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Obama tells
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Obama Warns Netanyahu |
Obama has sent a message to Benjamin Netanyahu demanding
that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation
against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who
met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu's envoy visited Washington and met with National
Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.
The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals
U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is
important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find
themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.
Obama
did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, scheduled for
next Monday, to deliver his message, but rather sent it ahead of time
with his envoy.
It may be assumed that Obama is disturbed by the
positions Netanyahu expressed before his election vis-a-vis Tehran - for
example, Netanyahu's statement that "If elected I pledge that Iran will
not attain nuclear arms, and that includes whatever is necessary for
this statement to be carried out." After taking office, on Holocaust
Memorial Day Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to
carry out another holocaust."
Netanyahu and Ehud Barak
(Defense) do not oppose American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe
it should be conducted within a limited window of time, making it clear
to Iran that if it does not stop its nuclear program, severe sanctions
will be imposed and other alternatives will be considered.
The
American concern that Israel will attack Iran came up as early as last
year, while president George W. Bush was still in office. As first
reported in Haaretz, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Barak made a
number of requests from Bush during the latter's visit to Jerusalem,
which were interpreted as preparations for an aerial attack on Iran's
nuclear facilities.
Following the Bush visit to Jerusalem, about
a year ago the previous administration sent two senior envoys, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and the former
U.S. national intelligence chief Mike McConnell to demand that Israel
not attack Iran.
The previous administration also gave the
message greater weight through Mullen's public statement that an Israeli
attack on Iran would endanger the entire region. Since that statement,
Mullen has met a number of times with his Israeli counterpart, Israel
Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Aluf Benn,
Haaretz |
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Obama's Willingness To Attack America's Honor |
Paul Mirengoff writes that Obama has
reversed himself and decided to
appeal a court decision ordering the release of photos showing U.S.
troops abusing prisoners. Suddenly, it has occurred to Obama that
the pictures would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and endanger
U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama did not see this
problem a month ago. At that time, the White House said it would
not oppose the release of dozens of photos from military investigations
of alleged misconduct. Apparently, it took expressions of concern
from American commanders in the war zones to move Obama to change his
mind.
It's encouraging to know that, ultimately, there is a
limit on how far Obama will go to launch or facilitate attacks America's
honor. That limit apparently is reached when generals tell him
American troops may well die. It would be more encouraging if a
lesser showing would suffice.
What's most discouraging, perhaps,
is that the Holder Justice Department is so firmly under the control of
leftist ideologues, who care little if at all about either American
honor or the safety of American troops, that it would push for the
disclosure of photos that even Obama eventually concluded would harm
America. For it was the Justice Department that decided in the
first instance not to appeal the ruling requiring release of the photos. |
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Obama Considers Detaining Terror Suspects
Indefinitely |
Obama is
weighing plans to detain some terror
suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a
plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for
prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The proposal being
floated with members of Congress is another indication of Obama's
struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing
security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration
practices he has harshly criticized.
The administration's
internal deliberations on how to deal with Guantanamo detainees are
continuing, as the White House wrestles with how to fulfill the
president's promise to shutter the controversial prison. But some
elements of the plans are emerging as the administration consults with
key members of Congress, as well as with military officials, about what
to do with Guantanamo detainees.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.),
who met this week with White House Counsel Greg Craig to discuss the
administration's plans, said among the proposals being studied is
seeking authority for indefinite detentions, with the imprimatur of some
type of national-security court.
The idea of a new national
security court has been discussed widely in legal circles, including by
Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Neal Katyal, a
former Georgetown law professor and now Obama Justice Department
official.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at a hearing last
month, hinted at the administration's deliberations, saying that there
were "50 to 100 [detainees] probably in that ballpark who we cannot
release and cannot trust, either in Article 3 [civilian] courts or
military commissions." |
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Obama's Tincture of Lawlessness |
George F.
Will, writing in The Washington Post reminds us that anyone, said T.S.
Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could
govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal
structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama
administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional
values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.
In February,
California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion
budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the
state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and
incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last
year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and
bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."
But the
Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month
from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration
has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded,
it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.
Such a
federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to
a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda
-- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the
federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor
income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local
governments. The federal government is.
Continue reading
here . . . |
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Obama And The Alternative Energy Fiasco |
It's
only a matter of time before Obama's vast popularity
runs aground on his energy policies. In the name of saving the planet
from global warming, he has delayed new oil drilling, an action that
will have major political repercussions once the world economy recovers. Instead of using some the stimulus billions to produce more gas and oil,
Obama's wild-eyed supporters dream of "renewable" energy derived from
corn, wind, sunshine, and even grass.
With the appointment of
extremists like climate czar Carol Browner and science adviser John
Holdren, Obama has placed his administration's environmental policy in
the hands of radicals. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar proposes replacing
oil and coal with windmills. Yet Barron's recently reported that America
would need to build 500,000 giant offshore windmills and transmission
lines to produce Salazar's specified 1,900 gigawatts of electricity. In
contrast, oil and gas drilling could provide hundreds of thousands of
solid, well-paying blue-collar jobs. Washington Post economics columnist
Robert Samuelson explains this in "The Bias Against Oil & Gas,"
describing how alternative energy job creation is miniscule compared to
what an expansion of oil production would create. Meanwhile, Rep. Henry
Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have proposed
legislation giving legal standing to allow Americans to sue any company
that produces "greenhouse" gasses.
All of these things are
happening at a time when natural gas is abundant and cheap. The new
technology of horizontal fraccing has made it economically feasible to
drill into vast shale deposits in many states, even famously difficult
ones like Michigan and New York. Many cars could run on natural gas,
much like many buses do already. On a recent trip to Peru, I learned
that most taxicabs have been converted to natural gas for a cost of
about $1,000 each. New technologies continually revive old oil and gas
fields and make new ones economically viable. So it's little more than
socialist Malthusianism to argue that the world is running out of cheap
energy. Science will always find and harness new sources. Even the
liberal New Republic recently admitted that, "Utopian environmentalism
has, to some extent, always promised to heal the alienation wrought by
modernity... it is a form of escapism and disengagement from reality." The extremists scoff at science and would apparently prefer scarcity so
that bureaucratic rationing will enforce a change in American
lifestyles.
Instead of producing more of the cheap, abundant
energy that fueled America's dynamic growth, the extremists who support
and surround Obama dream of drastically cutting American consumption. Many of them would like to see the government force General Motors to
make flimsy little cars that run on electricity (or alternative energy)
at the cost of billions. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club magazine recently
boasted of helping to block construction of 96 coal-fired power plants
and helping to impose a de facto moratorium on all new plants.
Currently, half of the drilling rigs in America are shutdown because of
low oil and gas prices. Most smaller oil companies have suffered severe
damage or even gone bankrupt by their inability to renew loans or gain
credit. Likewise, the majors have few safe options in foreign countries
but would invest heavily in offshore American exploration, if it were
permitted.
So what about the so-called green alternatives?
Continue reading
here . . . |
|
Now There Are Two |
A Virginia congressman, very quietly, has
signed onto a
measure in Congress that would require presidential candidates to verify
their eligibility to hold the highest elected office in the United
States.
WorldNewsDaily earlier reported when freshman Rep. Bill
Posey, R-Fla., filed
H.R.
1503, an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.
According to the Library of Congress' bill-tracking website, H.R.
1503 would "require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for
election to the office of president to include with the committee's
statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate,
together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish
that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the
Office of President under the Constitution."
The plan has been
referred to the House committee on House administration, where it has
remained.
Now, Virginia Republican
Bob Goodlatte has signed
on as a co-sponsor, putting a notice on his website that it's one of the
efforts in which he's joining. |
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Copyright Beckwith 2009
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