Dozens of nations have agreed to join in monitoring and, if necessary, intercepting and boarding ships on the high seas in the event they are suspected of engaging in one or both of these threatening activities.

Ever since taking office, the Obama administration has sought to accommodate Islamist demands that freedom of expression be curbed, lest it offend Muslims and stoke violence. For example, in 2009, the administration co-sponsored a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution along those lines.

Too many countries that do not play by the free trade rules of the World Trade Organization - including, notably mercantilist China and monopolist Saudi Arabia - have been allowed in, to the detriment of both the WTO and the liberal trading environment it is supposed to sponsor.

Dozens of nations have agreed to join in monitoring and, if necessary, intercepting and boarding ships on the high seas in the event they are suspected of engaging in one or both of these threatening activities.

It is one of the truisms of politics that a conservative is often enough a former liberal who has been 'mugged by reality.'

I don't believe there is such a thing as a moderate Islamist party. The challenge with Islamists is that they seek to impose what they call Sharia on everybody, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism, thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed, this country's taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.