By MARYCLAIRE DALE

Associated Press Writer

A suburban Philadelphia woman “desperate to do something” to help suffering Muslims has been charged with using the Internet to recruit jihadist fighters and help terrorists overseas, even agreeing to move to Europe to try to kill someone, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Authorities said the case shows how terror groups are looking to recruit Americans to carry out their goals.

A federal indictment charges that Colleen R. LaRose, who called herself JihadJane online, agreed to kill a Swedish citizen on orders from the unnamed terrorists and traveled to Europe to carry out the killing. It doesn’t say whether the Swede was killed, but LaRose was not charged with murder.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman wouldn’t confirm the case is related to a group of people arrested in Ireland earlier Tuesday on suspicion of plotting against a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. But a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said LaRose had targeted the Swedish cartoonist and had online discussions about her plans with at least one of the suspects apprehended in Ireland. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The official also said LaRose, who has blond hair and blue eyes, indicated in her online conversations that she believed her appearance would help her move freely in Sweden to carry out the attack.

LaRose is a convert to Islam who actively recruited others, including at least one unidentified American, and her online messages expressed impatience to take action, the official said.

U.S. Attorney Michael Levy said the indictment doesn’t link LaRose, a U.S. citizen who moved to Europe in August 2009, to any organized terror groups.

LaRose, 46, lived in Montgomery County, Pa., before moving to Europe, authorities said. She called herself JihadJane in a YouTube video in which she said she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” ease the suffering of Muslims, the indictment said. According to the 11-page document, she agreed to obtain residency in a European country and marry one of the terrorists to enable him to live there.

“Today’s indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face,” said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.

LaRose also agreed to provide her co-conspirators in Asia and Europe financial and passport help, the indictment charged.

LaRose has been in federal custody since her Oct. 15 arrest in Philadelphia, authorities said. She had an initial court appearance the next day but didn’t enter a plea.

Her federal public defender Mark T. Wilson declined to comment Tuesday.

By Florida Security Council

Muslim Day at the Florida State Capitol is being sponsored by a group called United Voices for America (UVA). The founder and director of UVA is Ahmed Bedier. While there is certainly nothing wrong with anyone petitioning their elected officials, the issue raised by the Florida Security Council (FSC), ACT! For America, Former Muslims United (FMU) and Americans Against Hate (AAHHh) is the need for legislators to know who they are meeting with and understand the UVA’s agenda.

“The purpose of Muslim Day at the Capitol,” says Tom Trento founder of the FSC, “is to deceive lawmakers into believing UVA is a benign civil rights organization, representing disenfranchised minorities and immigrants on such issues as healthcare and education. Since the Council of American Islamic relations (CAIR) was founded by HAMAS (Muslim Brotherhood of Palestine), and UVA was founded by a CAIR operative, this makes UVA the grandchild of a terrorist organization whose only reason for being is to wage a global Jihad against non-Muslims and former Muslims.”
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By Nonie Darwish

“Overwhelmingly, Florida Muslim leaders do not honor freedom to choose one’s beliefs as guaranteed under our First Amendment. That is the only conclusion we can draw from the overwhelming ‘silence’ and non-response to 47 letters containing a Freedom Pledge sent to Florida Muslim leaders by our organization in February 2010,” according to author and human rights activist Nonie Darwish. She is executive director of Former Muslims United (FMU) speaking at the America on Guard briefing to Florida legislators and staff about Muslim Day at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Florida.

Former Muslims United (FMU) is a human- and civil-rights organization whose mission is to protect and defend those who have chosen to leave Islam and face threats to their lives and property under Fatwas or rulings from Muslim clerics and legal authorities both here in the United States and abroad.

Darwish said, “the objective of letters sent by FMU was to request that Florida Muslim community leaders sign a pledge to honor the freedom of former Muslims to choose a personal belief other than Islam. We are dismayed. We call upon the majority of Florida Muslims who consider themselves law abiding citizens of this country to urge their leaders to reconsider their positions and sign the Freedom Pledge.”
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By Steve Rosenblum

There are some important things that need to be said about the “tea party” movement, the grassroots and the Republican Party. In the past 9-12 months, we have witnessed a remarkable, non-violent uprising throughout this nation – a revolution like nothing before seen in our lifetimes. It started last spring when President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress passed the $800 billion so-called “stimulus”, a trillion dollar omnibus spending package, cap and tax legislation and few other massive, unfunded spending bills. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Obama also signed a series of executive orders before setting his sights on the implementation of a socialized healthcare plan that he cleverly attempted to sell to the American people as “healthcare reform”.

All of this took place even as unemployment skyrocketed to over 8% (something the president promised wouldn’t happen if his stimulus was passed). And in response to the passionate outcry of displeasure from the American electorate, expressed via phone calls, faxes, emails and letters to their elected representatives, many members of Congress – along with a complicit media – either blatantly ignored them, or disparaged, maligned and dismissed them as angry racists, unable to get over the fact that a black man was now in the White House.

As the nation’s frustration and anger continued to rise, a CNBC anchor by the name of Rick Santelli went on an on-air rant, clearly articulating what many everyday Americans were feeling as they watched from their living rooms – exasperation at the economic illiteracy of the White House and Congress. Citizens around the country who had never protested anything in their lives got tired of yelling at their televisions and being ignored by those with whom they’d entrusted the responsibility of leadership and representation by and of the people.
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By Helen Kennedy

NY Daily News

Also posted at Right Truth

Pakistani officials claimed Sunday they nabbed Adam Gadahn, the treasonous Californian Al Qaeda leader who has long been on Washington’s most wanted list.

But high-level U.S. officials said they could not verify the report – and there were growing indications it could be a mixup.

President Obama did not mention what would be a welcome blow against terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden when he made a statement to reporters about the Iraqi election yesterday. He ignored a shouted question about Gadahn.

“We are checking with Pakistani authorities to confirm one way or the other,” said FBI spokesman William Carter.

A Pakistani official told Agence France-Presse that “we thought it could have beena big catch, but it appeared it’s not Gadahn.”

The confusing swirl of reports began in Karachi, where The Associated Press and several news outlets quoted Pakistani officials announcing the arrest of Bin Laden’s American mouthpiece.

An English-language paper ran a photo of a man said to be Gadahn being taken away with a bag on his head. Later reports suggested the arrested man might not be Gadahn but a Taliban commander with a similar name.

Gadahn, 31, is the first American to be charged with treason since World War II. If convicted, he would face the death penalty.

Stories about Gadahn’s arrest came just hours after he appeared in a new Internet video urging American Muslims to go on shooting sprees like Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s at Fort Hood, Tex., last year.
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By Jim Kouri

A terrorist’s use of a radiological dispersal device or improvised nuclear device – a/k/a ‘dirty bombs’ – to release radioactive materials into the environment could have devastating consequences.

The timely cleanup of contaminated areas, however, could speed the restoration of normal operations, thus reducing the adverse consequences from an incident. At the request of the U.S. Congress, the Government Accountability Office examined the extent to which federal agencies are planning to fulfill their responsibilities to assist cities and their states in cleaning up areas contaminated with radioactive materials from RDD and IND incidents.

GAO analysts also examined what is known about the federal government’s capability to effectively cleanup areas contaminated with radioactive materials from RDD and IND incidents, and the analysts looked at suggestions from government emergency management officials on ways to improve federal preparedness to provide assistance to recover from RDD and IND incidents.

Analysts also discussed recovery activities in the United Kingdom with that nation’s experts.
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Washington Times Editorial Board

The recent battle in Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand province was a key test case for new rules of engagement that emphasized protecting civilians rather than killing insurgents. The town was taken, but whether that was because of the new rules or despite them remains to be seen.

The rules of engagement are probably the most restrictive ever seen for a war of this nature. NATO forces cannot fire on suspected Taliban fighters unless they are clearly visible, armed and posing a direct threat. Buildings suspected of containing insurgents cannot be targeted unless it is certain that civilians are not also present. Air strikes and night raids are limited, and prisoners have to be released or transferred within four days, making for a 96-hour catch-and-release program.

In Marjah, the enemy quickly adapted to the rules, which led to bizarre circumstances such as Taliban fighters throwing down their weapons when they were out of ammunition and taunting coalition troops with impunity or walking in plain view with women behind them carrying their weapons like caddies. If World War II had been fought with similar rules, the battles would still be raging. Paradoxically, America’s most successful post-conflict reconstructions were in Germany and Japan, where enemy-occupied towns like Marjah were flattened without a second thought.
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BY Steven F. Hayward

The Weekly Standard

Also posted at The Gold Coast Chronicle

It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago – changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress.

Meanwhile, the climate campaign’s fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media – even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC – are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking.

Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying “It is too so!” In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.
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