FRIDAY,  AUGUST 28,  2009

OUR POLICIES ARE REALLY WORKING - AT 8:48 P.M. ET: 

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said.

The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public. They said the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.

The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.

COMMENT:  I'm sure those were angry letters.  You can see North Korea and Iran just quivering.  They know that The One will do nothing except send more negotiators, so why should they care?

August 28, 2009   Permalink

GET 'EM, DICK! - AT 6:21 P.M. ET:  I've always felt that Dick Cheney was the victim of a modern-day McCarthyism, far worse than the original.  He always struck me as a devoted public servant.  You can agree or disagree with him - that's fair - but his sense of service is remarkable.

Like the man he is, he is striking back at this administration's behavior in what used to be called the War on Terror.  Fox News reports:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday said the Obama administration should be debriefing CIA interrogators about keeping the country safe rather than trying to punish them for doing their jobs.

In an exclusive interview taped to air this weekend on "FOX News Sunday," Cheney called the Justice Department probe of interrogators an "outrageous political act" that will do long-term damage to the United States' capacity to protect the country.

"We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'" Cheney said.

"Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions -- threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They're going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations," Cheney added.

COMMENT:  He is right.  The damage to this country will be immense.  What most Americans won't face, because the media won't let them face it, is that many of those behind this sick crusade want to damage the country.  They are profound leftists caught up in the spirit of the sixties.  They think they are serving the greater good by weakening America. 

By the way, the notion of disbarring lawyers for giving honest opinions will turn the legal profession into a Sovietized branch of the government.  Again, there are people who have no problem with this.  To them, the personal is political and the legal is political.  It's what they've been taught in school.  It's what they practice.

And we must stop them.

August 28, 2009   Permalink

I AM SHOCKED, SHOCKED, AT THIS CHARGE - AT 5:50 P.M. ET:  I know all of you will share my sense of dismay:

Iran is stonewalling the UN nuclear watchdog agency about "possible military dimensions" to its suspect nuclear program, officials said Friday, urging the regime to clarify the mysterious role of a foreign explosives expert and shed light on other issues.

In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it has pressed the Islamic Republic to clarify its uranium enrichment activities and reassure the world that it's not trying to build an atomic weapon.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared solely toward generating electricity. The United States and key allies contend the country is covertly trying to build an atomic weapon.

COMMENT:  Oh, would I love to know about that "foreign explosives expert," especially what country he's from.  But don't despair over this stunning announcement.  The One will simply engage Iran, speak reasonably, say a few words about Islam, and they'll give up their nuclear program...just as we see the Earth cool and the oceans recede. 

Finally, the IAEA is acknowledging the suspicions that sane people have had for years.  The tragedy is that the Iranian program may be too far along for us to stop it, especially given the fact that every signal we send seems to rule out a military strike.

August 28, 2009   Permalink

GIVE 'TIL IT HURTS - AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  Nancy Pelosi is looking for some quick cash, and I know you'll want to help.  So this is published as a public service, via The Politico:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched an urgent effort to raise $100,000 by Monday to help combat what she calls GOP "smears" about health care reform.

"Republican opponents of reform are coming out with one outrageous smear after the next, all aimed at derailing our progress. We must be able to counter their special interest-funded attacks and set the record straight," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democratic supporters.

"That's why I have set a goal of raising $100,000 in grassroots donations before the August FEC fundraising deadline," says Pelosi.

Pelosi and Democrats are clearly worried that they've lost momentum on health care reform this month, and many in her caucus have been crushed by opposition at town hall events.

COMMENT:  But it's all "special interests" who oppose the plan.  Correct?  Apparently a majority of Americans are now considered a "special interest."

August 28, 2009   Permalink

TRUTH TELLING IN EDUCATION - AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  Education in America has been so politicized that getting real information is sometimes tricky.  After all, there are different cultures, dearie, and we must not judge results...

Yeah, right.

Reader Joseph J. Gallick refers us to this piece by John Hechinger of the Wall Street Journal, who gives us the latest report:

High-school students' performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam fell slightly, and the score gap generally widened between lower-performing minority groups and white and Asian-American students, raising questions about the effectiveness of national education reform efforts.

Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.

Many observers Tuesday viewed the flat results of recent years as discouraging in light of a more than 25-year effort to improve U.S. education. "This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "If there's any good news here, I can't find it."

COMMENT:  Please note the first paragraph:  There's a widening gap between "lower-performing minority groups" and "white and Asian-American students."

That's code language.  I always thought Asian Americans were members of a minority, and a minority that still faces discrimination.  But, apparently, if you work hard and do well in school, your minority status magically disappears.

That papers over the very poor practices in many minority communities.  We know, for example, that while Hispanic parents are eager for their children to learn English, so-called "educators" for many years kept the kids down through "bilingual" education that was a disgrace. 

We also know that culture has a dramatic effect on education.  Good schools are built by good families and good attitudes.  The refusal to deal with the social pathologies in some minority communities is directly related to poor performance in school and on tests.  But it's not politically correct to talk about that.

Some years ago I asked a guidance counselor from Los Angeles, who worked in a largely minority school, whether he could predict which parents would come to PTA meetings.  He replied, "Yes, all I have to do is look at grade reports.  It's the parents of the A and B students."  Then he paused and said, "That's why they're A and B students."

In other words, those kids got direction at home.

Unless we start dealing with the cultural mess in our communities, with the indifference of parents, and the excuse machines built by "leaders" and "educators," our drive for better student achievement will fail.

August 28, 2009   Permalink

MESSING UP THE MIDDLE EAST - AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  The president is about to take on the Middle East "peace process" again, from a kind of Jimmy Carter perspective.  The blunders have already begun.

There's a terrific writer on Mideast affairs, Michael Young, who works out of Beirut, and is a straight shooter.  I'm surprised he's survived.  He ridicules the Obama approach, a contradictory, sloppy, poorly thought out approach that we see in almost everything else this administration does:

There is great discomfort these days among those who backed Barack Obama’s “new” approach to the Middle East when he took office 10 months ago. That shouldn’t surprise us. Everything about the president’s shotgun approach to the region, his desire to overhaul all policies from the George W. Bush years simultaneously, without a cohesive strategy binding his actions together, was always going to let the believers down.

And...

As the president’s accelerated pullout from Iraq begins to look increasingly ill-thought-out, as his engagement of Iran and Syria falters, as Arab-Israeli peace looks more elusive than ever, and as Americans express growing doubts about the war in Afghanistan, Obama is discovering that personal charisma is not enough to alter the realities of a Middle East that has whittled down better men than he.

Well, actually, I don't think he's discovering it.  The rest of us are, but he's not.  I don't know if he's capable of discovering that.  He once remarked to a political associate, "I'm gifted."  I think he still buys that line.

On Iraq, the president's policy seems to be contained in one word:

That word is “withdrawal,” and Obama described his Iraqi policy this way in Cairo: “Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”

Those were noble thoughts, but how do they square with other American concerns, such as the containment of Iran, the avoidance of sectarian conflict that might engulf the region, the stability of oil supplies, and much else? Obama feels that an America forever signaling its desire to go home will make things better by making America more likable. That’s not how the Middle East works.

No, I guess not.  On Iran:

...there was always something counterintuitive in lowering the pressure on Iran in the hope that this would generate progress in finding a solution to its nuclear program. Engagement is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end among countless others. Where the Obama administration erred was in not seeing how dialogue would buy Iran more time to advance its nuclear projects, precisely what the Iranians wanted, while breaking the momentum of international efforts to force Tehran to concede something – for example temporary suspension of uranium enrichment.

Chalk up another failure.

He’s virtually folded over Iraq, is stumbling in Afghanistan, and does not occupy himself very much with Lebanon, all places where the Iranians can and are hurting the Americans. By placing most of his chips on engagement, the president has failed to develop a more multifaceted strategy while relinquishing other forms of coercion that could have been effective in Washington’s bargaining with the Islamic Republic.

That's not the kind of letter home you hope to get from the teacher.

Young notes that Obama has confronted Israel over settlements:

However, there is more to Palestinian-Israeli peace than settlements. Obama is exerting considerable political capital to confront Israel, but it may be capital wasted at a moment when Hamas can still veto any breakthrough from the Palestinian side. In other words, Washington is working on a narrow front whereas its failure to weaken Hamas may render the whole enterprise meaningless. But how can the US weaken Hamas when improving relations with the movement’s main regional sponsors, Iran and Syria, remains a centerpiece of American efforts?

Ah, no one thought these things out.

And finally...

Barack Obama’s devotees may imagine that because he spent a few years abroad as a boy, he is well equipped to understand our complicated world. Perhaps he is, but his approach to the greater Middle East, shorn of the soaring rhetoric, has been artless and arrogant. The president is being tied up every which way by his foes, who can plainly see that the Obama vision is an unsystematic one. If ever the US has been close to achieving potentially terminal self-marginalization in the region, it is now.

We award the grade of F- to the administration.  Re-take the course.  Maybe some different instructors are required.  And maybe the student should do less talking, and more learning.

August 28, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:17 A.M. ET:   From the great Andy McCarthy in NRO, commenting on the recent wave of "grovel and appease" tactics toward terrorism coming from the Justice Department:

I suppose that's what happens when control of the Justice Department shifts from the lawyers who spent the last eight years going after the terrorists to the lawyers who spent the last eight years representing the terrorists. That certainly is Change.

COMMENT:  And McCarthy certainly is right.  What we're getting now in what used to be the war on terror is worse than we got from the Clinton administration.  Terrorism?  What terrorism?  Just another law enforcement problem, like littering and double parking. 

We are impressed, though, with the number of articles in the last few days challenging the New Order.  At least our side isn't sleeping, even though it's the end of August. 

This appeasement problem may well get worse, as Justice is now staffed with leftist lawyers from the Ivy League who believe that Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the real world.

August 28, 2009   Permalink 

INADVERTENT TRUTH TELLING CONTINUES - AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  Oh dear, oh dear, what is happening to these Democrats?  Apparently, we learn from private sources, some truth serum was recently slipped into the organic tofu at a Democratic party get together, and it's still having its effect.

We have seen, in the last few days, Howard Dean admit that the reason there's no tort reform in the Dem health plan is the power of the trial lawyers in the party.  We have seen hot-tempered Representative Pete Stark of California call moderates in the party "brain dead," reflecting the real view of the party's radical left.  And now a Dem member of Congress from Colorado admits what the Obama administration has refused to admit, that some people are going to get hurt by her party's health plan, including Medicare recipients, who've been told most of their lives that the Democratic Party would take care of them:

Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday.

Markey has repeatedly said during the August congressional recess that Medicare spending needs to be reined in to help pay for reforming the broader health-care system.

"There's going to be some people who are going to have to give up some things, honestly, for all of this to work," Markey said at a Congress on Your Corner event at CSU. "But we have to do this because we're Americans."

Say what?  We're Americans, and that's why we have to do this?  Will someone please explain the relationship there?

And if we all have "give up some things," why does the "all" never include those who benefit from the corrupt malpractice system, which costs the nation between $60-billion and $200-billion a year?

The truth is coming out, bit by bit. 

But Rasmussen is also reporting that attitudes toward the Democratic plan have stabilized, with 53% of respondents opposed, 43% in favor.  Hasn't changed much in a few weeks.  Rasmussen also reports, though, that those opposed are far, far more passionate than those in favor:

As has been true since the debate began, those opposed to the congressional overhaul feel more strongly about the legislation than supporters. Forty-three percent (43%) now Strongly Oppose the legislation while 23% Strongly Favor it. Those figures, too, are similar to results from earlier in August.

COMMENT:  Our national "leaders" come back from their recess within days.  Then the combat really begins.  I'm concerned that 43% still support this corrupt farce.  That is enough of a base on which the liberal Dems can build.  We have to drive that number down, and one way to do it is to come up with thoughtful, practical and calming alternatives.

August 28, 2009   Permalink

THURSDAY,  AUGUST 27,  2009

THE CLASS OF THE HOUSE - AT 10:24 P.M. ET:  The warm feelings within the Democratic Party are something to behold.  The loyalty, the comradeship, the mutual respect.  Consider this scene:

WASHINGTON -- A key House liberal suggested Thursday that party moderates who've pushed for changes in health care legislation are "brain dead" and out for insurance company campaign donations.

Moderate Blue Dog Democrats "just want to cause trouble," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

"They're for the most part, I hate to say brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process," Stark told reporters on a conference call.

COMMENT:  Now, it's true that Pete Stark is one of the most volatile members of the House, known even for scuffling with other members.  But calling colleagues in your party "brain dead" is not endearing, and reveals the utter bigotry of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.  To this crowd, anyone who disagrees or even asks questions is "stupid." 

And yet, that wing controls almost all the committee chairmanships in the House, and most in the Senate. 

We are living in ugly times, presided over by ugly people.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION BULLETIN - AT 6:13 P.M. ET:  French experts are swinging into action against a major threat to our civilization, our way of life, our deepest beliefs:

France's consumer affairs minister will meet a director of Apple France for talks on Friday after half a dozen cases in which iPhones are said to have spontaneously exploded or cracked up.

Herve Novelli will meet Apple France's commercial director Michel Coulomb to discuss the incidents, which are being investigated by France's competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog, the DGCCRF, the finance ministry said.

They will "examine what steps to take in response to the DGCCRF's questions about the implosion of these devices, and what measures the agency could take," said a statement from the ministry.

Novelli will also remind the US technology giant of its general safety obligations towards consumers.

COMMENT:  I for one will sleep better tonight knowing that Herve Novelli is out there protecting the West. 

Charles de Gaulle is smiling down.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

WHITE HOUSE TIN EARS - AT 6:08 P.M. ET:  A recreation report from Martha's Vineyard:

After a mid-August trip to America's national parks and a weeklong vacation on Martha's Vineyard, President Obama plans ...

... to take a little more time away from the office next week.

Obama will head to Camp David on Wednesday, Sept. 2, and stay through the weekend, White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters in a Thursday briefing.

Joking that it may have been "wishful thinking" to suggest Obama's current trip out of Washington would coincide with a news-free week, Burton quipped that the president needs a "break from his vacation."

COMMENT:  There are no words.

August 27, 2009    Permalink

ANOTHER LOW - AT 5:54 P.M. ET:  Maybe the president's vacation among the liberal elites isn't going down too well with the public.  Gallup registered another new low for Mr. Obama today.  According to Gallup, only 50% of Americans now approve of Obama's performance, while 43% disapproves. 

The president is in trouble.  He still has a strong base of support, especially in minority communities and faculty lounges, but that base is dwindling.  At the same time, aside from pushing an unpopular health-care program, he's pushing a dismantling of the war on terror and an investigation into those who kept us safe after 9-11.  How popular is that?  Rasmussen reports:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters disagree with the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the treatment and possible torture of terrorists during the Bush administration, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirty-six percent (36%) agree with Attorney General Eric Holder’s naming of a veteran prosecutor to probe the CIA’s handling of terrorists under the previous administration. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. 

And...

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats now support the investigation of the CIA, while 70% of Republicans and 54% of voters not affiliated with either party are opposed.

Poll after poll shows that the president is losing the independents, the key to political dominance.  It's too early to call Obama a one-term president, but we can dream.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

THE BODY ISN'T EVEN COLD - AT 10:22 A.M. ET:   Look, it's politics.  Kennedy is gone.  They'll bury him at Arlington on Saturday.  As we said yesterday, the race to succeed him has already started.  In fact, it's probably been going on for months.  The Politico covers:

The course of the Senate race, however, may be determined by the intentions of other Kennedy family members who may have an interest in succeeding the patriarch— with his widow, Vicki, and his nephew, former Democratic Rep. Joseph Kennedy II, most often mentioned as possible contenders.

I don't know.  Is the brand still that hot?  Some think it is:

“They’re not merely the shoe to drop. They’re the whole shoe store,” said Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry. “The race doesn’t begin until they declare whether they’re in or out. If one of them runs, they’d suck up all of the oxygen in the room.”

And some think it isn't:

Earlier this year, Caroline Kennedy withdrew from consideration for the vacant Senate seat in New York after receiving negative press while testing the waters. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Mark Shriver recently lost campaigns in Maryland.  Businessman Chris Kennedy recently turned down recruitment efforts for him to run for the Senate in Illinois.

I lean toward the second position.  I think recent history shows the Kennedy brand is fading.  All political brands do.  The Roosevelt name really didn't last very long after FDR's death, although the behavior of some of his kids didn't help.  And there's no great public wanting of another Bush.  The Longs of Louisiana are history.  Americans, after love affairs with families, turn away from dynasties.

So we'll wait for the list of candidates.  No one stands out as obvious.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

AND IN THE REAL WORLD - AT 9:25 A.M. ET:  There's so much economic hype coming out of the White House, it's hard to know what's really happening...unless you go to good sources.  What's happening is grim:

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

The underemployed, and those who have given up, are the real story here.  We can easily have a jobless recovery, with a lot of hurt for those this administration claims to care about. 

Meanwhile, the bonuses on Wall Street are flowing again, into the millions, and even into the tens of millions.  We've said before that these people will never learn, and that they'll go back to doing exactly what they did before, leaving the public and their shareholders to pick up the tab.  But they write big checks to political campaigns, which is why they often get away with it.  They give free enterprise a bad name.

And here's some further sobering economic news:

NEW YORK (AP) -- The government agency that guarantees you won't lose your money in a bank failure may need a lifeline of its own.

The coffers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have been so depleted by the epidemic of collapsing financial institutions that analysts warn it could sink into the red by the end of this year.

Hey, welcome to the recovery.  Plan your trip to Martha's Vineyard now.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  I didn't think we'd ever be quoting Howard Dean here for our quote of the day, but occasionally even the daffiest among us make sense.  Dean, former Democratic national chairman, governor of Vermont, and a physician, was at a town meeting discussing health care, with Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia, one of the real basement-level Dems in Congress, a real bad piece of work.  But a truth came out.  From the Washington Examiner:

Whatever else he said Wednesday evening at the town hall hosted by Rep. Jim Moran, D-VA, former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean let something incredibly candid slip out about President Obama's health-care reform bill in Congress.

Asked by an audience member why the legislation does nothing to cap medical malpractice class-action lawsuits against doctors and medical institutions (aka "Tort reform"), Dean responded by saying: “The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the plain and simple truth.”

Dean is a former physician, so he knows about skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance rates, and the role of the trial lawyers in fueling the "defensive medicine" approach among medical personnel who order too many tests and other sometimes unneeded procedures "just to be sure" and to protect themselves against litigation.

COMMENT:  Well, at least it comes out.  The issue of malpractice reform should be getting much more attention.  Reforming the tort system could possibly save upwards of $200-billion a year, but it won't be done for exactly the reason Dean stated. 

And then the Dems have the nerve to try to sell their health-care package as true "reform," when it lacks one of reform's most important elements.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

AMERICA AT RISK - AT 8:05 A.M. ET: - Part II:  Very rarely do we do two-part posts, but national security is critically important.  Below we reported on a fine piece by Michael Goodwin.  In today's Wall Street Journal, Dan Henninger continues the theme - that Obama is damaging the national security of the United States:

Shakespeare wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” As we know, that didn’t happen. Four hundred years later, they’re killing us with the smothering pillow of hyper-proceduralism. Now the lawyers are about to smother the war on terror.

And...

In a May speech at the National Archives, President Obama, mirroring Kenny MacAskill's remarks, said we had to "update our institutions" to deal with terrorism but "do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process."

That "update" is upon us. The smothering pillows have arrived.

Attorney General Holder named Connecticut prosecutor John Durham to conduct an investigation into whether interrogations by CIA employees warrant a criminal inquiry. It has been shown repeatedly the past 25 years that an office of independent counsel or special prosecutor nearly always puts in motion an Inspector Javert-like hunt for an indictable defendant.

And...

The day of Mr. Holder's announcement, CIA Director Leon Panetta said his agency received "multiple written assurances its methods were lawful." It's now clear that even playing by the rules cannot stop erosion by legal challenge.

But erosion is exactly what the left wants.  It wants the war on terror destroyed, as it wanted the war in Vietnam destroyed.  It believes America is the cause of evil, rather than the opponent of evil.

To supervise future interrogations, the administration is creating something called a High Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Interrogation techniques will be limited to those in the Army Field Manual or that are "noncoercive," which suggests more constrained than a big-city police department...

...This means that the class of person who blows up skyscrapers, American embassies or the USS Cole would spend less time under a bare light bulb than a domestic robbery suspect.

Finally...

The message of...the Holder decision is that the will born in the wake of 9/11 is waning. The war on terror is being downgraded to not much more than tough talk. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranians, not yet converts to the West's caricature of its own legal traditions, will take note. In time, they will be back. The second war on terror is in the future.

COMMENT:  I'm glad to see that some journalists are speaking out.  But how many?  On television, Fox will certainly join the combat on the correct side.  But CNN?  NBC?  Come on.  They think this new administration is just fine, "enlightened" the way people who attend Manhattan dinner parties (organic) are enlightened.

They will weep crocodile tears the next time Americans are victims of mass killing.  And then, a day later, they will be back at the same old stand, looking for the "root cause," and finding that it was us.

August 27, 2009   Permalink

AMERICA AT RISK - AT 7:45 A.M. ET - Part I:  With America distracted by the health-care debate, the death of Senator Kennedy and the president's ice-cream tastes at Martha's Vineyard, we forget that this administration is slowly dismantling the war on terror.  Michael Goodwin of The New York Daily News is following our new national insecurity policy:

Pull together the loose threads of recent events and President Obama's vision for fighting the war on terror becomes one very scary picture. Scary, that is, for innocent Americans.

From interrogation to adjudication, the White House plan offers more legal protections to terror suspects and less to our nation. It's a kinder, gentler tilt that favors bad guys and raises the risk of attack at home because it compromises national security to promote other concerns and values.

And...

One thread is Attorney General Eric Holder's misguided decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether CIA agents broke the law in aggressive questioning of suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan...

...Another scary thread is the plan to take the job of terror questioning away from the CIA and move it to a new group in the FBI. The move is part of an effort to treat terror as just another law enforcement problem, a downgrade that led the White House to drop the words "war on terror." ....

...Scary thread No. 3 is the plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and move some of the worst terrorists to American prisons and give some detainees trials in civilian courts. Playing by the legal rule book raises the chance mad killers will walk free because of the vast defendant protections built into our criminal justice system.

Finally...

Obama often insists that keeping Americans safe is his most important duty, yet his actions and those of Holder say otherwise. By tying our nation's hands against an enemy that knows no rules or boundaries, the President is adding to the already considerable chance we will suffer a national catastrophe.

COMMENT:  And you can be sure that, if we do suffer another national catastrophe, Obama will blame it on BUSH (!!). 

Will the American people wake up?  I have to believe they will.  They woke up to Carter.  They rejected McGovern.  But years have passed, and a new generation, miseducated in our leftist universities, has grown.  They will be critical to determining our fate. 

August 27, 2009   Permalink