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On this day in 1867, the Republican-controlled 40th Congress passed a bill to charter Howard University, in Washington, DC. Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R-KS) wrote the charter, and Senator Henry Wilson (R-NH) introduced the bill. Civil rights activists established this institution...

NOTE: This article is an update of my previous article Marco Rubio is a Natural Born Citizen, just like John Fremont and Chester Arthur which includes the fact that Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes' father, like Marco Rubio's father,...

According to the Constitution, to be eligible for the presidency (or vice presidency), a person must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. The purpose of this restriction is to prevent a foreigner from becoming the nation’s chief...

ADD-ON!  Click here for county-by-county chart of MD GOP National Committeewoman Vote.

Ann Corcoran has a useful perspective (Potomac Tea Party Report) this morning on Nicolee Ambrose’s winning the post of Republican National Committeewoman yesterday in an unusually hard-fought contest with GOP Establishment veteran Audrey Scott.

Blogger Corcoran titles her post “Vote signals need for MD GOP to ‘get past Ehrlich.’”

Indeed.

 The Audrey Scott Record

Audrey Scott was “the hammer” for the last Ehrlich campaign.  Whatever the former governor’s many political sins (which we have been cataloguing for some time), she carried his banner with fidelity and some grit.  She also held elective executive office as mayor of Bowie, and, in our view, was an efficient Maryland secretary of planning.  We were sad to see her diminish her legacy in public life with a crude attack on conservative Representative Roscoe Bartlett just before his last primary win.  

But that Bartlett attack illustrates her major shortcoming:  if the Maryland GOP Establishment, in this case likely state senator David Brinkley’s campaign, asked Mrs. Scott to make a questionable if not self-defeating political move, she didn’t demur. We believe she knew better.  In recent times, she owed her GOP colleagues her judgment more than her obedience.

The Ambrose Promise

James Bopp: “But, in my view, the national committee’s job is to create the environment in which Republicans can be elected to set policy. . . . The Republican Party was founded to advance a set of principles — most famously, ending slavery. Electing politicians to public office is a means to that end. [Senator Lamar] Alexander, it seems, would reverse this: Let’s just elect public officials and see what public policies they come up with.”

The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Dresser terms Nicolee Ambrose a “conservative activist.”

Young, vigorous, attractive, Nicolee Ambrose does need to tell us at more length what she intends her role on the Republican National Committee to be.

“Growing the Farm Team” is a fine goal, but isn’t it more the job of the state chairman?

Will she join the conservative ranks in the RNC?  Or will she become another voice for the Beltway GOP?

We need more frank discussion, not silence, about the national struggle in the Republican Party between the “country class” and the “ruling class” — a contest well delineated by Angelo Codevilla here and evidenced in the constant stream of posts from, among many other sources, RedState and The Madison Project.

Click, moreover, on the following headline from the Washington Post of last Sunday illustrating the intensity of this struggle: “Book: GOP freshman class turned into ‘a monster’ for Boehner, other House leaders.”

Within Maryland itself, will Nicolee Ambrose use her own “bully pulpit” and her advertised organizational skills as the new Maryland RNC Committeewoman to get behind the drive to petition gay marriage to referendum, and to support the repeal of the so-called Maryland Dream Act on November’s ballot?  These are not just Maryland but national concerns.

Nor are these academic questions for our new Maryland RNC Committeewoman: some very influential Republicans here support gay marriage; some significant national GOP figures here are crafting their own version of a national Dream Act.

 Conservatives and The Maryland GOP

We ourselves didn’t have a vote at the GOP state convention yesterday – - which also elected the following delegates to the Republican National Convention:  Ellen Sauerbrey, Tony O’Donnell, E. J. Pipkin, David Craig, Diana Waterman, Kelly Schultz, Larry Helminiak, Kathy Szeliga, Michael Smigiel, and Ruth Umbel.

(See Monoblogue’s informative text and fine images of the Friday part of the GOP conference here.)

But if we had had a vote and had attended, we would have cast it for Nicolee Ambrose. 

We hope the Ambrose win yesterday (a county-by-county chart of the vote will be posted later as an add-on) signalled an end to “centrist” and statist GOP politics in Maryland, not just a change in the top GOP lineup.

Beyond the run-up to this November’s elections, Maryland conservatives need to organize seriously and do so for the longer haul to guide the GOP and the state in a better direction.

Otherwise an outcome like the one Joel Kotkin describes in “The Great California Exodus” (Allysia Finley in the WSJ) here may also be the outcome awaiting the Old Line State.

“As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California’s politics become even more left-wing. It’s a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, ‘the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.’”

Will Montgomery County be the first to reflect this scenario if matters are not put right?

 

 

 

Grand Old Partisan salutes Gov. William Brownlow (R-TN), the Fighting Parson, who died on this day in 1877. Along with most people in eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, Brownlow, a Knoxville newspaper editor, opposed the Confederates and remained loyal...

Grand Old Partisan salutes James Baker, born this day in 1930. Perhaps his greatest achievement was leading efforts to prevent Al Gore from stealing Florida's electoral votes after George W. Bush's victory in the 2000 presidential election. James Baker has...

Grand Old Partisan salutes Eva Bowring (R-NE), a rancher and Republican activist, sworn in as a U.S. Senator on this day in 1954. The Republican governor, Robert Crosby, appointed her to fill a vacancy in recognition of Bowring's service on...

I volunteered all day for Mitt Romney in the DC Republican primary on April 3. A week before, he won the Lincoln-Douglass dinner straw poll with 72% of the vote. Governor Romney has the good character and broad experience and...

At the request of President William McKinley (R-OH), Congress declared war against Spain on this day in 1898. Key to swift victory was the naval modernization program -- coal-fired, big-gun, all-steel ships -- begun fifteen years earlier by the administration...

I recently published at Human Events an article celebrating an overlooked achievement of our Grand Old Party: Republicans passed the first Civil Rights Act, in 1866 A source of pride for all Republicans today "...And now, the question that should...

Grand Old Partisan salutes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, established on this day in 1912 by seven hundred delegates from across the nation. In a message to Congress four month earlier, President William Howard Taft (R-OH) had called for a...

UPDATES APRIL 26, 25, AND 24! Andy McCarthy writes April 26 (NRO) – “The Pentagon has just piled on with various federal law enforcement agencies in the rush to conduct a review of training materials with an eye toward purging anything the Muslim Brotherhood might find offensive — like the insane notion that jihad might have something to do with Islam, or the crazy idea that, just because the Justice Department proved the Brotherhood has admitted to having a mission (a “Grand Jihad“) to destroy the United States, the Brotherhood might, like, actually be on a mission to destroy the United States. All the more reason to watch GBTV’s “Rumors of War III”. I was glad to be part of it, and I just got back from a quick trip to Dallas to watch the unveiling … and then talk about it on Glenn’s show along with a couple of terrific friends — General Jerry Boykin and Diana West — who also appeared in it. More details here. Well worth your time to watch the documentary … and to give GBTV a shot.” Listen here to “Know Thy Enemy” with experts Fred Grandy; Lt. Gen. Harry “Ed” Soyster (Ret.), former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; and former Federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy. Individual sections of the ten-part video on the Muslim Brotherhood can be viewed here.

* * * * * * * * * *

Muslim Brotherhood: 10-Part Video To Detail Their Threat To U.S.

Tomorrow morning April 24 at the National Press Club (NPC), Frank Gaffney will unveil his video “Course in Ten Parts” on the Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.

Click here for the video introduction to the 10-part course.

Former Reagan defense appointee Gaffney is now chief of the Center for Security Policy.

The Center asked today in their “Losing the Jihadists’ War on America Frank Gaffney, Top Intelligence Professionals Reveal Who is Responsible — and Why”  –

“Why, despite more than ten years of efforts – involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well-over a trillion dollars spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Islamist activists – are we no closer to victory in the so-called ‘war on terror’ than we were on 9/11?

In fact, such a prospect is becoming more remote by the day–and no one seems able to explain the reason why. (Bolding in original.)

The missing answer will be revealed tomorrow at the National Press Club at 9:30 a.m. with the unveiling of a new web-based, ten-part video course called ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within,’ presented by Mr. Gaffney.” (Highlighting Forum’s.)

The Center declared the NPC event will be “live-streamed at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com.”

Conservatives should find this painstakingly prepared and in-depth video series invaluable for grass-roots gatherings, and for bringing politicians on both the national, and state and local levels to a more alert mind on Islamist threats and ways to cope with them.

Stay tuned for links to the video course.

“… [Y]ears of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism.” – Zorro (via Mark Steyn and Stanley Kurtz)

One gritty fighter against this indoctrination-under-the-guise-of-education trend is Mary Grabar who offers “intellectual ammunition for dissidents of the anti-Western, anti-American academic regime” and rightly styles herself “Editor and Organizer of the Resistance.”

More on writer Grabar here.

Yesterday we were catching up on Graber’s latest report from Georgia, which included a brief post from National Association of Scholars’ Ashley Thorne who explained –

“NAS member and contributor Mary Grabar, whose nom de blog is ‘Dissident Prof,’ has posted two videos on her website that give a window into the academic-credit-for-activism culture in contemporary higher education.

The first video is of a teach-in held on February 4. The first 40 seconds of the video shows Jennifer Esposito, a professor at Georgia State University pledging to give extra credit to students in her ‘Race, Class, and Gender in Education’ course if they bring in handwritten letters to legislators opposing certain immigration reform bills (HB 87 in Georgia and HB 59 in Arizona).”

National Association for Multicultural Education—Georgia Chapter

Investigator Grabar then pointed out (scroll down) –

“The Georgia Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education [NAME] is working to prevent students from forming their own opinions before college by sponsoring speakers on the topic of ‘Teaching in a Diverse World’ and by linking to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance site that highlights a teacher fired for providing her students with ‘authentic learning opportunities’ in the form of writing essays about the Trayvon Martin case and then holding a fundraiser, complete with hoodie-clad students.  Dissident Prof wonders if any student essays in support of due process would get good grades from this teacher, though.”

Well, we asked ourselves yesterday, what is the Maryland chapter of this fine group of NAME constitutionalists contributing to improving history and civics learning in the Old Line State?

Here is what we found.

Carroll County Schools Host NAME Meeting Next Saturday

A Carroll County school system flyer here announces

“Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education

2012 Annual Statewide Multicultural Education Conference

Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hosted by: Carroll County Public School System April 28, 2012

Winters Mill High School, 560 Gorsuch Road, Westminster, Maryland 21157”

We are always delighted that Maryland’s own Michelle Shearer, 2011 national teacher of the year, carries her message of accomplishment to this and many other conferences as keynote speaker.

But one fears to imagine what the conference theme “Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled” has in store for the Republic.

A taste of what to expect at the Westminster, Maryland  April 28 conference? 

EdChange here declares they will be there.  Their website urges –

“Check out the Introduction to the new book, Assault on Kids: How Hyper-Accountability, Corporatization, Deficit Ideologies, and Ruby Payne Are Destroying Our Schools, by Roberta Ahlquist, Paul C. Gorski, and Theresa Montaño (Eds.).

Read Complicating White Privilege: Race, Poverty, and the Nature of the Knapsack, Paul’s short essay on limitations in the popular ‘white privilege’ discourse, recently published by the Web site, Counterpunch.”

Conservative readers will be thrilled to learn the public, political positions here of the Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter’s parent organization NAME.

• A sample — their position paper here on “undocumented immigrants.”

• Another — their paper here on “NAME Statement of Solidarity with OccupyChicago and the Global Occupy Movement.”

NAME and its Maryland chapter have every right to propagate their views.

They have no right to do so on taxpayer money.

They have no entitlement to the imprimatur of a public school system suggesting that the Maryland NAME chapter is merely a professional association dedicated purely to advancing the art of  teaching as it has been understood throughout the Western tradition.

The parent National Association for Multicultural Education is clearly a left-wing advocacy organization.

Consequently we — and we are sure many readers – will want to know how much Maryland and local taxpayer money supports not just this April 28 political organization’s statewide meeting — but also supports its other Maryland activities throughout the year by providing facilities, or bankrolling any honoraria, travel, and teacher dues.

Grand Old Partisan salutes Herbert Choy, the first Asian-American federal judge, appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Richard Nixon. He took his oath of office on this day in 1971. Born in Hawaii, Choy had been the...

Today, Human Events published one of my articles: "Thanks to Republicans beginning to appreciate the heritage of our Grand Old Party, it has become better known that Republicans in Congress supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act much more than did...

Annapolis – House Republicans today shed light on what many have called the “Doomsday Budget” that passed last week in the final hours of the 2012 Legislative Session.

“For all the hand wringing and wailing that we’re seeing in the media, the bottom line is spending in this budget increases by nearly $700 million over last year” said House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell. “It was not a budget that we would have crafted, but it is does not demand a Special Session.”

According to the Department of Legislative Services, even with the cuts included in the “Doomsday Budget”, total state spending still increases by nearly $700 million over last year. Total state spending in FY 2012 was $34.7 billion, in FY 2013 total spending increased to $35.4 billion.

“When you look at the numbers it seems that ‘doomsday’ is certainly in the eye of the beholder,” said Delegate Kelly Schulz. “While cuts to education have been making headlines, the reality is they’re basically level-funded in FY 2013, and still receiving more than FY 2012.  While interest groups like MSEA are making hysterical cries for a Special Session to increase taxes, we think after years of record education funding, the taxpayers deserve a break.”

“Our caucus offered a well thought-out plan that reduced the budget and avoided tax increases but it was solidly rejected on party lines”, said House Minority Whip Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio. “Now we have the Democratic majority’s budget that was haphazardly crafted as a coercion tool for tax hikes – it was a bluff to force their more reluctant members to vote for tax increases. This scheme backfired and now they want a do-over.”

In fact, a special session could be quite a costly “do-over” for taxpayers. When the legislature convened for a tax-raising special session in 2007, it cost taxpayers over $20,000 per day and lasted several weeks.

“With today being the Tax Day deadline, it is important to keep in mind that nearly $3 billion in new and increased taxes proposed in the 2012 Session, said Delegate Mark Fisher. “While polling showed that 96% of Marylanders felt they paid enough taxes, Governor O’Malley and the Democratic majority were still positioning themselves to take more. The fact that Maryland’s taxpayers made it through the session with very few of those taxes passing borderlines on miraculous.”

“Even in the final days of the 2012 Session Governor O’Malley was still pushing for a gas tax increase and even floated the idea of another sales tax increase, said Delegate Haddaway-Riccio.  “This ‘Doomsday Budget’ is a contrived crisis to give them another bite at the tax apple. We do not need a special session that allows the tax-hungry General Assembly to make another grab for Marylander’s wallets.”

####

“In sum, it appears to me an innocent man has been railroaded by the press and the race baiters, aided by an unethical, irresponsible special prosecutor and a racialist President and Attorney General.  I haven’t seen a shred of credible evidence to the contrary. Nothing good can come of this.” – Clarice Feldman

Clarice Feldman first came to this author’s attention around 1969 when she in her words —

“represented  Joseph A. Yablonski (‘Jock Yablonski’) in his bid for the presidency of the Union in the late 1960′s  and his successor Miners for Democracy, the reform group which took over after he, his wife and daughter were murdered by thugs in the pay of then Union President Tony Boyle.”

Here is a link to that lamentable episode in the history of American labor.

Last Sunday Clarice Feldman weighed in (American Thinker) on the Martin-Zimmerman matter with her ‘A Struggle Ensued’: Lynch Mob Justice In Florida –

“It doesn’t take a great deal of insight to see how the killing of Trayvon Martin, whom the media almost uniformly inaccurately presented as a younger, much smaller child  (sans his tattoos and gold teeth grill) than he was when killed and smaller than George Zimmerman, was the vehicle for another stab at a national race war. Sometime earlier Zimmerman had taken actions to protest that very Police Department’s failure to act when the son of a Sanford police officer had beaten a homeless black man. Others stepped forward to credibly establish he had no racial animus towards blacks whatsoever.

To keep fanning the flames, the media invented a new ethnic/racial category ‘white Hispanic’.  (A Hispanic-Black fight and murder apparently was unacceptable to the story line they wanted.) Despite CNN’s effort to claim to the contrary and the outrageous doctoring of the transcripts of the 911 call transcripts to support such claims, nothing in Zimmerman’s 911 calls preceding the incident indicated he was stalking Martin with an intent to harm him, nor that his suspicions were aroused by anything except Trayvon’s own behavior on that night at the Twin Lakes housing complex, where there had been 18 crimes in the prior year and where Zimmerman served as a volunteer Community Watch captain.”

Readers are encouraged to consider the entire Feldman post.

Grand Old Partisan wishes Ann Romney a Happy Birthday. She was born 63 years ago in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. See www.grandoldpartisan.com for information about the heritage of the Republican Party.

Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. He is also the author...

Andrew McCarthy here and here and Steve Emerson here and here spell out the details of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) visit from Egypt last week which gained that hostile organization $1.5 billion in American taxpayer dollars.

Former Federal prosecutor McCarthy revealed –

“In October 2010, on the eve of the Islamic revolution that the media fancies as ‘the Arab Spring,’ the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood called for jihad against the United States.

You might think that this all but unnoticed bombshell would be of some importance to policymakers in Washington. It was not. It is not. This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) luminary as president.

It is not easy to find the announcement. With the legacy media having joined the Obama reelection campaign, we must turn for such news to outlets like the Kuwait News Agency. There, we learn that, having dug our nation into a $16 trillion debt hole, President Obama has nevertheless decided to borrow more money from unfriendly powers like China so he can give it to an outfit that views the United States as an enemy to be destroyed.”

Last Monday Investigative Project on Terrorism chief Steve Emerson explained–

“They represent the new political power in Cairo, and given their performances in public events in Washington last week, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party has the art of doublespeak nailed.

At two events, four FJP members spoke about dialogue and respect for the West, in comments often at odds with the party line in their home country. They sidestepped controversial issues and tailored their message of dialogue to exclude the party’s extreme positions during an appearance Wednesday at Georgetown University and Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

They stuck to that theme despite aggressive questions which came mostly from Egyptian secularists.

‘We are here to start building bridges with the United States,’ said Sondos Asem, the senior editor of the Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb.com and the editor of the group’s Twitter account. She spoke about the FJP’s embrace of ‘Freedom, Human Dignity, Justice, and Democracy,’ as well as her own experiences of being considered a security risk under the Mubarak regime.

But the website she edits, Ikhwanonline.com, has previously burned those bridges with hateful and anti-Western rhetoric. In a statement condemning Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of American special forces, an article published by Ikhwanonline condoned attacks on foreign forces occupying Muslim lands, including American troops. The article states, ‘so long as occupation remains resistance is legitimate and it [the Muslim Brotherhood] calls on the United States, NATO and the EU to end the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.’

Other articles on her website hail violence and terrorism. One celebrates the life and death of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, while another claims that America actually creates terrorist states to have reasons to invade the Muslim world.”

The Grandys Sound The Brotherhood Alarm on Talk1200

Sounding the alarm (audio) this morning about the special exemptions from U.S. border inspection given to the MB delegation, however, were Fred Grandy and Mrs. Fred on Talk1200 .

Mrs. Fred asks –

“Where is the outrage in our country”?

Fred Grandy warns listeners about another group in the panoply of creeping shariah: the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.

Translating Jihad’s post “Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America Cautions Muslims Against Participating in American Legal System; Urges Them to ‘Hate It in Their Hearts’” points out –

“It is important to note that AMJA–whose stated purpose is to ‘clarify the rulings of the sharia which are relevant for those who live in America’–is not just a fringe organization with no influence. The Islamic scholars involved with this group occupy influential positions in universities, Islamic centers, and mosques throughout the United States.”

Readers may wish to see the lists of these Islamic scholars at their various academic and Islamic locations in the U.S. here, and here (Andrew Bostom).

In an ironic development, Islamist-friendly Grover Norquist will be a guest host on WMAL, the Grandys’ old radio station, tomorrow here (scroll to bottom) on WMAL’s Morning on the Mall show.

Last year Fred Grandy and his wife Catherine Mann, aka Mrs. Fred, left their morning show on WMAL.

She declared in “The muzzling of Mrs. Fred” (Daily Caller) –

“So Mrs. Fred Friday began to change. Now, instead of railing against cyclists on Old Georgetown Road, Fred and I were slowly connecting the dots between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that body of 57 Islamic states (Palestinian Authority included) that has since 1993 openly claimed in the UN that human rights policy must be subservient to Sharia law.

For our efforts, Fred and I were sometimes called racists and Islamophobes, but our audience loved our shows. Calls and emails would pour in during and after these reports wanting to learn more about the slow but steady progress of civilization jihad. Why wasn’t Nidal Hassan stopped before he murdered fourteen people at Fort Hood? Why is he still not referred to as an Islamic extremist in the official DOD report on the shootings?

The demand for more information eventually culminated two weeks ago in a large public forum on Capitol Hill co-hosted by the radio station, the Heritage Foundation, The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Westminster Institute. Fred fielded a panel of experts on domestic terrorism who packed the house and left the audience wanting more.

Nevertheless, just a few days after the event, Fred was told to tone down the jihadist talk and make sure I did the same. I didn’t. In my February 25th report on how Christians had been arrested in Dearborn, Michigan, for simply talking about their religion to Muslims, I said something that outraged our management and was dismissed.

I’m not sure exactly what I said that they objected to, but if I had to guess, I’d guess it was how I concluded the show: ‘If I don’t return next Friday to continue this discussion, you’ll know that CAIR has successfully put pressure on WMAL — and the radical Muslims have won.’”

Mrs. Fred asked today about the Obama Administration’s pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood: “Where is the outrage?”

Readers might want to ask their conservative friends in the House and Senate: “Where is your outrage?”