Back to Basics

Republicans are getting tripped up by the media when challenged about evidence of President Obama’s personal involvement in the IRS scandal. Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, who chairs the House committee looking into the IRS, “admitted there was no evidence” linking Obama to the IRS scandal, as MSNBC described his appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Camp said, “We don’t have anything to say that the President knew about it.” Michael O’Brien, a political reporter for NBC News, said both Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Dave Camp “admitted they lacked evidence that the targeting of conservatives was ordered by the White House.”

But a Democratic Administration or its president does not need to issue orders or directives or make telephone calls demanding that the IRS act against conservatives. History shows that it is simply how the federal bureaucracy operates. The “smoking gun” is liberal politics as usual, and it stretches back to the Kennedy Administration.

To illustrate this point, consider an article on a left-wing website attempting to distinguish between the Obama Administration’s IRS “affair” and Richard Nixon’s “Watergate-era IRS scandal,” The author is none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who insists that what Nixon did was far worse than anything that has been done under Obama. He advised Republicans not to fall victim to “anti-Obama hysteria” and to avoid talking about Obama’s impeachment.

“A principal distinction” between the use of the IRS by the Nixon and Obama Administrations, he said in his column, “is the ingredient of direct presidential involvement.”

He does acknowledge that Nixon, who resigned from office because he was threatened with impeachment, “was aware that the IRS had audited him in 1961 and 1962 and presumed those audits were politically motivated by the Kennedy White House.” He doesn’t provide any more details, probably because he doesn’t want to implicate his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, in the political use of the IRS. But that is exactly what they did. In fact, they did it before Nixon, and led Nixon to believe the practice was routine.

As noted by Victory Lasky’s book, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, the practice of using the IRS for political purposes began with the Kennedy brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, when they were President and Attorney General, respectively. Not only were Nixon and others involved in his presidential campaign audited after John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election, “tax-exempt right-wing groups” were targeted by the Kennedy Administration’s IRS for special reviews and some lost their tax-exempt status.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article focused on a “Special Service” staff of the IRS under Nixon. What he does not talk about is a special project under President Kennedy dealing with “ideological organizations.” According to the staff report “Investigation of the Special Service Staff of the Internal Revenue Service,” prepared for the Joint Committee on Internal Taxation in 1975, “This program apparently was stimulated by a public statement of President John F. Kennedy and also a suggestion by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.”

In other words, initially there were no direct orders or direct presidential involvement. IRS officials simply responded to the President’s public statements and his concerns.

Jeffrey Lord’s story in the American Spectator about a “smoking gun” in the IRS scandal has backfired. He implied that the head of the IRS union had personally met with President Obama to plot against the Tea Party when there is no evidence of such a meeting or such plotting. Instead, as the Daily Caller and U.S. News & World Report have reported, the union chief had been part of a “Workplace Flexibility Forum” in the Old Executive Office Building attended by 200 people and featuring Obama as a speaker.

Lord is a fine columnist, but Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel had previously pointed out that the smoking gun evidence of presidential wrongdoing has been right in front of us all along, in the form of various statements by the President and other administration officials attacking and demonizing the Tea Party, as well as demands from Democrats and their allies that conservative groups be scrutinized by the IRS. This was pressure from above that had its intended effect—to disable the Tea Party movement during the 2012 elections.

“The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies,” Strassel commented. “But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.”

In fact, the pressure came not only from the Democratic Party, but from various George Soros-funded groups and journalists, one of whom, Seth Rosenfeld, obtained personal financial information about filmmaker Joel Gilbert and his financial backers. The Gilbert case, which involves a massive invasion of privacy and harassment of donors to an anti-Obama film, is potentially even more serious in a legal sense than scrutiny of Tea Party groups by the IRS. In addition, the IRS reopened Gilbert’s 2009 tax return, and simply denied all of his business expenses, even though they were well-documented.

Amy Pyle of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) asked that I correct my article on this aspect of the scandal, saying that, “While Seth has done some freelance work for us in the past, as for many other outlets, he is not an employee here nor is he on any contract with us.”

I had reported that Rosenfeld “works” for the CIR and in fact he is listed on its website as a “correspondent” for the group. That suggests an on-going relationship. I told Pyle there would be no correction. In fact, why doesn’t the CIR help us get to the bottom of this scandal?

The CIR is funded by the Open Society Institute of George Soros and other liberal foundations. Its “media partners” include the Arab government-funded Al Jazeera English—a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood—The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio and PBS.

With these collaborators, it would appear that an investigation of Rosenfeld and his methods would have to come from Congress, rather than the media.

The Washington Post apparently doesn’t care how ridiculous it looks as it embarks on the process of destroying Ken Cuccinelli and other Republican candidates for top statewide offices in Virginia.

After Cuccinelli won the gubernatorial nomination, the Post stories looked like press releases from the Democratic Party. The front-page online Washington Post headline proclaimed, “Virginia GOP leans far to the right, nominating staunch conservatives.” The summary of the story by Laura Vozzella said, “After election losses, state Republicans are largely resisting advice to move to the middle.”

“Democrats made it clear that they view the GOP ticket as too extreme,” the Post reported, in a follow-up story. This is the way the Post views the GOP ticket. And this is the way the Post wants readers to view it, too.

The extreme rhetoric apparently includes Cuccinelli’s statement, “Our country was founded on the belief that our rights don’t come from the government, they come from our Creator. The Constitution was set up to limit the size and scope of government, not the liberty of individuals.”

There is nothing new here, in terms of the paper’s coverage of politics. But despite losing readers and money, the paper still carries some clout among those unaware of how media bias works and how the paper demonizes conservative Republicans. It is important to document this bias as it is taking place so that the Post is aware that the public understands these media tricks.

Fortunately, the Cuccinelli campaign recognizes the problem and is fighting back. Cuccinelli campaign manager Dave Rexrode said, “…we need to break through the biased and unfair actions of Washington, D.C.’s largest newspaper.”

“Over the past few months,” he explained, “The Washington Post has launched numerous misleading and false editorials attacking Ken Cuccinelli. They are basically taking the Democrats’ talking points and turning them into editorials.”

The presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe, “appears to have The Washington Post in his back pocket,” Rexrode pointed out. He also talked in detail about a push-poll that was nothing more than the paper’s “next attempt to attack Ken and prop up Terry McAuliffe.”

In a column headlined, “Ken Cuccinelli must say whether he’d still pursue tea party agenda if elected governor,” Post columnist Robert McCartney demanded that the candidate accept the label of extremist, which is how the paper wants to depict him. He said Cuccinelli “is trying to distract voters from the very positions that made him famous,” insisting that “In his acceptance speech Saturday at the Richmond Coliseum, Cuccinelli made only brief, passing references to his antiabortion position and his unsuccessful fight as attorney general against health-care reform.”

This is the “passing reference” to abortion: “It also means defending those at both ends of life—protecting the elderly from abuse as well as the unborn. We should encourage a deep and abiding respect for all human life.”

Rather than duck the issue, this is an unmistakable addressing of the abortion problem.

On the matter of “health-care reform,” which is what the Post calls socialized medicine, the fact is that Cuccinelli led a successful legal fight against Obamacare and a federal judge ruled in his favor. However, the Supreme Court ultimately decided on spurious grounds in favor of the law. Hence, the battle to repeal it rests with Congress.

Of the IRS abuse cases that have recently come to light, the use of the IRS to enforce the defunct “Fairness Doctrine” on broadcasters is one of the most disturbing.

“I am alarmed by reports that suggest a federal official at the IRS instituting a de facto Fairness Doctrine,” National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) President & CEO Dr. Frank Wright said in a press release. Wright was referring to long-time Christian radio host Dr. James Dobson revealing that his organization had to submit sample radio programs to the IRS, and that an IRS agent indicated that his criticism of President Obama would prevent his ministry from getting a certain form of non-profit status.

A press release about the controversy was issued under the headline, “IRS Subjects Dr. James Dobson and Family Talk Action to Viewpoint Discrimination.”

In other words, Dobson’s views were singled out by the IRS because they were conservative, Christian, and critical of President Obama.

The NRB notes that the Fairness Doctrine, first introduced in 1949, enabled the FCC to compel broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues deemed to be of public importance. It was eliminated from the Code of Federal Regulations in August 2011, though it hadn’t been enforced since 1987.Wright said the FCC “was right to purge that pernicious policy from the Code of Federal Regulations” but that, in the Dobson case, it appeared to be “alive and well at the IRS.”

In a press release under the headline, “Targeted by the IRS,” the Dobson organization, Family Talk Action, quoted Dobson as saying, “The American people deserve better treatment from its government than this. Christian ministries and others supporting the family must not be silenced or intimidated by the IRS or other branches of the government.”

In a video, Ryan Dobson described how the tax-exempt status was denied for three years because the group was deemed to be right-wing and critical of Obama. He said it was only when Family Talk Action threatened to take the IRS to court that the agency relented.

The Dobson case indicates that rather than seek to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, as many conservatives had feared, the Obama Administration and its allies used the IRS to enforce a version of the measure through federal scrutiny and intimidation of religious and conservative broadcasters.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) had warned about such an effort in our special report, “Left-Wing Censorship Campaign Targets Conservative Media,” but did not anticipate that the campaign would take the form of using the IRS rather than the FCC as a method of federal coercion and control.

AIM released a book, The Death of Talk Radio?, and a TV ad warning that liberal politicians and bureaucrats were preparing to interfere with the First Amendment right of free speech.

We had noted at the time that the “National Conference on Media Reform,” underwritten by billionaire George Soros and rich liberal foundations, was providing a platform for liberal politicians who advocated the return of the Fairness Doctrine to target conservative media and talk-radio personalities. “The only question,” we said, “is when congressional liberals will get enough nerve to aggressively push this authoritarian attempt to muzzle their political opponents.”

Now we find out that the effort which took place circumvented the congressional and legislative process and instead used the powers of the IRS.

Five months before Barack Obama was elected to his first term as president, Herbert Romerstein and I finished a Washington, D.C. briefing on “The Stealth Candidate”—Barack Obama—and his communist connections. I opened it up for questions. “I’m Dana Milbank from The Washington Post,” said the questioner. “So what’s the upshot? Do you think that Barack Obama is a communist?”

Not wanting to fall into an obvious trap, I replied, “We have no way to judge.”

But Herb told Milbank: “No, let’s answer that one a little differently. We’re telling you that you’re not doing your job. We didn’t say Obama was a communist. We said that you have to do due diligence in tracking down what Obama really is because right now he’s a stealth candidate. So, if you don’t do your job, that’s your problem.”

“Herb, you just got us a bad story in The Washington Post, for crying out loud,” I said. To which Herb responded, “I don’t remember ever seeing a good story in The Washington Post.”

Milbank promptly did write a story, labeling Herb “a living relic from the House Committee on Un-American Activities.” It was this committee, of course, that uncovered the treason of State Department official Alger Hiss and his service to the Soviet Union.

Herb’s family, friends and admirers paid tribute to him at a graveside burial service on May 9. This veteran of the Korean War fought for his country not only in wartime but also in peacetime, when the communists continued their onslaught against the West through other means. His wife Pat accepted the American flag in his honor. His daughters talked about their father’s dedication to the cause of freedom and family, as they recounted how he would question and challenge their own beliefs and statements. They cried but also laughed. Herb could be serious but funny, as he showed in that exchange with Milbank.

Herb did the serious research Milbank and his associates did not want to do. He helped unmask one of their icons, I.F. Stone, as a Soviet agent, and exposed Senator Ted Kennedy’s collaboration with the Soviet KGB.

It’s true that Herb worked for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He also worked for the House Internal Security Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, and headed the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation and Active Measures of the United States Information Agency. He was part of the Reagan Revolution that safeguarded our freedom and turned back the Soviet Union and its proxies in the 1980s. As a result of his research in the archives of the Communist International in Moscow, which were briefly opened for outside inspection after the Soviet collapse, Herb ascertained that Harry Bridges of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union had been a secret member of the Communist Party USA. Bridges had always denied party membership.

As the reaction of Dana Milbank suggests, the media wanted to ridicule our findings on Obama or trick us into saying something that might backfire. Others in the media simply covered these findings up. Even the Drudge Report declined to run our advertising highlighting Obama’s connection to Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s Communist mentor during his growing up years in Hawaii, and communist networks in Hawaii and Chicago.

“Beck Crosses the Line Again” was the headline over a Jonathan Tobin Commentary article about Glenn Beck’s attack on Michael Bloomberg at the NRA convention. Tobin insisted that Beck “spoke in front of a large backdrop that photo-shopped Bloomberg’s face into what appears to be a famous photo of Adolf Hitler.”

Commentary describes itself as “the bold, influential voice of conservative opinion.”

“Beck owes Bloomberg an apology,” said Tobin. “So does the NRA. Just as important, they owe supporters of Second Amendment rights an apology for debasing the debate and undermining their cause in this manner.”

But the charge against Beck is demonstrably false.

Tobin wrote of the alleged Bloomberg-Nazi comparison that “This is more than merely unacceptable political commentary. It is an offense that diminishes the horror of the Holocaust and casts a dark light on both Beck and those who thought his little joke was funny.”

In fact, however, as noted by writer Moshe Phillips, “The problem is that Beck did not use a mock-up of Mayor Bloomberg giving the Nazi salute—the image was of Mayor Bloomberg in a famous pose of Vladimir Lenin.” He explained, “The image of Lenin that Glenn Beck used is so famous and iconic that statues have been made of it.”

Beck has posted both images on his site to prove his point. The Beck comparison images show that the Bloomberg pose was clearly modeled directly after a famous pose by Lenin.

The article on Beck’s site asked, “…did anyone call to actually see if Glenn used Nazi imagery in his NRA speech? Nope.”

Tobin, the Senior Online Editor for Commentary, seems to have based his remarks on erroneous reports about what Beck said and did. He would not, however, retract his charge after he was informed by Accuracy in Media that his account was flatly inaccurate.

Tobin’s commentary was linked to an article attacking the NRA by Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is described as “the definitive source for American Jewish community news and opinion.” In the article, “Glenn Beck does not get Jews and Nazis,” Kampeas wrote, “Glenn Beck likens Michael Bloomberg to Nazis. No, honestly. And the National Rifle Association folks eat it up.”

But this is not what Beck said and not what the NRA did.

Not surprisingly, the George Soros-funded Media Matters attacked Beck for the alleged comparison in a story headlined, “Jewish Leaders Condemn Glenn Beck For Depicting Bloomberg In Nazi Salute.” The story was based on a falsehood that was accepted by these “Jewish leaders,” including Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Soros funds organizations critical of the Jewish state and sympathetic to the Iranian regime.

Media Matters clearly hoped to resurrect the controversy over Beck, when he was with Fox News, having identified George Soros as having been a Nazi collaborator in his youth. Beck was fired from the channel after Soros and his operatives pressured Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and the channel’s advertisers to dump Beck. The Zev Chafets book, Roger Ailes Off Camera, confirms the role of Media Matters and the ADL, as well as Beck’s criticism of Soros, in his forced departure from Fox News.

However, Beck started his own television channel, TheBlazeTV, available through Roku and some cable and satellite systems, and still hosts a daily radio show.

If the FBI wants to find Joanne Chesimard, who has just been added to the “Most Wanted Terrorists List,” it could begin by wiretapping President Obama’s friends, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and other members of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground helped Chesimard—a convicted cop-killer—escape from a New Jersey prison in 1979 and flee to Cuba.

Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was involved in the “execution style” murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. The attack on Foerster in a gun battle also took the life of Chesimard’s associate, Zayd Shakur. Ayers and Dohrn named one of their children after Zayd Shakur, who now goes under the name of “Zayd Dohrn,” and is a playwright.

The doubling of the reward from $1 million to $2 million for information leading to her capture and return to New Jersey was made on the 40th anniversary of Foerster’s brutal murder.

However, Chesimard is still today being protected by a support network of “progressive” activists, lawyers and the Cuban government.

Alluding to terrorist support networks for Chesimard in the U.S, Aaron Ford, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Newark, New Jersey, said, “We would be naïve to think there’s not some communication between her and some of those people she used to run around with today.”

Chesimard was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a group that worked with the Weather Underground. The Black Liberation Army was an outgrowth of the Black Panthers, a black militant group that described police officers as “Pigs” and called for their deaths.

Her escape to Cuba was not surprising. Former FBI informant Larry Grathwohl points out that the Weather Underground was a virtual project of the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI. His book, Bringing Down America, has been updated and republished.

However, the role of the Weather Underground in helping Chesimard go “underground” for more than four years in the U.S., and then escape to Cuba, is being conspicuously ignored in most of the stories about her being named as the first woman added to the Most Wanted Terrorists List.

Raising the stakes, Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said at Thursday’s news conference on this matter that they have “reason to believe she has established associations with other international terrorist organizations.”

Hence, it appears to be the case that Chesimard has maintained her contacts with leftists and terrorists in the United States and abroad.

Fuentes said that Chesimard “flaunts her freedom in the face of this horrific crime…In 1984, she surfaced in Cuba and was given political asylum by Fidel Castro. To this day, from her safe haven in Cuba, Chesimard has been given the pulpit to preach and profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by any means necessary. As a government functionary and instrument of anti-U.S. propaganda, she has been used by the Castro regime to greet foreign delegations visiting Cuba.”

The FBI has posted videos and stories about the search for Chesimard. “This case is just as important today as it was when it happened 40 years ago,” says Mike Rinaldi, a lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police and member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Newark.

The claim that the Russians somehow “warned” the U.S. about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical Islamic connections has been accepted by most news organizations and commentators as established fact. But while U.S. intelligence agencies have a lot to explain, the Russian security services have been treated with kid gloves and even as the “good guys” in this affair.

Russian media, including the English-language propaganda channel Russia Today (RT), have been insisting that the U.S. is to blame for the Boston bombings because vague “warnings” from Moscow were ignored.

It is reminiscent of when Lee Harvey Oswald, a pro-Castro Marxist who had traveled back and forth to Russia, assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and the Russian KGB promptly launched a disinformation campaign in the media blaming right-wingers in Dallas and the CIA for the murder. The Soviets—and the Cubans—were determined to obscure their links to the assassin.

The obvious question in this case is: If the Russian intelligence agencies were suspicious of the brother’s terror ties, why did they not arrest and imprison him?

The Moscow regime of Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet KGB officer, rules with an iron fist and has supposedly been waging a vicious war against Muslim terrorists within its own borders. So why would they let a suspected terrorist from America come and go at will? And why, if Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a grudge against the Russians over their handling of those Muslim regions in Russia, did he attack the U.S. and not Russia?

There is something about the Russian angle that doesn’t add up.

The claim about Russian “warnings” to the U.S. ignores the sensational evidence uncovered in the 2007 book, Blowing Up Russia, that the Russian security forces are behind much of the Islamic terrorism that supposedly originates in the Muslim regions of Russia. The book was “banned in Russia,” where journalists investigating the Kremlin get threatened or even murdered.

The book’s co-author, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent, not only blamed Moscow for Islamic terrorism, but said that al-Qaeda terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been trained by the KGB and was an agent of the Russian security services. Litvinenko died in 2006 in London, where he had fled from the Russian regime, as a result of being poisoned by Russian intelligence on the orders of Russian President Putin. A film, “Poisoned by Polonium,” examines how the highly radioactive substance Polonium was used to kill him.

He gave an interview to a Polish newspaper in 2006 and said, “The bloodiest terrorists in the world were or are agents of the KGB-FSB.” The FSB is Russian’s Federal Security Service, a successor to the KGB.

“I can definitely say that the center of global terrorism is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the Chechen Republic,” he said. “The terrorist infection is spread worldwide from Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin cabinet.”

In other words, the Soviet-sponsored international terror networks of the 1980s did not go away, despite the collapse of the Soviet economic system.

In the U.S., after the Boston bombings, radio talk-show host Alex Jones made headlines by claiming that the attacks were a “false flag” intelligence operation staged by the U.S. Government, so that the bombings could be blamed on Islamists and the “war on terror” could expand at home and abroad.

The possible involvement of a Saudi in the Boston terror attacks is being curiously ignored or downplayed by most of the mainstream media. Steve Emerson, Glenn Beck, and others have pressed for answers, however. Beck has issued a full report with updates on the controversy.

When Rep. Jeff Duncan, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, questioned Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano on the matter, she claimed his questions were “not worthy of an answer” and that much of the reporting has been “wrong.” She later said the Saudi was on a watch list but had no involvement.

Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir issued a statement condemning the bombings in Boston and offering his condolences to the families of the victims.

On Twitter, according to one report from Ahmed Al Omran, a Saudi blogger and journalist, “many Saudis expressed their fear that one of their countrymen could be involved in the bombings. According to the Saudi cultural attaché in the US, there are more than 1,000 Saudi students going to school in Boston.” Al Omran graduated with a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

The reason for the sensitivity may be that the Obama Administration has been working with Saudi Arabia in “counterterrorism,” and that the country has served as a base for Obama’s drone attacks on al-Qaeda leaders he wants eliminated. This fact was covered up by our major newspapers, including The Washington Post and New York Times, for over a year.

The Post finally blew the whistle on its own cover-up, acknowledging that “an informal arrangement among several news organizations” had been in existence to protect the Saudi role in the drone attacks.

The paper said that it “had refrained from disclosing the location at the request of the administration, which cited concern that exposing the facility would undermine operations against an al-Qaeda affiliate regarded as the network’s most potent threat to the United States, as well as potentially damage counterterrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.”

Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, an American citizen, was said to be the first target of a Saudi-based American drone strike. His son, also an American citizen, was later killed in a drone attack.

The Saudis claim they are cooperating with the U.S. They say that in October 2010, Saudi intelligence officials provided key information to American officials that foiled an attempted terrorist plot involving bombs heading to the United States that originated in Yemen.

But the Saudi role in the drone attacks gives the Saudi regime leverage over the Obama Administration. It might come in handy if Saudis were implicated and detained in terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Saudis and their U.S. allies, especially in the oil business, are heavy hitters in Washington, D.C.

Last October we reported on the Arab-US Policymakers Conference, or AUSPC, sponsored by various American Big Oil companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and U.S. corporations such as Boeing. The government of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states were also major sponsors.

On April 20, just five days after the Boston bombings, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left Washington for the Middle East where, among other things, he was going to discuss a $10 billion package of arms to Saudi Arabia.

So-called “medical marijuana” apparently doesn’t cure all of their ailments. Now the progressives want easy access to “psychedelic medicine,” including LSD and Ecstasy.

Working with the George Soros-funded marijuana movement, which has achieved enormous “progress” in the various states, especially Colorado, a group called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is demanding acceptance of “psychedelics,” or mind-altering drugs that create hallucinations, to be accepted as “legal prescription drugs.”

Don’t laugh. Powerful and wealthy supporters of Barack Obama such as the late Ashawna Hailey, a transgender woman, have been among the noted backers of MAPS. She left her fortune to a slew of left-wing groups, including MAPS, Code Pink, and the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance.

A report on a MAPS-sponsored conference has just appeared on a left-wing website called AlterNet under the uplifting headline, “The Enormous Promise of Psychedelics for Sustaining Health, Happiness and Sanity.” The conference was actually titled, “Psychedelic Science 2013,” to give respectability to the use of illegal drugs. The Drug Policy Alliance was a “promotional partner,” along with such groups as the Psychedelic Society of San Francisco.

One presentation, “Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere,” was about drugs which can “enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena,” including “interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien communication, or communion with ancestors and spirits…”

Bringing the subject back down to earth, their current project is to promote “the healing potential of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy on psychological and emotional damage caused by sexual assault, war, violent crime, and other traumas.” MDMA is another word for Ecstasy, a synthetic drug described as having amphetamine-like and hallucinogenic properties.

The promotion of an illegal drug for its alleged “medicinal” properties is the same scam used to set the stage for the legalization of marijuana in such states as Colorado, where “medical marijuana” is already out of control. Three people were shot during the 4/20 marijuana celebration in Denver.

Don’t think MAPS doesn’t have its friends on Capitol Hill. When the marijuana movement was taking off, then-Massachusetts Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, in 2007, sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) urging the agency to approve a “medical marijuana production facility” that was to be under the sponsorship of MAPS. Later, 45 members of Congress signed a similar letter.

MAPS has now moved on to the “psychedelics.”

Although MDMA is classified as a drug with “high abuse potential and no recognized medicinal use,” CNN has favorably reported on the use of MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and quotes MAPS founder Rick Doblin as saying he’s working with the Defense Department in an effort to use the drug on active-duty troops. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who was offered the job as surgeon general of the United States by President Obama, even narrated a story about a woman claiming relief from an experimental PTSD treatment using the drug MDMA.

Shawn Hailey, also known as Ashawna, supported Obama’s campaign for president and was a member of the MAPS Board of Directors. She passed away in 2011 and left $5.5 million to the organization. She made her money through high-tech companies in Silicon Valley and was a co-founder of Meta-Software Corporation, which was sold to Avanti Corporation in 1996.