Tag: OSCE

Liberals Upset Over Trump Hiring Election Observers. Meanwhile, the UN is Sending 500.

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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The Trump campaign website posted a message on Friday, August 12th, that read,

Volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer. Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election! Please fill out this form to receive more information about becoming a volunteer Trump Election Observer.

The “Smartest People in the Room” immediately threw a hissy fit, which continues to this day.

Jon Grinspan, a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has written an op-ed for The New York Times, which posted this morning. In it he writes…

…Measures like the Voting Rights Act ushered in a more equitable, peaceful era in American elections. In the 21st century, though, we seem willing to cast off the restraints that society designed to clean up politics over the last century — a trend into which private, partisan election observers fit perfectly.

To be fair, it doesn’t automatically follow that such observers will return Election Day to its violent, chaotic past — they could even enliven our polling places, which since have become colorless affairs, far from the public gatherings of the mid-19th century. Maybe we should all be observing our elections.

America has reached a critical moment of re-evaluation of our democracy — new ideas are welcome. But we are working within a very old and well-documented political system, and have plenty of experience with democratic innovations. So we might occasionally pause to look back at what worked, and what didn’t. We tried election observers. There’s a reason we left them in the past.

There is nothing more embarrassing that someone who considers themselves to be one of “The Smartest People in the Room” who is woefully uniformed.

CNSNews.com reports that

When Americans went to the polls four years ago, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) deployed 44 observers, a quarter of whom came from countries deemed by a leading democracy watchdog to be “not free” or “partly free.”

This year, the OSCE plans to send more than ten times that number – and some civil rights groups in the U.S. say even that won’t be enough.

Following a “needs assessment” visit earlier this year, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) decided to send 100 long-term and 400 short-term observers to monitor the November 8 election. The former will follow the electoral process across the nation while the latter will monitor Election Day itself.

The nationalities of those who will be deployed have yet to be announced. Queries sent to ODIHR headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, brought no response by press time.

In 2012, the much smaller team included members from OSCE members Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, all at the time ranked “not free” by Freedom House.

Others came from six countries graded “not free” – Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine.

(Washington-based Freedom House each year evaluates political rights and civil liberties in the nations of the world, and then ranks them as “free,” “not free” or “partly free.” Since 2012 it has upgraded Kyrgyzstan from “not free” to “partly free.”)

The significantly larger observer group to be sent this time reflects the fact that the OSCE believes this year’s election requires a “full-scale” election observation mission, while in 2012 it felt that a “limited” election observation mission was sufficient.

OSCE explains that a full-scale mission is sent in cases where “there is limited confidence among election stakeholders in the election administration, the long-term process and election-day proceedings and … the presence of observers could enhance public trust in the process.”

By contrast, a limited mission is sent when it’s determined “that serious and widespread problems on election day at the polling-station level are unlikely, but that observation of the entire long-term process throughout the country might still produce useful recommendations.”

For a coalition of U.S. civil rights groups, the difference between 2012 and 2016 has to do with the Trump campaign; and with the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). The ruling paved the way for states with a history of racial discrimination to change their election laws without “preclearance” from the Justice Department.

While supporters of voting laws passed in some states since the Supreme Court decision argue that they are needed to counter electoral fraud, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights describes the developments as “a tidal wave of voter discrimination efforts.”

On Tuesday the Leadership Conference released a letter sent to OSCE/ODIHR director Michael Georg Link, urging him to “greatly expand” the monitoring of the U.S. election and to “target resources to states where voter discrimination and intimidation is most likely.”

Those states, it said, include Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.

The coalition pointed to the VRA changes, and to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.

“A confluence of factors has made the right to vote more vulnerable to racial discrimination than at any time in recent history,” it told Link, a German politician who has headed the ODIHR since 2014. “The need for additional election observers is paramount.”

“The unprecedented weakening of the Voting Rights Act has led to a tidal wave of voter discrimination efforts nationwide and has required the United States to drastically scale back its own election monitoring program,” the letter continued, referring to federal observers used in past elections.

“In addition, a leading presidential candidate who has made the demonization of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities a hallmark of his campaign has recently urged supporters to challenge voters at polling sites nationwide.”

Leadership Conference president and CEO Wade Henderson said in a statement the right to vote in the U.S. “is more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 50 years.”

“Additional monitors can never replace what we lost when the VRA was gutted but we have to use every possible means to ensure the integrity of this election isn’t compromised by racial discrimination and intimidation,” he said.

“We now have to fight in the courts and at ballot box for every voter and even our nation’s best and most well-organized efforts will not meet the demand we’re confronted with.”

“Congress needs to restore the VRA immediately,” Henderson added.

When the OSCE/ODIHR carried out its “needs assessment” visit earlier this year it held meetings with representatives of federal and state institutions, political parties, media, and civil society groups.

It said these interlocutors had mostly expressed confidence in the election administration.

OSCE/ODIHR did, however, cite issues including the “implementation of new state laws regarding voter registration and identification, changes to alternative voting methods, the reliability of NVT [new voting technologies], the effectiveness of campaign finance rules, and the conduct of the electoral campaign, particularly in the media.”

The OSCE has observed U.S. elections since 2002.

However, Petulant President Pantywaist ramped the United Nations’ Involvement up a bit during the 2012 Presidential Election.

And, now, once again, Obama is bowing before the United Nations, as if they have some authority over our Sovereign Nation, without whom, they would no exist nor have a place to meet.

There are several times, during my musings, that I have described our blessed country as a Sovereign Nation. What does that mean?

On June 5, 2009, Professor Jeremy Rabin of George Mason University, author of “The Case for Sovereignty”, delivered a lecture sponsored by Hillsdale College in Washington, DC. What he said certainly applies to this situation…

The Constitution provides for treaties, and even specifies that treaties will be “the supreme Law of the Land”; that is, that they will be binding on the states. But from 1787 on, it has been recognized that for a treaty to be valid, it must be consistent with the Constitution—that the Constitution is a higher authority than treaties. And what is it that allows us to judge whether a treaty is consistent with the Constitution? Alexander Hamilton explained this in a pamphlet early on: “A treaty cannot change the frame of the government.” And he gave a very logical reason: It is the Constitution that authorizes us to make treaties. If a treaty violates the Constitution, it would be like an agent betraying his principal or authority. And as I said, there has been a consensus on this in the past that few ever questioned.

…At the end of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton writes: “A nation, without a national government, is, in my view, an awful spectacle.” His point was that if you do not have a national government, you can’t expect to remain a nation. If we are really open to the idea of allowing more and more of our policy to be made for us at international gatherings, the U.S. government not only has less capacity, it has less moral authority. And if it has less moral authority, it has more difficulty saying to immigrants and the children of immigrants that we’re all Americans. What is left, really, to being an American if we are all simply part of some abstract humanity? People who expect to retain the benefits of sovereignty—benefits like defense and protection of rights—without constitutional discipline, or without retaining responsibility for their own legal system, are really putting all their faith in words or in the idea that as long as we say nice things about humanity, everyone will feel better and we’ll all be safe. You could even say they are hanging a lot on incantations or on some kind of witchcraft. And as I mentioned earlier, the first theorist to write about sovereignty understood witchcraft as a fundamental threat to lawful authority and so finally to liberty and property and all the other rights of individuals.

Let me inform any idiotic individuals who might support Obama’s pattern, as seen during his ongoing crusade to take away our guns and his recent Iran Deal, where he continuously goes to the United Nations as the Supreme Authority over our Sovereign Nation, first, instead of our own Congress, the way I feel about “answering” to the United Nations.

The United States of America is a Sovereign Nation, created by the blood, sweat, and tears of men and women, who rise above those of you, including President Obama, who do not believe in American Exceptionalism and our Sovereignty as a Free Nation, in stature, honor, integrity, and courage to the point where you are not even fit enough to tie their boots.

We are an “independent state”, completely independent and self-governing. We bow to no other country on God’s green Earth. We are beholden to no other nation. America stands on its own, with our own set of laws, the most important of which is The Constitution of the United States, which guarantees us, as a Free People, the right to cast our vote from whomever we please…including Donald J. Trump.

And, much to the esteemed professor’s chagrin, as American Citizens, we have the right to monitor our own elections.

America is still the Greatest Nation on the Face of the Earth, despite all of President Barack Hussein’s efforts to make us “just another country”.

Because, usually, those who claim to be the smartest person in any room that they walk into, greatly overestimate themselves.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Texas AG Tells OSCE, “Not in OUR Polling Places, You Don’t!”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

One of our State Attorney Generals has told the OSCE from the United Nations that they’re going to have to wait outside, while Americans vote.

Thehill.com has the story:

Texas authorities have threatened to arrest international election observers, prompting a furious response from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

“The threat of criminal sanctions against [international] observers is unacceptable,” Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said in a statement. “The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

Lawmakers from the group of 56 European and Central Asian nations have been observing U.S. elections since 2002, without incident. Their presence has become a flashpoint this year, however, as Republicans accuse Democrats of voter fraud while Democrats counter that GOP-inspired voter ID laws aim to disenfranchise minority voters.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott further fueled the controversy on Tuesday when he sent a letter to the OSCE warning the organization that its representatives “are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place” and that it “may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance.”

The letter goes on to accuse the group of having met with liberal organizations that oppose Voter ID laws. The OSCE put out an interim report last week saying that “recent state-level legislative initiatives to limit early voting and introduce stricter voter identification have become highly polarized.”

“The OSCE may be entitled to its opinions about Voter ID laws, but your opinion is legally irrelevant in the United States, where the Supreme Court has already determined that Voter ID laws are constitutional,” Abbott wrote. “If OSCE members want to learn more about our election processes so they can improve their own democratic systems, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the measures Texas has implemented to protect the integrity of elections. However, groups and individuals from outside the United States are not allowed to influence or interfere with the election process in Texas.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) also weighed in, tweeting “No UN monitors/inspectors will be part of any TX election process; I commend @Txsecofstate for swift action to clarify issue.”

In letters to Abbott and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose State Department invited the 44 election observers, Lenarčič reiterated that the group is only there to observe the elections.

“Our observers are required to remain strictly impartial and not to intervene in the voting process in any way,” Lenarčič said in a statement. “They are in the United States to observe these elections, not to interfere in them.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sought to tone down the controversy during her briefing Thursday. The department is eager to avoid giving the impression that the United States is unwilling to submit to the same scrutiny it demands of others when it comes to human and civil rights.

“Since the initial issue with Texas we’ve received a letter, both for Secretary Clinton and one for Texas authorities, from the OSCE assuring us and Texas authorities that the OSCE observers are committed to following all U.S. laws and regulations as they do in any country where they observe elections and they will do so as well in Texas,” Nuland said. “To my knowledge [Texas] is the only state that came forward and said ‘please reassure us that you’re going to follow our state electoral law.’ And they have now been reassured.

As I wrote in my post last Sunday, “UN Representatives to Monitor OUR Presidential Election”:

Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was picked to represent the United States government at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) annual 10-day human rights conference, the Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM).

The fact that our soon-to-be former president (Please, God) selected a Jihadist to represent OUR country should give you a clue as to the nature of this UN Committee.

I’m sure you’re asking by now, “How did this mess start in the first place?”

Start the Wayback Machine, Sherman. We’re traveling to 2004…

The foreign observers set to monitor the U.S. presidential election for the first time ever this November said the election of a Florida Democrat as president of the group’s parliamentary assembly would not taint the group’s objectivity.

On July 9, U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings – criticized by conservatives for his ethics and partisanship – was elected president of the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly, a position that will allow him to appoint and assign OSCE’s election monitors.

Although the OSCE members present at the press conference insisted that Hastings would not be involved in observing the election on November 2, at least one member did concede that Hastings has influenced the process by playing a role in the selection of OSCE Vice President Barbara Haering, a Swiss parliamentarian who will lead the observer operations on Election Day.

Olszewski told CNSNews.com that the appointment of Haering means that Hastings will stay separate from the actual observation process.

But Peyton Knight, executive director of the conservative American Policy Center (APC) dismissed what he said were the OSCE’s and Hastings’ attempts to distance themselves from each other.

“That is quite a different tune that [Hastings] was playing two months ago,” Knight told CNSNews.com.

“As the parliamentary president, Hastings often declared that he would get to pick the observers that would be observing this election,” Knight said.

In August, the APC objected to Hastings’ role with the OSCE, partly because of his questionable ethics. Hastings was impeached in a bribery and perjury scandal when he was a federal judge.

Hastings became Florida’s first African-American U.S. District Court judge in 1979, nominated by then President Jimmy Carter. But nine years later, the U.S. House impeached Hastings for taking bribes from the federal bench and for perjury. The U.S. Senate subsequently convicted Hastings on the charges and removed him from office.

Hastings in 1992 ran for the Florida’s predominantly black 23rd district in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he still serves.

According to APC, which refers to Hastings as a “disgraced federal judge,” Hastings’ comments about the Bush administration, including a comment that the president’s re-election team would “try to steal this election,” jeopardize his impartiality.

Hastings also is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group still smarting over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to stop Florida’s presidential ballot recount in 2000. The ruling effectively gave the election to George W. Bush.

…Knight said the APC’s objections to OSCE go beyond Hastings’ affiliation with the group.

“The OSCE is totally biased,” Knight said. He noted that OSCE observers are in the U.S. “at the behest of the most leftist Congress member on Capitol Hill, and that is who they are going to get their marching orders from.” Knight was referring to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others.

“The OSCE monitoring of our elections is an insult to America and that is exactly what the few Democrats and internationalists in Congress want it to be – an insult. That was the goal,” Knight said.

“The other goal was to give false credence to claims that Republicans stole the election in 2000,” he added.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was right in barring these “impartial observers” from entering OUR polling places.

The manner in which we exercise our right to vote, and, whom we vote for, is none of their business.

However, I do have a newsflash for the UN:

I do not think they are going to like the outcome of OUR  2012 Presidential Election.

Sho’ ’nuff hate it for ’em.

The 3rd Presidential Debate: The Petulant President Vs. the Grown-Up Contender

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Going into last night’s debate, all you heard from the MSM, and all the Obama sycophants (but, I repeat myself) was that Obama was just cotton-picking brilliant in the area of Foreign Policy

Of course, I’m sure that Ambassador Chris Stevens would have a different opinion.

Foxnews.com describes the opening of the debate:

Mitt Romney ripped President Obama’s foreign policy at the start of Monday night’s debate, claiming the president’s strategy has not quelled the Al Qaeda threat.

“It’s certainly not on the run. It’s certainly not in hiding,” Romney said. “This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries.”

Obama, though, countered that “Al Qaeda’s core leadership has been decimated.”

And he sought to portray Romney as someone who would be an unsteady leader on the world stage. He accused Romney of having a strategy that is “all over the map.”

Obama was tough on Romney from the outset, accusing him of having poor judgment and antiquated views on the world stage.

“I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda,” Obama said. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

Obama went on to say that, on foreign policy, “every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”

Romney fired back, “attacking me is not an agenda.” He accused Obama of looking at countries like Russia through “rose-colored glasses.”

Per businessweek.com:

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney accused each other of failing to have clear foreign policy visions as the two met for their third and final debate.

“I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy, but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong,” Obama said tonight at the faceoff in Boca Raton, Florida. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has put forth strategies that are “all over the map,” Obama said.

Romney began the debate by criticizing Obama for what he described as growing threats in Syria, Libya, Mali, Egypt and Iran. While he congratulated Obama for the raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, he said, “we must have a comprehensive strategy” to reject extremism.

“We can’t kill our way out of this mess,” Romney said. Later, he said, “nowhere in the world is America’s influence in the world greater than it was four years ago.”

Obama stressed his commander-in-chief credentials while trying to paint Romney as out of his depth. He criticized Romney for once saying Russia was the biggest geopolitical foe facing the U.S.

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Obama said.

Later, Obama told Romney that a complaint he frequently makes on the campaign trail about lower U.S. navy ship levels was misplaced because the military has changed.

“We also have fewer horses and bayonets” than in the past because of differing national security demands, Obama said.

And that’s the way the evening went.

Mitt was acting mature and presidential, and Obama was petulant and rambling like a six year-old, who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

As I alluded to earlier, if you look at all the usual suspects this morning, CBS, NBC, ABC, Huffington Post, USA Today, et al, you would think that President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) was absolutely brilliant.

If he is, then, so was Neville Chamberlain.

Investigativeproject.org reports:

A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.

Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.

The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors’ names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:

Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;

Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;

Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a “war against Islam”— a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;

Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.

Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) visited the White House at least 20 times starting in 2009. In 2008, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering case in U.S. history – the trial of the Holy Land Foundation in which five HLF officials were convicted of funneling money to Hamas.

U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis later ruled that, “The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the association” of CAIR to Hamas, upholding their designations as unindicted co-conspirators. In 2008, the FBI formally ended all contact with CAIR because of its ties to Hamas.

As I reported Sunday, Obama appointed a Jihadist to the OCSE, the UN Committee, who has been invited by someone (with no sense whatsoever) to monitor our National Election on November 6th. To remind you,

Salam Al-Marayati is the founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Los Angeles-based Islamic advocacy group that defends Muslim extremist violence. MPAC has condemned the anti-terrorism measures of both the U.S. and Israel, and has called for a repeal of the Patriot Act.

This is Smart Power?

Obama’s Domestic and Foreign Policies both stink on ice. We cannot afford 4 more years of the Manchurian President. 

I know how I’m going to vote on November 6th. How about you?

UN Representatives to Monitor OUR Presidential Election

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

A group from the UN, whose representative from the US, appointed by President Obama, is a jihadist, will be at the polls, monitoring our Presidential Election.

Thehill.com reports

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers around the county on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places.

Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

The request for foreign monitoring of election sites drew a strong rebuke from Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True the Vote, a conservative-leaning group seeking to crack down on election fraud.

“These activist groups sought assistance not from American sources, but from the United Nations,” she said in a statement to The Hill. “The United Nations has no jurisdiction over American elections.”

The observers, from countries such as Germany, France, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, will observe voting at polling places and other political activity.

“They [will] observe the overall election process, not just the ballot casting,” said Giovanna Maiola, spokeswoman for OSCE. “They are focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing [and] new voting technologies used in the different states.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Maiola noted that it is a limited election-observation mission. She said “the OSCE has regularly been invited to observe elections in the United States, in line with OSCE commitments.”

Access of international observers during voting is explicitly allowed in some states such as Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Mexico.

“State law does not generally provide for international observers,” Maiola said. “However, through our contacts at state and county level in certain states, we managed to secure invitations at local level and we have taken up the offer to observe. Where this is not possible, we will respect the state regulation on this matter and will not observe in precincts on Election Day.”

International observers will follow up on the concerns raised by civil rights groups.

“We attended their meeting, we took note of the issued they raised and we asked our observers in the field to follow up on them,” said Maiola.

Per the OSCE Handbook:

Election observation enhances accountability and transparency, thereby boosting both domestic and international confidence in the process. The mere presence of international observers alone, however, should not be viewed as adding legitimacy or credibility to an election process. Although the presence of observers may indicate that the process merits observation, it is the observers’ conclusions about the process, based on the ODIHR’s methodology, that will form the ODIHR’s opinion on the election.

Through my anger, I researched the OSCE further, because somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind,  the name rang a bell.  I soon discovered why:

Jewish leaders expressed outrage Friday over the State Department’s praise for, and defense of, a controversial Muslim leader who has defended terrorist groups and suggested that Israel may have been responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was picked to represent the United States government at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) annual 10-day human rights conference, the Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM).

Al-Marayati’s well-known anti-Israel bona fides prompted Jewish leaders and others to express outrage over the Obama administration’s selection.

“It is regrettable that someone with such distorted, conspiratorial views—even with a lackluster apology—is delegated by our government to represent our country abroad,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to the Free Beacon.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, argued that the State Department is showing inconsistency by touting an individual who has defended the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which are designated by the U.S. as terrorist organizations.

“One would assume that individuals selected to represent the United States at an international human rights conclave would share our government’s longstanding policy that Hamas and Hezbollah are dangerous terrorist organizations,” Cooper told the Free Beacon. “But Mr. Salam al-Marayati and his organization are long-time advocates that these deadly terror groups be removed from the U.S. terrorist list.”

“With terrorism continuing to roil the Middle East,” Cooper added, “the question is why the U.S. State Department would say he is ‘highly credible’?”

So, who is this guy, whom Obama chose as our country’s representative to this group that is monitoring the most important Presidential Election in our lifetime?

According to discoverthenetworks.org:

Salam Al-Marayati is the founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Los Angeles-based Islamic advocacy group that defends Muslim extremist violence. MPAC has condemned the anti-terrorism measures of both the U.S. and Israel, and has called for a repeal of the Patriot Act.

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Al-Marayati used a Los Angeles talk radio program as a forum in which to accuse the Israelis of responsibility for that morning’s attacks on New York and Washington. Al-Marayati has also called for the U.S. government to unfreeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation, that were shut down by the government because of funding they had given to terrorist organizations.

Al-Marayati refuses to call Hezbollah a terrorist group. “I don’t think any group should be judged 100% this or that,” he says. “I think every group is going to have . . . its claim of liberation and resistance.” He has similarly justified Hamas’ existence as a political entity that promotes social programs and “educational operations.” “Yesterday’s terrorists in the Middle East are today’s leaders,” he says. “The PLO is the number one example of this . . . The PLO 35 years ago was considered a terrorist organization, nobody should deal with them . . . But they became the people in authority, in Palestine, today. So Hamas today, the way it’s being viewed, is exactly how the PLO was viewed 30 years ago. And in fact, even Hamas in terms of its social and educational operations is doing exactly what the PLO was doing 35 years ago, as well as its quote unquote military operations.”

During a 1997 speech he delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, Al-Marayati equated the concept of jihad to the statements of the eighteenth-century American statesman Patrick Henry. Said Al-Marayat, “[T]he person who we think in America would epitomize jihad would be Patrick Henry, who said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ That is a way of looking at the term jihad from an American perspective.”

Excuse me, sir, but, I beg to differ. Patrick Henry was an American Christian Leader, not a supporter of merciless Islamic Terrorism.

And, Americans certainly do not need you, nor the United Nations, involved in our elections. We are a Sovereign Nation. Men like Patrick Henry pledged their lives and sacred honor to give us the right to vote as we see fit.

And, neither you, the OCSE, nor the United Nations, is going to be able to do a darn thing about it.

Very soon, you will be joining your buddy and boss, Barack Hussein Obama, on the Unemployment Line.

We’ll see you on November 6th.