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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 11:19:38 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Is Cheney keeping Obama relatively "honest"? By Paul Power Line Andy McCarthy made a shrewd observation in response to Jack Goldsmith's discussion about the extent to which President Obama has largely adopted the anti-terrorism policies of President Bush -- an observation that is particularly relevant following today's "dueling speeches" of Obama and Dick Cheney. Andy writes: << I think there's a critical question that needs asking -- and it goes to a big plus for Vice Presdient Cheney that should be entered into the mix. Clearly, President Obama has reversed himself on many national security policies, and that is all to the good. But on how many would he have reversed himself if the Veep had not been out there making the case?. . . As it happens, I think Obama HAS made us less safe -- I don't see how Jack or anyone else can argue otherwise until someone satisfactorily explains such matters as (a) releasing Binyam Mohammed, (b) the decision to plead Ali al-Marri out for a song, and (c) the lunatic effort to relocate trained alien terrorists in the U.S. -- to live freely and at taxpayer largesse despite U.S. immigration law that renders them inadmissible. Nevertheless, Obama has made us LESS less safe than he otherwise would have precisely because Cheney has been making the counter-case and has been incredibly effective doing so. >> I would like to believe -- and I find it plausible -- that Obama has maintained much of Bush's anti-terrorism policies for the reasons Goldsmith cited in his article and, in particular because "the Bush policies reflect longstanding executive branch positions" and "the presidency invariably gives its occupants a sober outlook on problems of national security." However, I can't state with confidence that Goldsmith's explanations are correct and sufficient. Therefore, I join with Andy in saluting the former vice president's efforts to hold Obama's feet to the fire. powerlineblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 11:22:47 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Dueling Speeches, Part III By John Power Line One of the most dishonest moments in Obama's speech came when he assured us that detaining terrorists at Guantanamo Bay has undermined our security: << Guantanamo became a symbol that helped Al Qaida recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo, likely, created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. So the record is clear. Rather than keeping us safer, the president at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. >> The "record is clear?" The record is that there were no successful attacks after 9/11. What "record" can Obama possibly be talking about? And what evidence is there that Guantanamo "created...terrorists around the world?" On its face, it is absurd to think that anyone will join an organization that chops off people's heads and gouges out their eyes with spoons because he is outraged that at Guantanamo Bay--what? A female interrogator sat on a detainee's lap? It is jihadist ideology, not a belief that Americans are meanies, that draws recruits to al Qaeda and like-minded groups. (In fact, jihadis tend to think that Americans are softies.) Moreover, while there are no data on terrorist recruitment, one thing we know about extremist organizations is that it is success, not failure, that brings adherents to their banners. After 9/11, al Qaeda has been dogged by failure, defeat and the loss of most of its key operatives through death or capture. Obama, in short, just made up his purportedly empirical claim that Guantanamo Bay made the U.S. less secure. It is another example of his conviction that he can slip any sort of howler past the American people. powerlineblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 11:33:24 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Dueling Speeches, Part IV By John Power Line A principal theme of Barack Obama's speech today was that the Bush administration had shredded the Constitution and imperiled the "rule of law." Obama delivered his speech at the National Archives, before an inscription that said "the Constitution of the United States of America" and just a few steps away from the Constitution itself. His speech, among many other attacks on the Bush administration (as I noted earlier tonight), repeatedly suggested that the Bush administration had been lawless. He claimed that his administration had restored the rule of law. There is much that could be said in response to this charge, but let's start with one basic and obvious point. The Bush administration went to great lengths to comply with then-existing law. Operating in a zone where authorities were lacking due to the unprecedented nature of the conflict, the Bush administration sought legal advice when it encountered a gray area, as in the case of harsh interrogation methods. And so far as is known, the administration followed that legal advice and did not overstep its bounds. Moreover, when Bush administration anti-terror policies were challenged in the courts, the administration won much more often than it lost. And when it lost, it altered its policies to conform to court rulings, no matter how questionable they may have been. How, exactly, is that lawless? But here is the clincher: the three major cases that the Bush administration lost in the Supreme Court were Rasul v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush. It was those decisions that caused anti-Bush fanatics to become triumphalists, advancing the idea that Bush's policies had been decisively repudiated. And yet, if you review the history of those cases, most of the federal judges who addressed the issues sided with the administration. In Rasul, the district court judge upheld the administration's practices, as did a 3-0 Court of Appeals panel. The Supreme Court went 6-3 the other way. In Hamdan, the district court went for Hamdan, the Court of Appeals reversed 3-0, and the Supreme Court found for Hamdan 5-3. In Boumediene, the district court and the Court of Appeals (3-0) upheld the practices at issue, but the Supreme Court reversed 5-4. So, do the math: of 38 votes cast by federal judges on the constitutionality of Bush administration detainee policies, in the cases the administration lost, 21 voted to uphold those policies, 17 to overturn them. How "lawless" could the administration's most controversial policies have been, if a majority of federal judges who analyzed them concluded they were lawful and constitutional? What was going on here, of course, was that the liberal majority changed the law. The Bush administration followed the law as it has existed throughout our history, so naturally it was upheld by the lower courts which evaluated the policies in light of existing law. But a narrow majority of the Supreme Court decided to liberalize the law by according detainees "rights" that had never before enjoyed, in any conflict from 1791 until the present. One can reasonably ask: who was lawless here? Was it the Bush administration, which followed existing precedent, or was it the Supreme Court justices who decided to impose their own liberal policy preferences, with no evident support in the language of the Constitution or in over 200 years of jurisprudence? For Barack Obama to repeat the canard that the Bush administration shredded the Constitution, operated outside the law, etc., is false and dishonorable. It is also damaging to our country. Barack Obama is slandering his own government--his own nation, really--for political advantage. This is one more in a growing list of contemptible actions by our new President. powerlineblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 11:50:09 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Obama's crock By Scott Power Line In his speech at the National Archives yesterday, Barack Obama gave a full-throated, campaign-style version of the left-wing critique of the Bush administration's national security policies. As John pointed out in his excellent dueling speeches series of posts, the speech cannot withstand serious scrutiny. It is a crock. Where was the brilliant Lincolnian rhetoric Professor Goldsmith finds in Obama's deep thoughts? Where the Rooseveltian diplomacy? Perhaps it was in the ascription of irrational "fear" to the Bush administration and "foresight" to himself that Obama ascended the heights Goldsmith finds in Obama's musings. Professor Goldsmith, is this what you were talking about? The contrast Obama drew between Bush administration policies and the Constitution was particularly disgusting. To the vision of his own high-mindedness Obama added the inevitable (for him) autobiographical element: <<< I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights -are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world. I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn of their truth when I lived as a child in a foreign land. My own American journey was paved by generations of citizens who gave meaning to those simple words - "to form a more perfect union." I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never - ever - turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience [sic] sake. >>> We draw one hard one hard and fast rule from this passage. If old man Obama apppears in a speech, Obama is losing an argument. Looking back at his race speech, we can deduce the same rule from any reference to Grandma Dunham. Here the argument Obama is losing is to Vice President Cheney. But Obama's real problem is with fellow Democrats who reflect the "fear" of their constituents regarding the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo. There aren't many people on the mainland who fancy having the Guantanamo detainees for their neighbors. They "foresee" problems with that. So run that argument by us one more time, President Obama. Why are we closing Guantanamo? I forget: <<< For over seven years, we have detained hundreds of people at Guantanamo. During that time, the system of Military Commissions at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years. Instead of bringing terrorists to justice, efforts at prosecution met setbacks, cases lingered on, and in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the entire system. Meanwhile, over five hundred and twenty-five detainees were released from Guantanamo under the Bush Administration. Let me repeat that: two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office and ordered the closure of Guantanamo. There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law - a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. >>> Obama alludes to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Boumediene granting Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus. Was the Bush administration's opposition to Boumediene's claim lawless or unreasonable? Not at all. In opposing Boumediene's lawsuit, the Bush administration relied in part on the Court's decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In Eisentrager the Court held that nonresident enemy aliens have no right to seek relief in the federal courts in wartime. The Court did not expressly overrule Eisentrager in Boumediene, but Boumediene cannot fairly be reconciled with Eisentrager. The distinctions drawn by the majority between Eisentrager and Boumediene in part IV of Justice Kennedy's opinion are remarkably unpersuasive. The unpersuasiveness of this crucial part of the opinion shows the Court, rather than the Bush administration, to have acted arbitrarily on the point in issue. Justice Scalia noted in his dissent that the Court's decision was difficult to reconcile with American history as well as its own precedent: "The category of prisoner comparable to these detainees are not the Eisentrager criminal defendants, but the more than 400,000 prisoners of war detained in the United States alone during World War II. Not a single one was accorded the right to have his detention validated by a habeas corpus action in federal court--and that despite the fact that they were present on U. S. soil." Putting all this to one side, why is it a good idea to bring the Guantanamo detainees to the United States? "Rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security." Oh, yeah, I remember now. Bringing these terrorists to American soil will make us safer. How did the Bush administration pull the wool over our eyes for so long? A few more questions come to mind. Does Obama think that detainees of the American military held outside the United States in facilities other than Guantanamo have a right of access to the federal courts? How about the Taliban detained by American forces at Bagram? Will Obama do the old man proud in extending habeas corpus to the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or will Obama throw the old man under the bus? powerlineblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 12:14:57 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Still Politicizing Our Security Posted by David Limbaugh May 21, 2009 06:57 PM Democrats are outraged that former Vice President Dick Cheney is publicly defending the Bush administration's policies regarding the war on terror. How dare he defend the Bush record in the face of the partisan slander that began during Bush's first term and continues to this day unabated? Why, he's demeaning the office he serves. It must have slipped their minds that radical environmentalism's high priest, former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, has gallivanted the world over, maliciously excoriating the Bush administration. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there was ever the slightest complaint from the Democratic decorum police. Does this ring a bell? "He betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place." How convenient, also, for Democrats to overlook that Cheney didn't start any of this. He isn't going about the country leveling unprovoked attacks against the administration. He is responding to Democratic attacks and thuggish threats to criminalize Bush administration policies. But it's not Gore's attacks to which Cheney is responding. He's reacting to the far more current but equally vicious (though subtler) attacks against the Bush administration by President Barack Obama himself. Never has a sitting president been as obsessed with scapegoating the policies of the preceding administration as Barack Obama. We are four months into his administration, folks, and he is still sneering at -- and blaming -- Bush and Cheney for our economic woes and national security policies. In his much-ballyhooed national security apologia Thursday, which ended up serving as rebuttal fodder for Mr. Cheney's stemwinder at the American Enterprise Institute, Obama lashed out at the previous administration, because he doesn't dare blame congressional Democrats for refusing to fund his reckless scheme to close Gitmo without any plan to house the detainees. "We're cleaning up something that is, quite simply, a mess -- a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my administration is forced to deal with on a constant, almost daily, basis, and that consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country." I can't imagine President Bush spewing such nastiness at his predecessor or at any of the other Democrats who ceaseless bashed him -- precisely because he didn't. But Democrats, evincing their virtuosity at the fine arts of psychological projection and hypocrisy, reserved their outrage for Cheney, not Obama, ignoring that Obama and his party are always the ones drawing first blood. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum says the charge that Democrats are playing politics with national security is "a smear." Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said: "I've never heard a more slanderous, disgraceful performance by a former vice president or president than I just listened to. The idea that Dick Cheney would suggest that the Obama administration was putting, for political purposes, at risk the security of the United States of America and lives of American people is outrageous." No, Bob(s), what's outrageous is that the charges ring true. Why else, besides politics, would Obama and other Democrats have lambasted and discredited the Bush administration for years over its WOT policies and then adopt many of those very same policies, from extraordinary rendition to the NSA warrantless surveillance program to recognizing that the laws of war permit the U.S. to capture enemy combatants and detain them without trial until the conclusion of hostilities to the use of cosmetically modified military commissions, which Obama had earlier called a "legal black hole"? If rank partisanship hasn't been at play here, how does one reconcile the Democrats' demagoguery against Bush to close Gitmo come hell or high water with congressional Democrats' present refusal to fund Gitmo's closure until Obama presents a plan concerning placement of the prisoners? Apart from recognizing it as a partisan witch hunt, how do you explain why the Obama-Holder Justice Department condemned enhanced interrogation techniques as torture, to the point that it considered prosecuting Bush officials and its Justice Department lawyers for authorizing and recommending them, yet endorsed the Bush position on torture just weeks ago, in Demjanjuk v. Holder? How do you explain the approval of these very techniques by the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when briefed by the CIA and the Bush administration? And the money question: If, indeed, Barack Obama is so convinced that enhanced interrogation methods violate our values and the rule of law, how do you rationally explain his reservation of the authority to reinstitute the practice? Democratic strategists are free to dramatize their manufactured indignation over the charge of subordinating our national security for political gain, but their chickens are coming home to roost. Their inconsistent, untenable, reckless positions have been exposed, and they've tied themselves in knots. How else do you explain Obama's unhinged national security speech Thursday? davidlimbaugh.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 12:52:55 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Krauthammer’s Take NRO Staff The Corner From last night’s “All-Stars.” On Obama’s speech at the National Archives: <<< Well, Obama really didn't really want to give this speech. He had to. I mean, he wasn't elected to be a national security president. He is a domestic president, and that's his agenda. But his hand was forced because there was an open rebellion in Congress over the Guantanamo issue. The senators wanted a decision, and he gave them an essay. The senators wanted a president, and he gave them a professor. What he did was he outlined the five categories of prisoners in Guantanamo, an interesting exercise that you would expect out of a graduate student, in which you have got those who can be tried in regular courts and those who have to be in military tribunals, and those that will not be taken by allies, as if any allies are taking them, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, a freshman in college could tell you that. And then he says the fifth category, those whom you cannot try, either because the crimes are committed but the evidence is tainted, or because they have not yet committed a crime but they sure as hell will if released, there are those whom you cannot try and you cannot release. </b>And then he says, "And that's the really difficult issue." No kidding. I mean, who would have thought that was the problem about these prisoners? Of course everybody knows that. So what was his answer? He doesn't have an answer. What he says is he is going to work with Congress and work out a framework of detaining these people. OK, but it's no answer at all. And what you saw in the reaction in the Senate and the House is they were not extremely happy. But all that took a hit and said OK, we're encouraged, and we're waiting on details. Look, rhetorically, it was a brilliant speech. He got around the issue. He dressed it up as a defender of the constitution and everything that's American. But in essence, it was a punting, and it was essentially obscuring the absence of a decision in a lot of excellent, interesting, but in the end futile rhetoric, I would say. >>> On the Obama administration’s refusal so far to release the “effectiveness memos:” <<< Well, this is a really important challenge to the president. And that, I think, was the heart of the Cheney speech. He spoke almost entirely about interrogations because he has been excoriated about that, and the people who supported him in the administration are having their reputation, their livelihoods, even their freedom threatened as a result of those actions. So he feels he is obligated to rise in defense. And I thought his speech was strong, decisive, unapologetic, and convincing. On the issue here, he is saying, look, the administration is making a big deal of its transparency. "If I don't release information, I'll tell you why." So tell us why you're going to release the memos that you know are going to embarrass the Bush administration, and describe unpleasant interrogations. Why do you not release memos which might show how these interrogations helped save American lives? And we know from Obama's own director of national intelligence, he has said in writing that these interrogations yielded information of high importance about Al Qaeda. So let's see them. And I think Republicans ought to focus on this and not on Pelosi resigning. I want to keep her in office twisting slowly in the wind. But this is an issue that Republicans ought to rally on. Release the memos. >>> corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (71994)	5/23/2009 1:27:10 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Why No Word Of Terror Bust From Obama? By MICHELLE MALKIN Investor's Business Daily Editorials Posted Friday, May 22, 2009 4:20 PM PT President Obama's speech last week on homeland security was 6,072 words long. Curiously, he chose not to spare an "a," "and" or "uh" on the New York City terror bust that dominated headlines the morning of his Thursday address. Did the teleprompter run out of room? After a yearlong investigation launched by the Bush administration, the feds cracked down on a ring of murder-minded black Muslim jailhouse converts preparing to bomb two Bronx synagogues and "eager to bring death to Jews." They also planned to attack a New York National Guard air base in Newburgh, N.Y., where the suspects lived and worshiped at a local mosque. Not one word from the president on the jihadists' intended victims, motives or means. No comfort for the reported targets in the Big Apple, still raw from the Scare Force One rattling that so vainly and recklessly simulated 9/11. No condemnation for the accused plotters. Why? Because doing so would force Obama to abandon his cottony "extremist ideology" euphemisms and confront the concrete truth. To borrow one of our obtuse president's favorite cliches, "let me be perfectly clear" about the reality Obama won't touch: America faces an ongoing Islamic jihad at home and abroad. Not merely "man-caused." But Koran-inspired. Yet, Obama refuses to spell out the centuries-old roots of the war that he claims he'll win faster, better and cleaner than any of his predecessors. Moreover, his push to transfer violent Muslim warmongers into our civilian prisons — where they have proselytized and plotted with impunity — will only make the problem worse. A brief refresher course for the left's amnesiacs about the festering jihadi virus in our jails and overseas: In 2005, Bush officials busted a terrorist plot to attack infidels at military and Jewish sites in Los Angeles on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 or the Jewish holy days. It was devised by militant Muslim converts of Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam") who had sworn allegiance to violent jihad at California's New Folsom State Prison. Convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla converted to Islam during a stint at a Broward County, Fla., jail and reportedly fell in with terrorist recruiters after his release. Convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid converted to Islam with the help of an extremist imam in a British prison. Aqil Collins, a self-confessed jihadist turned FBI informant, converted to Islam while doing time in a California juvenile detention center. At a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, he went on to train with one of the men accused of kidnapping and beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In East Texas, inmates were recruited with a half-hour videotape featuring the anti-Semitic rants of California-based Imam Muhammad Abdullah, who claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the Israeli and U.S. governments. Federal corrections officials told congressional investigators during the Bush years "that convicted terrorists from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were put into their prisons' general population, where they radicalized inmates and told them that terrorism was part of Islam." Despite the insistence of Obama and the Jihadi Welcome Wagon that our civilian prisons are perfectly secure, convicted terrorist aid Lynne Stewart helped jailed 1993 World Trade Center bombing/N.Y. landmark bombing plot mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation. U.S. Bureau of Prison reports have warned for years that our civilian detention facilities are major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists. There are still not enough legitimately trained and screened Muslim religious leaders to counsel an estimated 9,000 U.S. prison inmates who demand Islamic services. Under the Bush administration, the federal prison bureaucracy had no policy in place to screen out extremist, violence-advocating Islamic chaplains; failed to properly screen the many contractors and volunteers who help provide religious services to Islamic inmates; and shied away from religious profiling. What's Obama's plan to prevent the jihadi virus from spreading? Washing hands and covering mouths won't work for this disease. Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc ibdeditorials.com