May 22, 2009
 

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Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire Yesterday morning, Obama’s terror law speech was profoundly candid. Over and over again, in words that were at times eloquent and at times simple, the president conceded the limitations of the executive branch’s ability to easily or quickly solve some of the very same legal issues that beguiled the Bush Administration for nearly eight years.

During the speech, Obama said, "I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable."

If that isn't the biggest pile of horse manure ever!

For more than two years, Obama has employed teams of lawyers in a dozen states to hide the truth surrounding his birth, college, travel and medical records.  Who does this guy think he's kidding?
Obama To Unveil Peace Plan In Cairo Obama is expected to outline a far-reaching proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement in Cairo next month that will flesh out the Saudi-initiated Arab Peace Plan proposed in 2002 in a way that makes it more palatable to Jerusalem but also requires the Jewish state to make major concessions.

Under the Obama proposal, Palestinian refugees would not be permitted to return to Israel, but they would be permitted to return to the Palestinian state that would arise on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  Those who continue to reside in Arab countries where they have been largely confined to refugee camps for 60 years would be given citizenship of those countries, ending their refugee status.

On the critical question of Jerusalem, Obama will support the Arab demand that Palestinians be permitted to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.  However, the walled Old City at the heart of Jerusalem, where the principal holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are located, would become an international enclave and fly the UN flag.

Update:  Here is a second report stating that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been assured that Obama's new peace plan includes a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.

PA officials told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that the US intends to stand by its policy that East Jerusalem should be the Palestinian capital. Obama is expected to roll out the peace plan in Cairo on 4 June.
 
 
The Palestinian state would be demilitarized, maintaining a significant police force to keep order but not an army that might pose a security threat to Israel.

The pre-Six Day War borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories would be modified, but only by mutually agreed territorial exchanges, not unilateral annexation.

The proposal was reported by the prestigious Arab-language newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, which is published in London.  The paper said the plan would be unveiled by Obama when he gives his much-touted address to the Muslim world in Cairo next month.

Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4 will be a major address to the entire Muslim world, and will not focus exclusively on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  It will aim to rebuild US relations with the Muslim world that were knocked askew following the attacks on September 11, 2001.

I don't see the Israelis going for this deal.  They'd have to give up all claim to Jerusalem.

 Told you!  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel).  The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.
Obama Is Giving Iran The Time It Needs Has Obama inadvertently given Iran the green light to develop an atom bomb?  I only ask because it appears to be the logical conclusion to be drawn from his announcement this week that he is giving Iran until the end of the year to decide whether or not to co-operate with the West over its controversial nuclear program.

In all the furor over MPs' expenses, it is hardly surprising that the implications of Obama's highly revealing comment have gone unnoticed in this country.  But taken at face value, it could have a major impact on how the international crisis over Iran's nuclear program plays out.

Under pressure from a visiting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to explain the latest White House position on Iran, a relaxed Obama remarked: "We should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether [the Iranians] are moving in the right direction."
 

 

 The only problem with this somewhat lackadaisical approach to the most pressing security issue of the modern age is that, come the end of the year, Iran's development of a nuclear weapon will be a fait accompli.

Continue reading here . . . tic, tic, tic . . .
Shredding The Constitution John Hinderaker at Powerline blog reminds us that 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.
Obama's Strategy May God save the United States of America from this kind of leadership that borders on criminal ignorance of the motivating factors of our most deadly enemy.

Hal Lindsey says that when he heard Obama's speech yesterday in which he practically accused the former administration of war crimes, he had to go out into his yard and walk off his anger.

The new president assessed all previous efforts to prevent terrorism against U.S. targets either a waste of time or a criminal enterprise that should cause all Americans to hang their heads in shame.

One wonders if our new president has yet realized who it was he was referring to.  Although he no doubt intended to attack the previous administration, imagine how it must sound to the family of some U.S. soldier killed or maimed in the past seven years.  Was all their suffering for nothing?

What about those members of the armed forces who executed lawful orders that the president now speaks of with such derision?

Brigitte Gabriel combats politically correct notions about the "religion of peace" in "They Must be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How we Can Do It."

"I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe.  I could not disagree more," Obama told the nation in his address from the National Archives.

Obama continued, "As commander in chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation.  What's more, they undermine the rule of law.  They alienate us in the world.  They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America.  They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.  In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts -- they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all."

What, do you think are the odds that American treatment of detainees has any bearing on how al-Qaida treats its American captives?  Before there was Gitmo, there was Danny Pearl.

Continue reading here . . .
Obama’s Different Policy Obama was on TV again.  This time he was delivering an address on national security, terrorism, and the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison at the National Archives in Washington.

Flopping Aces focused on these words:

"...there remains the question of detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people."

"I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face.  We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country.  But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.  Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.  These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States."

"As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people.  Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture -- like other prisoners of war -- must be prevented from attacking us again."

Uh, so Obama believes there ARE in fact people are who are too dangerous to release?
 
 
Other then the fact Obama used a bunch of flowery rhetoric to pretty all this up there isn’t any difference.  When the Commander-in-Chief believes someone to be too dangerous then its ok to hold a person indefinitely.

And people fall for this crap?

Aces loves Geraghty’s take on the speech:

Obama mentioned the conviction of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, but did not mention his sentence.  Upon hearing that an admitted al-Qaeda sleeper-cell member who studied chemical weapons is free to leave prison in 9 to 15 years, this "try them all if we can" may not sound so reassuring to the American people.

Also really central to Obama’s argument is his assertion that Guantanamo Bay "likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained."  How do we know this?  Where do we get figures?  Though I am a skeptic, I’m willing to recognize the possibility that this is true, but how does one even go about proving this?  Is there some secret census of al-Qaeda members?

Obama’s speech was about theory, and even in this circumstance, where a foiled plot to blow up synagogues in the Bronx isn’t even the biggest news of the day, it felt professorial, esoteric, abstract, and strikingly lacking in specifics.  I can only imagine how this will sound when there are bodies in the streets.
FBI Keeps Tabs On TEA Parties In April 2009, David Axelrod, Senior White House Adviser, said, "The 'TEA Party' movement is an unhealthy mutation from public dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policies."

Since when is free speech, as personified by the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party grass-roots citizens movement, unhealthy?  Since the leftward tilt of federal agencies accelerated during the first 100 days of the Barack Obama presidency.

Consider, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has moved far to the left on the political spectrum in record time under Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Consider also the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).  The once fabled and incorruptible FBI is showing signs of becoming a mere "yes man" for the Obama administration.

Evidence for the yes-man charge is found in a recent report by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment (I&A), entitled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."  The report names law-abiding U.S. citizens, who choose not to support the liberal agenda of the Obama administration, as prime subjects for FBI surveillance.

 

 

 This Obama enemies list is a lengthy one, encompassing all "single-issue" advocates, including those who are pro-life, those who are gun owners, those who oppose illegal immigration, those who oppose "same-sex marriages" (such as Miss California), those who support third-party candidates, those who criticize free trade agreements, and, believe it or not, those military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and those veterans still around.

A citizen-taxpayer who falls into several of these categories is even more likely to be targeted.  The FBI appears to be following, in lockstep, the DHS agenda, in complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the citizenry.  Lest the DHS, A&I, DOJ, and FBI forget, the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, the right to peaceful assembly, and free speech.

A similar DHS report, also prepared by the I&A, was withdrawn within hours of its release.

Continue reading here . . .

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