By Debbie Schlussel

****  SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE  ****

It’s a pretty telling sign how desperate conservatives and Republicans have gotten.  Willing to take any red meat scrap thrown their way no matter how poisonous, they’ve now embraced Jihad Darrell a/k/a Congressman Darrell Issa as their moral standard-bearer.

Darrell Issa w/Fave Constituent, Syria’s Assad

For the last couple of days, a number of talking points conservatives with little investigative or critical thinking have gullibly embraced a hypocritical letter by Issa (and accompanying press release).  The letter–accusing Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the Obama administration of “scare tactics,” “intimidat[ion],” and “the playbook of the Chicago political machine”–is five pages of the Jihad Darrell pot calling the Obama-nik kettle, “black.”

Issa has made a career of being a shill, cheerleader, and personal representative in Congress for Hezbollah, Arafat, Syria, and the global Islamic terror machine.  He has a track record of anti-Semitic statements–dismissing critics (like myself) because they are “Jews”–and of using his Congressional office to try to intimidate others, mostly conservatives and many political enemies.  And then there’s his long criminal record.  During his life–he stole at least three cars, stole his multi-million dollar business, stole patents, fired an employee at gunpoint, committed arson and insurance fraud, at a plant (and then the detective investigating it mysteriously “died”), lied about his military record, was caught carrying a concealed weapon and ammunition including tear gas (believed to be for the purpose of committing armed robbery), and even stealing one of his fellow soldier’s cars.

Self-styled conservatives like Sean Vannity (who gushed over Issa on his show and licked, er . . . “interviewed” Issa) and Michelle Malkin (who did the same on her site . . . twice)–who constantly tout their investigative skills–didn’t do even the tiniest bit of investigation, research, or basic homework on (Malkin could have looked in her own site archives, where she cited my 2007 New York Post column about him) into Issa, and instead larded on the praise for this pan-terrorist, criminal thug.  (Hmmm. . . writing a book decrying a “Culture of Corruption,” but then looking the other way at the King Corruption on your side of the aisle?)

And in that laughable choice of Issa by desperate conservatives and Republicans lies another sign of someone far too lazy:  Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.  If I were Emanuel, I would not have ignored Issa’s hypocritical attack.  Don’t get me wrong–I despise Emanuel and Issa and my archives serve as a seminal body of info against both of them.  But Darrell Issa is far worse.  Issa accuses Emanuel of things of which Issa’s skill and perpetration would make the Obama and Chicago political machines blush.

They needed a group of people and a city to do it.  He did it with just one person–himself–and a bunch of blind, foolish, ignoramus conservatives enabling him.

It’s not just Issa’s history of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews (myself, pro-Israel Congressman Elliot Engel, and, yes, Rahm Emanuel).  It’s not just Issa’s tactics of intimidation and threats to silence his critics.  Issa demanded–and ultimately succeeded, via his pan-Arabist friend Grover Norquist–in getting TownHall.com editor Jon Garthwaite to remove me and my columns, which were then its most popular (at the time, I had twice the readers of Ann Coulter, their page-views stats showed).

Issa also demanded that David Horowitz remove my columns critical of  him from the FrontPageMag.com site, insisting that he had a “dossier” on me.  The “dossier” included a waste of taxpayer money, which consisted of Issa’s staff putting together a binder of my articles on him and letters from some stupid Israelis thanking him for helping in the Lebanese release of Elchanan Tannenbaum–an Israeli drug dealer and spy for Hezbollah, who’d given up valuable secrets about the IDF to the Iranian-backed terrorist group.  Wow, Jihad Darrell, you’re a gem–getting a traitor his freedom.  To his credit, David Horowitz–unlike the weak, spineless Mr. Garthwaite–refused to give in to Issa.  With all the time Issa’s tax-paid staff spent on his BS “dossier” on me, it’s funny to hear him complain about government waste with the stimulus.

It’s not even just Issa’s lifetime of praise and legislative machinations for Hezbollah, Syria’s Assads, Saudi Arabia, and Arafat–my detailing of which in a 2007 New York Post column cost him the chairmanship of the Republican Policy Committee.  Those items were also part of the reason Karl Rove forced Issa out of the California Gubernatorial recall race he helped fund with his millions.  (In announcing the decision, Darrell Issa cried and cried and wept and wept for the cameras like the sissy-boy that he really is, behind the thuggery.)  Rove knew the Dems were ready to use those to those things in a race between Issa and Gray Davis, and that’s why California now has Gov. Schwarzenegger.  And it’s not just that, last year, Issa called the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, “simply a plane crash.”

It’s Issa’s personal criminal rap sheet, which Rove also knew the Dems were ready to promote.  That record of lying, cheating, and stealing–which would rival and beat out Rahm Emanuel’s every day of the week–is also the reason Issa withdrew all of his ads at the last minute when he was running for a U.S. Senate seat in California in 1998.

I can’t post it all here, but I’ve picked some large, choice excerpts from newspaper stories over the last decade or so, about the man who now calls the Obama/Rahm Emanuel kettle black–the man who accuses them of “scare tactic[s],” “intimidat[ion],” and “resorting to the playbook of the Chicago political machine.”  With a history of car thefts and other crimes, many of which he blamed on his brother (just like Bill Clinton did), it’s amazing that Issa has the chutzpah to attack Emanuel’s tactics and that Emanuel won’t call him out on it.

*  “In West Coast Recall, Shady Past Recalled,” The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer,  July 24, 2003:

A three-decades-old dismissed car-theft case involving a Maserati in Cleveland Heights, a dropped Mercedes theft case while Issa was in the Army, and a 21-year-old fire at a Maple Heights company he ran have all become ammunition against the recall campaign. . . .

In slow, piecemeal fashion, sometimes only after a newspaper disclosure, Issa has reluctantly acknowledged a colorful past that preceded his 1985 move to San Diego. . . .  Issa has blamed his older brother William, known as “Billy,” who has a string of felony convictions, for some of the escapades.

Cleveland Heights police arrested Darrell Issa, then 18, and Billy, then 20, in 1972, accusing them of stealing a 1968 red Masserati. . . .

Darrell . . . joined the Army after dropping out of Cleveland Heights High School (he later earned a high school equivalency certificate). . . .

Public records reviewed by The Plain Dealer show that when arrested, Darrell Issa had a hunting knife and his brother had a screwdriver.  Neither man would talk with police that night.

An eventually, per usual, Issa lucked out, and the charges against him were dropped, despite witnesses.

Billy Issa, 51, who has Ohio felony convictions for auto theft and receiving stolen property, did not respond to a request left at his home for an interview.  Darrell Issa said he would not assist a reporter in contacting his brother.  “Not a chance.” . . .

The brothers faced another car-theft charge in 1980.  Darrell had re-entered the Army and was stationed at Ford Ord in California.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, he owned a 1979 cherry-red Mercedes 240 that he reported stolen upon hi return from a holiday trip to Cleveland.

Police said the car had not been stolen.  Rather, it had been taken to a San Jose auto dealership by a man who resembled Billy Issa, and the man left with $16,000 in trade for the car.

Police and a prosecutor suspected that Darrell was covering up for his brother [DS:  other accounts say records show police and prosecutors believe Darrell and Billy Issa cooked up the plot together].  At one point, the Chronicle said, police showed Darrell Issa a composite sketch of the man who sold the car and asked if he recognized him [DS:  the sketch looked exactly like his brother, the Chronicle reports].  Darrell said he didn’t, but asked if he could mail the sketch to his mother in case she might.

Authorities were incredulous.  A judge ordered the two men to stand trial, saying he had a “strong suspicion” that the men had committed a crime, according to the records cited by the San Francisco newspaper.  A prosecutor, however, decided that grand-theft charges would be hard to prove and dismissed the case, the Chronicle reported. . . .

The brother who would become a congressman was arrested on a concealed-weapons charge in Adrian, Mich., in 1972, while attending Siena Heights College.  It was just months after his Cleveland Heights arrest.

According to recent reports in California’s major newspapers, as well as the Daily Telegram, an Adrian newspaper, police stopped Darell Issa’s yellow Volkswagen when he was driving the wrong way on a one-way street.  Officers found a loaded .25-caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol in a box in the glove compartment, the newspaper reported.  Police also found 44 rounds of ammunition for the gun and a tear gas gun with two rounds of ammunition.

Issa  . . . later pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge, possession of an unregistered handgun. . . .

A fire labeled “suspicious” by the Ohio fire marshal broke out at a Maple Heights company Issa was running in 1982. . . .  Insurers and the Ohio fire marshal’s office, which cited burn pattern indicating that a flammable liquid had been poured, also explored the  possibility of arson, records reviewed by the Plain Deal show.

Three weeks before the fire, Issa had quadrupled insurance coverage on parts and equipment in the building.  He had ordered that a computer be removed for reprogramming about a week before the fire, according to transcripts of employee interviews, and wanted equipment blueprints, normally kept in a filing cabinet, to be put in a fireproof box.

Public records show that Joey Adkins, a former partner told an insurance investigator that he believed Issa started the fire.  He repeated the charge in a recent telephone interview with The Plain Dealer, saying the business at the time needed cash and an insurance settlement would be a way to get it.

*  “Issa’s Army Record in Doubt,” The San Francisco Examiner, May 29, 1998:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Darrell Issa says that during the Vietnam War he served with an elite Army bomb unit, traveling with then-President Nixon to protect him from harm.

He attended baseball’s World Series in 1971 as part of the president’s entourage, Issa once told an interviewer.

But military records obtained by The Examiner and interviews with former soldiers cast doubt on the stories the millionaire executive-turned-politician tells about his Army days. . . .

Issa couldn’t have guarded Nixon at the World Series because the president didn’t attend, according to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda.

According to records and interviews, Issa’s service on the bomb squad was marred by a bad conduct rating, a demotion and allegations he had stolen a fellow soldier’s car.

And although Issa’s campaign biography says he served nine years in the Army before leaving to make his fortune in the electronics business, the records show he serve for five years and three months.

Issa declined to be interviewed for this story. . . .  One former GI says he has a different memory of Issa.

“That kid stole my car out of the parking lot and took it to Cleveland, and I knew he did it,” said retired 1st Sgt. Jay Bergey, who served with Issa in 1971 on the 145th Ordnance Detail, an Army bomb squad stationed near Pittsburgh.

I confronted Issa. . . .  I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my care reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike,” the retired soldier said in a phone interview from his home in Pennsylvania.

Issa was not prosectured and “he left the unit very shortly after that,” the former soldier said. . . .

Details about Issa’s military service are important because he repeatedly cites his Army background as what sets him apart from the other Senate candidates.  Before going into business, Issa “devoted his life to serving in the Army,” his biography says. . . .

Issa’s military records show that he arrived at the 145th on June 18, 1971, and stayed until Sept. 12.  On that day, he received unsatisfactory conduct and efficiency ratings and was transferred to a supply depot in another Pittsburgh suburb.

There, he worked as a duty soldier.  Former GIs said that means he had been stripped of  his duties as a bomb specialist. . . .

Issa often mentions his time in the 145th, saying in one biographical press release that he was “detailed to the Army security team that travelled with President Richard Nixon.”

In newspaper interviews, he somtimes has elaborated.  A 1990 story in the San Diego Union said of Issa:  “He was on a bomb disposal unit for President Nixon and got to see the 1971 World Series because Nixon wanted to go and the stadiums had to be secured.” . . .

According to Sgt. Bergey, the alleged auto theft occurred shortly before Christmas i 1971.  Bergey ssaid he had been sent on short notice to eastern Pennsylvania to dispose of ammunition.  When he returned the next day, he said, the car was missing.

Bergey said only a few soldiers knew of his overnight assignment.  He said he concluded that Issa had stolen the car, driven it 150 miles to Cleveland and then returned to the barracks.

At the time a 15-year veteran who had served in Vietnam, Bergey said he confronted the teenage soldier.

“I told him I was going to kill him if I didn’t get my car back,” Bergey said.  He said Issa denied stealing the car, but soon after, the car was found abandoned less than a mile away.

He said he discussed the car with Issa’s mother when she visited a few weeks after the car was found.

He said Issa’s mother “basically admitted that my car had been in Cleveland,” saying that Issa had claimed to have purchased the vehicle.

Bergey said he was unaware of Issa’s political career and wasn’t particularly interested in it, saying, “I can’t believe this kid is running for anything.”

*  “Details About Issa Arrest,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2003:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the driving force behind the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis was carrying a loaded .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, 44 bullets and a tear gas gun when he was arrested on a weapons charge in 1972, public records show.

A police report regarding Issa’s arrest in Adrian, Mich., claims Issa was more heavily armed than he has said since The Chronicle first reported the incident in a story July 2.

In one recent interview, the San Diego County Republicn dismissed the gun case as involving only an “unloaded . . . little teeny pistol.”

The police report and an interview with the arresting officer also undercut Issa’s claims that the gun in the case wasn’t his.

Issa “took responsibility” for the loaded handgun and never denied he owned it, said retired Adrian police officer Don Payne, who made the arrest. . . .

Issa declined to be interviewed for this story. . . .

In the July 2 Chronicle story, Issa said the gun “wasn’t mine, but it was something that was in my possession, and I paid the fine. . .  .

Also on July 2, the Sacramento Bee quoted Issa as blaming his brother for the gun. . . . Issa elaborated in a July 4 interview with the Los Angeles Times. . . .  The newspaper also said Issa denied owning the weapon but wouldn’t say who did.

“It wasn’t mine.  I’ve never owned a gun, er, I’ve never registered a gun. . . but that’s neither here nor there,” he was quoted as saying.

According to the report, on the night of Dec. 1, 1972, officer Payne and his partner stopped a yellow Volkswagen with Ohio plates driving the wrong way on a one-way street.  Issa was at the wheel and his girlfriend was in the car.

The report says that when Issa opened the glove compartment to get his registration, officer Payne noticed a box with a sticker that said “.25 cal.” on it.  The officer retrieved the boxand inside found the .25-caliber semiautomatic with seven bullets in the clip.

Also in the glove compartment was a military-style pouch:  inside was a box with 44 bullets in it, along with a tear gas gun and two rounds of ammunition, according to the report. . . .

“He said he’s got the right to carry it, because he’s from Ohio,” Payne said.  “Back then even an off-duty police officer in Ohio couldn’t carry a (concealed) gun, so there was no way he could carry a gun like that. . . .

Spokesman Andrew Arulanandum said the NRA considered a series of remarks Issa had made recently on firearms issues “less than positive.”

*  “Issa’s Rags-to-Riches Tale Has Some Ugly Chapters,” The Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1998:

To hear Darrell Issa and his supporters tell it, the San Diego County businessman is a modern-day Horatio Alger who built his company “from scratch” and clawed his way to a fortune. . . .

But a closer look at the 44-year-old Issa’s financial beginnings reveals a more complex tale, rooted as much in discord. . . .

Issa also has left a trail of spurned associates from New York to California who accuse him of distorting his record and trampling them on his way to the top.

The car security company that Issa now says he “started” in his hometown of Cleveland 16 years ago actually came under his control after a bruising battle with the former owners, records and interviews show.  The clash and its aftermath featured accusations of underhanded tactics and intimidation, a suspected arson, even a glimpse of an Issa arrest. . . .

“It’s an ugly past chapter, ” Issa acknowledged in a recent interview. . . .

A grand jury indicted the Issa brothers on charges of felony theft of a red Maserati from a Cleveland dealership in 1972 after a witness reported seeing them pushing the sports car down the street just before midnight, records and interviews show.  But the charges were dismissed–months before the older brother, Bill, was convicted of stealing another car amid a string of offenses.

Issa has spent about $6 million of his own money to air commercials i which he tells, among other thnings, of “building a world-class business from scratch” and using  his $7,000 life savings to start the company, but [Joe]Adkins, 42, who is now repairing video equipment at his runodwn shop outside of Cleveland, was there at the beginning, too.  The company that Issa says he founded had belonged to Adkins until Issa seized control in 1982. . . .  “Darrell stole that company out from under me.  He screwed us.”

Adkins started work in the late 1970s on anti-theft devices for automobiles, developing a product called Steal Stopper that killed the ignition switch unless a digital code was entered. . . .  Meanwhile Issa was breaking into business himself. . . .  [His] company also had begun doing electronics work for Adkins.  The relationship went smoothly until Adkins turned to Issa for a $60,000 loan that would eventually cost him his business . . . .

A similar loan from Issa was repaid the previous year.  But this time, Adkins asked for a few more weeks to repay the loan–and Issa says he agreed.  Within days, howevere, Issa went to a judge and–under an Ohio law that did not require the debot to be present–won a judgment for the outstanding $60,000 [DS:  without Adkins even getting notice of the court date].  Issa promptly called Adkins at home to declare that he now owned his auto company, Adkins recalled.  “I was completely floored,” he said.  Why, after promising more time, did Issa [DS:  secretly, ex parte] go to court to collect?

One of Issa’s first tasks as the new boss was to remove an executive named Jack Frantz.  According to Frantz, Isa came into his office, placed a small box on the desk and opened it.  Inside, he said, was a gun.  “He just showed it to me and said, ‘You know what this is?'” Frantz said.

Issa  . . . told him he had learned about guns and explosives during his military days, Frantz said.  Because he was about to be fired, Frantz said he saw it as “pure intimidation.”  The bookkeeper, [Karen] Brasdovich, also recalled Issa having a gun at the company that day.  “It was pretty terrifying,” she said. . . .

Issa confirmed that he wanted to remove Frantz. . . .  “Shots were never fired.”

Gee, why didn’t that excuse work for John Dillinger?

Adkins blames the episode for triggering his slide into bankruptcy, family rifts, bouts with alcohol and a recent jail stint for drunk driving.

“It’s been a rought 17 years,” he said.  “He’s got $250 million, and I’m lucky if I can pay my taxes.”

Adkins is still estranged from his sister [DS:  Ernestine Brown, whom Issa hired to rub it in Adkins’ face, and who now runs his Cleveland facility.] . . .

Perhaps the darkest chapter in the saga came Sept. 7, 1982, seven months after Issa took control of Steal Stopper.  Just before 3 a.m., a police officer spotted smoke billowing from Issa’s Quantum manufacturing plant in Maple Heights near Cleveland.

Before the blaze was brought under control three hours later, a firefighter was seriously injured . .  . .  He [Issa] told them [investigators] he thought the fire began accidentally.

Investigators didn’t think so.  Case files from Maple Heights, the Ohio fire marshal and insurers pointed repeatedly to the likelihood of arson in the blaze, which officials estimated caused $800,000 in damage. .  . .

The uneven and unnatural burn patterns made the blaze “suspicious in nature,” the state concluded two months later.  Flammable liquid appeared to have been poured on the only area not covered by fire sprinklers, investigators found.

Circumstantial evidence also aroused suspicion of arson.

Weeks before the fire, Issa and Hunsinger [Miles Hunsinger, Issa’s partner] boosted their fire insurance from $100,000 to $462,000 on property stored for other companies, including Issa’s Steal Stoppers.  At the same time, a separate company that contracted with Quantum to outfit bug zappers increased its insurance to $400,000, and, according to and insurance report, one investigator was “concerned about the coincidence.”

Fire investigators also noted that a computer was taken off the site eight days before the fire, “allegedly to be reprogrammed” by Issa’s lawyer [DS:  how convenient, since his attorney can’t be questioned by authorities or even under oath due to attorney-client privilege], and that business blueprints were put away in a safe–which was “not previously done before.”

An unexplained note was typed at the bottom of a state fire marshal’s lab request:  “RUSH–Have suspect or conspiracy.”

No one was charged.  And with the two main investigators now deceased, fire officials say they do not know why. . . .  Issa . . . sued when his insurance company contested his claim.  He reached an out-of-court settlement. . . .   He added, “That’s the breaks of the game.” . . .

[Issa has brought] dozens of claims in recent years [in the courts]. . . . One of his few setbakcs was a 1984 order banning his company from distributing a knockoff of the Club steering wheel lock.

Confrontation seems to have become a trademark for Issa. . . .  One of his harshest critics is John Pleck, a New York businessman whose firm won more than $40,000 from Issa’s company in 1993 after saying that Issa denied him his share of proceeds from a new car alarm product for BMW.

“As far as I’m concerned, Darrell is a confidence man,” Pleck said in an interview.  “He always found a way to break his promise.”

No more complimentary is Bob Raines, Issa’s former partner during short-lived corporate marriage in San Diego County.  In 1985, Raines’ home alarm company, called Astro-Guard, acquired Issa’s company.  Raines maintains that Issa tried to run the company into the ground after Raines refused to sell out. . . .

Raines says now:  “He’s a real operator. . . . I wouldn’t have any personal dealings with him again.”  Raines said he survived the split only by selling off his boat and his motor home and spending $100,000 in retirement money.

Around the same time, Scotty Herd was forced to suddenly shut down his $4-million-a-year distributing company in Carson–a turn of events he blames on Issa.

The company, Black Bart, distributed security products from Astro-Guard in the mid-1980s.  Herd said that Issa, as president of Astro-guard, was negotiating an agreement to purchase Black Bart when he cut off shipments to the company, forcing it out of business.

“He was looking  . . . to bring us to our knees and then just walk in and take over the company,” said Herd, a Beverly Hills real estate investor.  “Except he didn’t take it over, he destroyed it.”

Issa, discussing the episode in a 1989 deposition in another dispute . . . said that once Black Bart’s collapse was complete, he was quick to “strip off the majority of their sales people” and lobby their old clients for new business.

In 2003, Darrell Issa–desperate to become California’s next governor and in the midst of the recall petition drive–enlisted Bruce Bialosky, then the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition of Southern California to pressure me.  Bailosky e-mailed me that I must call him because it was “an emergency.”  The “emergency” turned out to be a threatening phone call that if I don’t stop writing about Darrell Isssa and telling about  his connections to terrorists and his work on their behalf, I would “pay a price” and “be sorry” because, Bialosky told me, Issa would become California’s Governor or, at least, remain a Congressman and “would use his power against me.”

Bialosky, who acknowledged he agreed that Issa was working on behalf of Islamic terrorists, urged me to accept an invitation Issa asked him to give me to fly me, on Issa’s dime to Los Angeles to meet with him for a meal at a Middle Eastern restaurant.

I told Bialosky that I wouldn’t accept even one greasy falafel ball from that schmuck, Issa, and that he should be ashamed of himself.  Then, I hung up on him.

If only conservatives and Republicans had the courage to give Issa the same response.

If they don’t, they are no better, no different than the thuggish liberals they claim to be against.

If you can’t say no to Jihad Darrell, you might as well say good-bye to America.

Rahm Emanuel and Chicago machine politics have nothing on him.

****  UPDATE:  Darrell Issa’s record of thug tactics and intimidation is so long, I couldn’t mention everything here, but I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t note how when a Border Patrol agent stopped him for a speeding ticket (he was driving where he shouldn’t have been and was speeding), Issa swore at him and pulled the “do you know who the f*** I am?” tactic.  The Border Cop was unfazed and issued him a ticket.  Thereafter, Issa made sure his career in the Border Patrol was ruined forever and tried to deunionize the Border Patrol when the union stuck up for him.

Like I said, Rahm Emanuel has nothin’ on Jihad Darrell.