Free Republic

Move follows two-year sting operation NEW YORK - The FBI arrested a Florida doctor and a New York martial arts expert on federal terrorism charges, saying they conspired to treat and train terrorists, federal prosecutors announced Sunday. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, a Boca Raton physician, and Tarik Shah, a self-described martial arts expert in New York, were both charged in Manhattan federal court with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Both men are American citizens. Prosecutors said Sabir agreed to treat jihadists, or holy warriors, in Saudi...

It is already known that nobody has stepped forward to vouch for witnessing or being connected to Mr. Obama’s birth as alleged to have been in some Hawaiian hospital. And now it appears that nobody seems to while some individuals associated with Columbia University seem to remember their fellow classmate at Columbia University (see the mixed and varied commentary associated with this posting), nobody appears to be able to vouch for his records. The Anti-Mullah blog posted this story last Sunday; I did some further research to find out from whence they pulled much of the verbiage in their posting....

Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him. Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia. Ever! Nobody recalls him. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding." Root adds that he was also, like Obama, "Class of '83 political...

The eye-opener here concerns Obama's first job out of college. In his autobiography, "Dreams from My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as A consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer" In fact he was recruited by Business International Corporation that was continuously being accused of as a CIA front company. Wikipedia, an independent source, supports this, The company has been identified as cover organization for the Central Intelligence Agency, e.g. see Lobster Magazine, and...

Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University

During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know?  The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm...

During the campaign, I wrote a piece called "Why Won't Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won't discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about." So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, "Breaking the War Mentality," that Columbia student Barack Obama wrote for a campus newspaper. The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its...

JOSEPH Massad's schol arly contribution during his decade as a faculty member of Columbia University's Middle East Studies Department may be summed up as follows: Israel is racist, and homosexuality is an insidious Western invention. Yet that was enough for Columbia, which officially -- if quietly -- awarded Massad tenure earlier this month. Columbia's process for reviewing tenure candidates is as rigorous as any Ivy League school's. Ordinarily, an academic of Massad's caliber would be bounced from Morningside Heights. And in fact, the system did work -- it denied Massad tenure two years ago. But now the school's academic standards...

Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981. According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years." Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names...

Michele Moody-Adams, vice provost for undergraduate education at Cornell University, will become Columbia College's next dean, assuming the mantle from Austin Quigley and becoming the first woman and first African American to hold the post. She will begin her tenure on July 1, 2009.

There is a deeply disturbing report that Columbia University has granted tenure to a teacher who used his classroom as a platform for propagating offensive teachings about Jews - and bullied his students to boot. Joseph Massad should have no place on the faculty of a world-class institution of higher learning, let alone a university located in New York. He showed himself to lack the quality of mind and temperament necessary to serve among the Columbia professoriate. Massad is a Jordanian-born Palestinian who teaches in the department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures. That he does not belong...

Should Private Colleges That Raise Billions Receive Public Funds? As state lawmakers crunch budget numbers in New York, some leaders of the State University System are wondering why private institutions with the ability to raise money on their own are still receiving public funds, according to The Buffalo News. Columbia University has received $32-million in state funds, and New York University has collected $50-million, the newspaper reports. Meanwhile, Columbia is in the middle of a $4-billion fund-raising campaign and NYU is raising $2.5-billion in private donations. “At a time when we’re facing budget cuts, is it appropriate?” asked Marsha S....

Most students at Columbia do not have first hand knowledge of war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds through television, film, and print. The more sensitive among us struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves to our parents' wartime memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a Maller[?] or a Coppola. But the taste of war -- the sounds and chill, the dead bodies -- are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are...

Letters         Cool on Global WarmingThe Fall issue of Columbia prompted dozens of letters disputing the cover article’s central premise — that climate scientists agree the earth’s atmosphere is warming because of human activity. Many readers proposed instead that natural factors, such as sunspots or variations in the earth’s orbit, are warming the atmosphere. These factors were addressed in a 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, available online at www.ipcc.ch. To read additional letters from our readers, visit www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine. —Ed. A large part of the American population openly challenges the theory...

If further proof was needed that the field of Middle East studies is marred by a politicized, morally vacuous approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the reaction of many of its leading lights to the current war in Gaza should suffice. According to these self-appointed arbiters of international law, Israel’s military campaign against Hamas following the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilian targets since 2005 is unjustified. Hamas, they tell us, is not a terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction, but rather a national liberation movement that seeks only the noble founding of a Palestinian state. Either that or...

Columbia University said on Wednesday it had uncovered $3 million in losses tied to accused swindler Bernard Madoff, joining other New York universities hit by the purported fraud. Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby confirmed the losses, but declined to provide further details beyond saying that information in a Bloomberg News story on the losses was accurate. Bloomberg reported that the school discovered the losses in a review of its investments. The news service said the money was tied to a 1980 gift to Columbia's law school from an unnamed alumnus who had retained the right to decide how the funds would...

I want to introduce you to a group of faculty members at Columbia University, considered one of the great institutions of higher learning in America, and one of the elite Ivy League. I’ve written many columns on our colleges and universities and how they have become centers of anti-American values and hate-America faculty, along with centers of anti-military, anti-conservative, pro-communist, racist and bigoted approaches. They are often no longer in the business of teaching but now specialize in indoctrination of their own political views. But it occurred to me the message might best be communicated by going to one of...

I finally found a use for the Columbia Journalism Review, a publication of the Columbia University graduate school of journalism. If you want to know what’s wrong with journalism, read that publication of one of the nation’s leading journalism schools for the answer. It won’t tell you what is wrong with journalism. No, by the quality of its product, it shows you what’s wrong with journalism. But that should not surprise you, as Columbia has long been a hotbed of anti-Americanism and loony leftism. You’ll recall it was the institution that invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give an address to the...

"The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM’s energies alive.,,," The highly indicative sentence above comes from an 1800-word article that Barack Obama wrote for Columbia’s weekly news magazine, Sundial, at the height of the KGB-generated anti-nuke craze in March 1983. Obama was twenty-one at the time. The sentence nicely captures Obama’s skill as a writer. The noun, “belief,” and the verb, “keep,” don’t agree—one of an appalling five such noun-verb mismatches in the essay--and the punctuation is fully random. More problematically, the word choice sucks all logic out of the...

Banned conservative speakers, stolen votes, assaults on religious liberty, gay English classes, and forbidden Thanksgiving & Christmas celebrations Political correctness ran amuck in our nation’s school system this past year, and Young America’s Foundation has once again compiled our “best of the worst” academic abuses for 2008. From “free speech zones” to transgendered speakers at military academies, the following list may make you both laugh and cry in the same breath. That probably isn’t too surprising, however, since we are talking about academia after all… 1. The free speech “zone.” A student at Yuba College in California was sent an...

As you know, Barack Obama won't release his college transcripts. He has attended Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. So why won't he release his transcripts? A caller to Larry Elder's show yesterday advanced a theory. He says that it's possible that Obama was caught cheating in one of his classes at one of those schools. Your thoughts?

CHICAGO (AP) - Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind. The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment. One expert said personality disorders may be overdiagnosed. But others said the results were not surprising since previous, less rigorous evidence has suggested mental problems are common...

NEW YORK - (KRT) - The Bronx martial arts expert arrested in an alleged plot to build a secret al-Qaida training camp is a well-known city jazz musician who has backed greats like Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, friends said Tuesday. Tarik Shah, 42, has played bass at local clubs for years, and fellow musicians said they've never heard him espouse an allegiance to Osama bin Laden. "This man talks about music. That's all he talks about," said pianist Donald Smith, 61, who last month played with Shah at St. Nick's Pub in Harlem. "The only thing we know is...

NEW YORK --A Florida doctor was convicted Monday of providing material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, was convicted in federal court in Manhattan after a three-week trial that featured testimony by him and Ali Soufan, an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter in a sting operation that led to four arrests. When the verdict was read, Sabir looked straight ahead. Later, as he was escorted from the courtroom, he waved to supporters, who said, "Stay strong." His lawyer, Ed...

A Jersey City councilman has reportedly been arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington D.C. nightclub.

"Recently" I traveled up to the Campus of Columbia University to do some research on BHO's "missing years" as a student at Columbia College. This is my report (fwiw). I looked through every page of every issue of The Columbia Spectator published during bho's time on campus (Aug1981-Jun1983). No smoking guns. Nothing of any great immediate value BUT some interesting leads for further pursuit and some strange stuff to report... First, what I didn't find is almost as interesting as what I did find... * BHO is never mentioned in the paper during the period * No photographs of BHO...

You might think that Columbia University would be on its best academic behavior on the issue of the Middle East conflict these days. After all, several professors in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, known as MEALAC, are credibly accused of anti-Semitism and intimidating pro-Israel students. The university's president, Lee Bollinger, has appointed a committee to look into the charges. But even with the media spotlight on, Columbia apparently can't help itself. Last Monday night we attended a university panel on the Middle East conflict titled "One State or Two? Alternative Proposals for Middle East Peace." Even the...

Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes will discuss the close relationship between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi - Palestinian supporter and the professor at Columbia University - on a special broadcast of "Hannity's America" which will air tomorrow night at 9:00 PM eastern time. Khalidi is a former professor at the University of Illinois and was a close friend of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. At a farewell dinner for Khalidi before he took the Columbia job, Obama 's speech was filled with glowing praise for his friend, including references to the many meals they had shared. He thanked Khalidi...

JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens. The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it...

This is the sequel to the "do you speak Obama" at Saddleback, this time covering the 10 first minutes of Barack Obama's appearance at the Columbia University forum, on September 11, 2008

Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights. The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing? Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be...

Chelsea Clinton. The former First Daughter is also starting a master's program at Columbia, majoring in public health policy, according to a source.

He Graduated Without Honors. Senator Obama's life story, from his humble roots, to his rise to Harvard Law School, to his passion as a community organizer in Chicago, has been at the center of his presidential campaign. But one chapter of the tale remains a blank — his education at Columbia College, a place he rarely speaks about and where few people seem to remember him. Contributing to the mystery is the fact that nobody knows just how well Mr. Obama... performed as a student. The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript... The Obama campaign declined to...

The latest report on Obama's missing thesis comes from MSNBC. Written his senior year at Columbia University, Obama's thesis was about Soviet nuclear disarmament. It's only natural to wonder what the budding socialist turned presidential candidate thought of nuclear proliferation in the early 1980s. The Obama campaign, proving every bit as secretive as the Office of the Vice President, has been less than forthcoming with details. "Spokesman Ben LaBolt wouldn’t even say whether Sen. Obama threw out his copy or lost it." At an earlier date, an aide actually told the New Republic the junior senator couldn't recall what he...

The Columbia University professor who gained widespread attention last fall after a noose was found hanging on her office door was fired on Monday after months of wrangling over charges that she plagiarized the work of two former students and a former colleague. Madonna G. Constantine, a professor of psychology and education with a focus on racial issues at Columbia’s Teachers College, was sanctioned in February, after an 18-month investigation into the plagiarism charge, but allowed to stay in her job and to appeal the ruling that she had violated the university’s academic standards. But over the last five months,...

Teachers College at Columbia University is suspending indefinitely Madonna Constantine, a professor who claimed she was the victim of a hate crime after an investigation began into allegations that she committed plagiarism. In a letter sent out yesterday to Teachers College faculty, the college president, Susan Fuhrman, and dean, Thomas James, said the faculty advisory committee had rejected Ms. Constantine's appeal of the plagiarism charges. They said Ms. Constantine was suspended as of yesterday but that she is entitled to appeal the decision or request a hearing before the faculty executive committee. RELATED: The Letter to Faculty (pdf). The letter,...

Perhaps you’ve not yet heard of Larry Sinclair, the YouTube star who attests that in 1999 he shared coke, crack, and hot man-on-man action with Barack Obama sometime “between November 3 and November 9 in the Chicago, Illinois area.” As Reason’s David Weigel quipped: “Which night? Eh, one of ‘em.” Of course there’s absolutely nothing to substantiate this D-grade Hustler Letters fantasy knock-off. The only things that Sinclair’s story and the fawning commenters on his blog reveal is that an astonishing number of people are willing to believe just about anything, especially if it slanders a politician they don’t like....

Columbia Clash By BENJAMIN SMITH Smartertimes.com Staff NEW YORK -- A face-off is developing at Columbia University between students and the administration over a "counter-conference" planned by opponents of the World Economic Forum. A key element of the dispute is the students' reluctance to make available a list of participants in their gathering, which, like the conference of business leaders that is usually held at Davos, Switzerland but this year is to be held in New York, begins January 31. The "students, activists, rabble-rousers, and concerned citizens" invited to attend the Columbia conference will join thousands of protesters expected to ...

Mark Goldblatt If you cannot attack a position on "straightforward logical grounds," what grounds remain? Welcome to Columbia U It's rare that squabbling among college professors makes the front page of the New York Times, but such was the case recently with a report on the 14-year civil war within the Columbia University English Department. The battle lines are predictable: traditionalists on one side and a loose amalgam of postmodernists — including postcolonialists, muliculturalists, feminists, and queer theorists — on the other. The fight itself is joined whenever a new faculty position opens up, or whenever a new chairperson is...

Hatfill's lawyers alleged that the three officials who leaked investigative details to the news media were Roscoe C. Howard Jr., who from 2001 to 2004 served as U.S. attorney for District of Columbia; Daniel S. Seikaly, who served as Howard's criminal division chief; and Edwin Cogswell, who formerly served as a spokesman for the FBI. .... U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the lawyers for the government and for Hatfill to seek "mediation" over the next two months. The prospects of a mediated settlement notwithstanding, Walton said he expected a trial could begin in December. Hatfill's lawyers, Grannis and...

Obama Grilled on Ties to Pro-Palestinian Professor by FOXNews.com Thursday, May 22, 2008 A persistent questioner at a campaign stop Thursday grilled Barack Obama on his ties to a professor with pro-Palestinian views, prompting Obama to speak at some length against “guilt by association” and about his support for the Jewish community. The at-times heated exchange occurred during a town hall event held at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla. The questioner focused on Obama’s relationship to Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University who has drawn fire for some of his criticisms of Israel. Obama responded...

NEW YORK, April 26 -- Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers. This Story At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution The 1968 Protesters, Then and Now Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake. "Strangest reunion I ever saw," said Victoria Benitez, a...

Just received this a few moments ago ...

Obama worked with Terrorist. Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence Posted: February 24, 2008 5:44 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2008 WorldNetDaily JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. #Barac Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens. The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for #Obama. Khalidi...

Shortly after I began teaching at Columbia University, I was taken aback to hear that the Iranian ruler Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak on campus. There was hardly any time to organize a protest against the event. Despite this, three kipot-wearing students from Hillel House worked day and night to distribute posters and pamphlets featuring a choice selection of the guest's hate-filled, genocidal invective. They organized a demonstration in front of the hall where the Iranian president was to speak, and all without any outside help. I spoke at the demonstration, where I discovered that almost all the participants...

As people like our own Rick Moran dig up more and more of the Barack links to Rezko, others are uncovering more and more links between Barack and other unsavory characters like ex-weatherman and terrorist defender Ayres.Today's report involves Obama's connections with Columbia University's Professor Khalidi and pro Palestinian groups ,including the PLO: Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe." (Obama has also reportedly spoken at fundraisers for Palestinians living in what...

RUSH: This is from the JewishPress.com: "Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a 'catastrophe.' (Obama has also reportedly spoken at fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps.) The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror group by the State Department. Khalidi held a...

“Death has replaced sex as the taboo subject of our times,” said one of the world’s richest men and leading philanthropists, George Soros, when he launched the Project Death in America fund at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1994. It promotes euthanasia or assisted suicide, and has been succeeded by the Open Society Institute’s International Palliative Care Initiative . Soros’s mother committed suicide, as a member of the Hemlock Society . His father died a lingering death from cancer, and Soros was “disappointed” at the way the old man clung miserably to life.

JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barak Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens. The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it...

Police stumbled upon a bomb-making factory Sunday in the home of a Columbia professor who specializes in the spread of infectious disease - and are investigating whether he and his roommate have terror ties. Cops evacuated the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood around the Remsen St. home of Michael Clatts, a medical anthropologist, after finding seven pipe bombs fitted with fuses in his flat, police sources said. The frightening cache was discovered almost by accident - Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger and sought police help in the street about 1:15...