Ted Cruz To Deliver Keynote Address At CPAC

Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been selected to deliver the keynote address at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, American Conservative Union President Al Cardenas told WRAL's "Mornings on the Mall" on Friday.

Cruz had already confirmed a speaking role at the conference, which is set to take place March 14-16 in the Washington D.C. area, but the decision to have him close out the conference marks another high-profile move for the Senate newcomer.

Ted Cruz Responds—And Still Sees Red at Harvard Law

Senator Ted Cruz has responded to The New Yorker’s report that he accused Harvard Law School of having had “twelve” Communists who “believed in the overthrow of the U.S. Government” on its faculty when he attended in the early nineties. Cruz doesn’t deny that he said this; instead, through his spokesman, he says he was right: Harvard Law was full of Communists.

Is Senator Ted Cruz our new McCarthy?

Last week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s prosecutorial style of questioning Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary, came so close to innuendo that it raised eyebrows in Congress, even among his Republican colleagues. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Cruz’s inquiry into Hagel’s past associations “out of bounds, quite frankly.” The Times reported that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, rebuked Cruz for insinuating, without evidence, that Hagel may have collected speaking fees from North Korea. Some Democrats went so far as to liken Cruz, who is a newcomer to the Senate, to a darkly divisive predecessor, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whose anti-Communist crusades devolved into infamous witch hunts. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, stopped short of invoking McCarthy’s name, but there was no mistaking her allusion when she talked about being reminded of “a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such-and-such a date,’ and of course there was nothing in the pocket.”

Andrew McCarthy's Defense of McCarthyism

Leading Republicans, including House Majority Leader John Boehner and Sen. John McCain, have rejected Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) and several of her colleagues' claims that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So with their support crumbling, the Shariah-panic caucus brought out one of their big guns to defend Bachmann's crusade. Andrew C. McCarthy, a National Review columnist and former federal terrorism prosecutor, headlined a Center for Security Policy event in Washington on Wednesday in which he accused the Obama administration of Islamist sympathies. "There is something terribly wrong if members of Congress were not asking questions about Islamist influence in our government," McCarthy told the largely sympathetic audience at the National Press Club. "Islamophobia is a term that was manufactured by the Muslim Brotherhood precisely for the purpose of browbeating people into silence about the activities and threat posed by Islamic supremacism."

Newt Gingrich Defends Michele Bachmann Over Huma Abedin Claims

Newt Gingrich justified his support of Michele Bachmann's campaign against top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and other government employees on Wednesday, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "American citizens have a right to have their members of Congress ask the question."

Gingrich, who wrote a column for Politico last month asserting his support for Bachmann and her Republican colleagues, further defended their anti-Muslim Brotherhood crusade, telling Blitzer that it's not out of bounds to question Abedin's alleged ties to the radical group.

Modern-day McCarthyism

In the tenth paragraph of a page A15 Times piece, Rick Santorum accuses Barack Obama of engaging in “absolutely un-American activities.” What are they? The article doesn’t say. The quote appears without explanation or comment, in an article entitled “Santorum’s Challenge: Broaden His Appeal Beyond Evangelical Christians.” Nor does the line show up anywhere else on the Web—apparently no reporter in the mob following the candidates through the last days before the Iowa caucuses thought it worth writing down, and no blogger thought it worth repeating. It was just a throwaway line, a hunk of spoiled red meat tossed at the crowd in a Sioux City coffee shop, no more newsworthy than saying, “It’s a great day to be an Iowan!” And the crowd ate it up, applauding lustily. According to the Times, Santorum, surging in the polls, “became emotional at times.” He “wore a beaming smile on his face.” He said that he was running for his children’s sake. A supporter from a nearby town said that he liked Santorum for his avoidance of hyperbole: “Santorum doesn’t make crazy statements.”

Several things are worth noting here. The first is that, in today’s Republican politics, one reliable way to reach beyond the Christian base is by whipping up nationalistic hysteria with language lifted straight from the McCarthy era. If criminalizing all abortions and nullifying all gay marriages are a little too sectarian for you, surely you’d like to try some old-fashioned traitor-hunting. (Santorum has also accused Obama of “sid[ing] with evil” in Iran, a country with which he plainly wants to go to war.)

Would the PM please shut up: Senior Conservative cabinet minister was BQ member for 7-plus years

Senior federal Conservative cabinet minister was member of Bloc Quebecois for seven-plus years!

Well, it's not April 1, and it's in the Globe and Mail just now, so presumably the fact Prime Minister Stephen Harper's transport minister, Denis Lebel, was a member of the theoretically separatist Bloc Quebecois for more than seven years during the 1990s means the federal Conservatives are either breathtaking hypocrites or they’re incompetent buffoons who didn't do their due diligence.

By the sound of the Globe's report, there wasn't much secret about Lebel's long sovereignist involvement, or his generous personal donations to Quebec's separatist movement. But that was before Prime Minister Harper came along with his great economic plans for Canada, and Lebel saw the light, or so his spokesperson told the Globe yesterday.

Guaranteed, this story wouldn't have rated two inches on page B97 but for the fact the Conservatives have been raging for days about Acting Opposition Leader Nycole Turmel having once been a member of the BQ … just like the prime minister's esteemed cabinet colleague.

Tories on the defence over Lebel’s Bloc ties

The NDP is accusing the Harper Conservatives of hypocrisy as the Tories try to defend against revelations that one of their own was also once a member of the separatist Bloc Québécois.

Reports Tuesday noted that Denis Lebel, the Transport Minister and a senior member of the Conservative team in Quebec, had been a member of the Bloc from July 1993 to April 2001. Some Tories, however, are arguing this is much different than the situation of NDP MP Nycole Turmel, who was a member of the Bloc for four years before she turned to federal politics.

A senior Conservative source said Tuesday morning that as Mr. Lebel is not head of the party a different argument would be applied.

Ms. Turmel has taken over as the Interim NDP leader and official opposition leader while Jack Layton battles a new cancer diagnosis.

Nycole Turmel: It’s not a crime to change your mind

Better a leader with a wealth of perspective, than a pittance

I took the Quebec referendum very seriously in 1995, maybe because I was six years old and believed that separatism was exactly what it sounded like: Quebec would literally cut itself off of Canada with a giant machete and float away, taking the Maritimes and the United States with it. Unfortunately I was wrong: not only would the French province remain Canadian (and wholly responsible for prolonging interruptions to in-flight movies) but the ghost of separatist past would linger on, and spawn a uniquely Canadian kind of McCarthyism—the sort that dug the sovereign skeleton out of Nycole Turmel’s closet. Because what we’ve learned from this past week of parliamentary theatrics, is that Jack Layton’s choice for NDP Interim leader (Turmel—GASP—a former member of the Bloc Quebecois and current member of Quebec Solidaire) was simply not cool. Or as Prime Minister Stephen Harper put it, “disappointing”. Forget that Turmel tore up her Bloc membership prior to running for the NDP, promised to tear up her Quebec Solidaire membership this very week, and publicly denounced the notion that she ever held separatist sentiments in the first place; her apparent shift in allegiance was a death knell. But if Dumbledore could forgive Professor Snape for his darker indiscretions, can’t we forgive Nycole Turmel her Sovereign past? Or, do we even have to? Maybe we should be congratulating her instead, for having the temerity to change her mind.

Fanning the Flames of Intolerance

In framing Nycole Turmel's affiliation with the Bloc as a scandal, The Globe revealed the dangerous nationalist underbelly of Canadian politics.

The cover story of Tuesday’s Globe and Mail was a non-story of the worst kind. Globe writer Daniel LeBlanc has reported that interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel was, for several years, a member of the Bloc Québécois.

Now, let’s be clear about two points before we deal with the meat of this issue. First, it is perfectly normal for Canadians, over the course of their lives, to vote for, support, and belong to more than one party. I might add that this is equally true of Canadian politicians, who often cross the floor and sit with a party they were loudly denouncing in the previous election. So, if Turmel has supported more than one party in recent years, it isn’t really a story at all.

Second, Quebec has its own culture, history, and politics, and that is an inescapable reality. Even strong federalists in Quebec can acknowledge the rationale for sovereignty, and many Quebecers have supported one side and then the other over the course of their lives. Moreover, in general, the political centre in Quebec is somewhat to the left of the rest of Canada, so that also has an effect on where Quebecers choose to place their political support.

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