually “worsen health care options for the most vulnerable.”
• When he objected for no particular reason to a symbolic resolution commemorating Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week.
• When he called the families of children killed in Newtown “political props.”
• And, of course, this: