…trying KSM at Gitmo?”
Word is that this brilliant, groundbreaking, never-before-thought-of option is currently being considered.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
In the end, the animating vision behind the message Scott Brown delivered was rather simple. Here it is folks:
Mr. Brown says it frustrates him that too many politicians still believe that people will be fooled by what they’re proposing. “People aren’t stupid, and leaders should figure out they’re better informed now than ever.”
Brown respected voters, and he was repaid for that courtesy with his startling upset victory.
One of the hallmarks of the Obama administration—and especially the present Congress and its members—is their feeling that they can fool enough of the people enough of the time. Obama has so much contempt for voters that he believes he can lie over and over, be caught on tape doing so, and get away with it. Let us hope that Brown’s election is part of a tide that will prove the bankruptcy of that assumption, and will start a trend for the election of politicians who (gasp!) think the American people are fully able to distinguish rain from pee.
[ADDENDUM: Pretty funny, and closely related.]
Jay Cost at HorseRaceBlog takes up the Obama vs. Alito SOTU controversy:
I think it was inappropriate for the President to take a shot at the Court in the way he did. The Court’s solid reputation is a public good for the country, and it should not be tampered with, especially over a case such as the one in question…I’m sure [Alito] regrets what was an impetuous response. Obama should not have been so critical because the Court’s reputation is important yet fragile. For the same reason, Alito should have kept his counsel. Obama has a republican legitimacy that Alito lacks – and it is politically not smart for a Supreme Court justice to disagree openly with an elected official such as Obama…Altogether, I’m much more troubled by Obama’s comment than Alito’s response because Obama is so much more powerful than Alito.
Cost is correct as far as it goes. But he and many others are leaving out another important difference between the actions of the two men. Obama’s words were part of a prepared major speech, written out beforehand and planned and rehearsed with care, and then executed in full voice and full view of others. He was the focus of all eyes and cameras, and he knew it.
In marked contrast, Alito’s response was completely spontaneous, unplanned, and reactive to what Obama had said. In essence, he was sucker-punched, and he and the other justices showed remarkable self-control under the circumstances.
Alito’s reaction was also quite subtle and subdued and not really meant as a public declaration. If he had really thought about it, he might have imagined that a camera might be focused on him at that moment, but it certainly wasn’t clear that this was the case, and he was only one of hundreds in the crowd. In addition, as far as anyone can tell, he did not actually vocalize aloud, just formed the shape of the words almost to himself, in a spontaneous reaction to being attacked (and even lied about) in full view of the world.
A huge difference. Obama is immeasurably more culpable—malice aforethought. But malice seems to be an important element of his character, although the myth of his measured, rational responses continues among supporters. If things continue to go poorly for Obama and he gets more rattled, prepare to see this aspect of his personality come increasingly to the fore.
One of the worst decisions the Obama administration has made (and that’s saying something) was to go after lawyers Bybee and Yoo, who did the research and made the recommendations that allowed waterboarding under certain circumscribed circumstances.
It appears, however, that the blow is about to be been softened:
Previously, the report concluded that two key authors””Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor””violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action””which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.
When asked, the Justice Department denied that Margolis did this at the request of Holder. It is said that he acted on his own.
I wonder. If Margolis was in fact responding to directions from the higher-ups, my guess would be that at this point the Obama administration is afraid that Obama’s successor could do the same sort of thing to Holder and company, after the terrible judgment they have exhibited, both in the KSM decisions and the chaos at Justice revealed by the Christmas bomber hearings.
The Obama administration is looking to try KSM elsewhere than New York City.
Apparently the movers and shakers in New York realized Obama had hung a huge millstone around their necks, and demanded he remove it. And although the tip of another island known as Cuba—Guantanamo, that is—would IMHO be a fine place to have the trial, Obama and Eric Holder (who are looking more and more like the Two Stooges of terror trials, except that there’s nothing even remotely funny about them) won’t allow it.
Moving the trial out of NYC is enough of an embarrassing concession to reality and common sense for them to handle at the moment. Taking the trial out of the civilian justice system entirely and putting it in the military courts would be too great an admission of error.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Will the next venue chosen also say “NIMBY (not in my backyard)?” And if it does, will it exhibit enough clout to prevail on Obama and Holder to change the location once again? And will Obama and Holder end up running out of civilian venues?
Nancy Pelosi will fight for you. That is, she’ll fight against you.
Or maybe she’ll do both simultaneously: she promises to muster nearly-Churchillian determination in order to pass health care reform.
And whatever she does, remember, she does it for you:
We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in but we’re going to get health care reform passed for the America people.”
It doesn’t matter what the American people might happen to want. The federal government has become an invader, storming a fort that the people have tried to barricade against its assault.
More apropos than Churchill to the Pelosi quote is the children’s book The Runaway Bunny. Although it has its charms, the book used to give me the willies, actually. It features a young bunny who wants to escape a mother he/she is angry at. But the implacable maternal bunny declares her intent to pursue her hapless (and beloved) offspring to the ends of the earth.
For those of you unfamiliar with this classic, here’s a good description (from a sermon, of all things). I think you’ll see the resemblance; Pelosi is our very own mother bunny:
“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’
‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’…”
The little bunny taunts his mother with hints about running away. No matter where he threatens to go, she promises she’ll be there to find him. When he says he’s going to become a fish and swim away, she answers, “Then I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.” When he comes back with, “I will become a bird and fly away,” and there he is, sprouting wings she counters, “Then I will be a tree that you come home to.”
His fantasies of flight get even more extreme as do mother’s responses. “I will become a sailboat and sail away from you.” The picture is of the bunny’s ears becoming huge sails. But mother bunny is right there. “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.”
In the end, little bunny realizes there is no shaking mom and he capitulates. “‘Shucks, I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.’ And so he did. ‘Have a carrot,’ said the mother bunny.”
You can run, but you can’t hide. But maybe, in the end, there’ll be a nice carrot for you.
You can’t make this stuff up.
James O’Keefe has posted a statement at the Big Government site explaining his side of the story:
I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.” I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office ”“ the people’s office ”“ to ask the staff if their phones were working.
On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building. The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator. We video taped the entire visit, the government has those tapes, and I’m eager for them to be released because they refute the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media.
“Could” have used a different approach? I would say most definitely “should” have used. A stupid move on O’Keefe’s part, but I have no idea whether it’s some sort of actionable offense.
Time will tell. But whatever the case’s final disposition, the MSM certainly seems to have jumped the gun on this one, as O’Keefe points out:
The Associated Press incorrectly reported that I “broke in” to an office which is open to the public. The Washington Post has now had to print corrections in two stories on me.
I dunno, though—perhaps O’Keefe has been punished enough already. After all, the NY Times reports that, as a condition of his release, he has been ordered “to live with his parents in Westwood, N.J., until his case is resolved.”
Maybe if he does get a sentence, they’ll take time off for time already served?
Peter Wehner points out some of the blatant contradictions in Obama’s SOTU speech, and then says:
“It was as if we were being lectured on marital fidelity by John Edwards or Mark Sanford.”
Exactly.
Here’s more:
Perhaps the most striking aspect of last night’s speech, though, was that Obama spoke as if the last year hadn’t happened; as if he had not been president; and as if Congress had not been controlled by Democrats. He sought to portray himself as an outsider and a reformer, an antidote to cynicism, and a post-partisan, unifying force…What we are seeing play out on a very large stage, it seems, is a man of extraordinary self-regard having to deal with punishing political set-backs, with the fact that his high hopes have come crashing down around him. The nation has turned against his agenda. They are turning against his party. And they are tiring of him as well. This is something he cannot seem to process. So the president marches ahead, pretending up is down and east is west, embracing an agenda the country has rejected and that is doing terrible damage to his own party.
It was quite a thing to witness.
Here’s a moment from Obama’s SOTU that’s gotten a lot of coverage:
There are several things wrong with what Obama did here. The first is the questionable nature of his factual assertion, which was the reason Alito shook his head and mouthed “not true.” Law professor Bradley A. Smith writes:
The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.”
Smith goes on to add that Obama’s statement that the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United “open[ed] the floodgates for special interests ”” including foreign corporations ”” to spend without limit in our elections,” was “either blithering ignorance of the law, or demogoguery of the worst kind.”
I happen to think it may be both; are they always mutually exclusive? But hey, what do you expect; it’s not like Obama’s a law professor or anything.
What’s more, as many commenters at the law blog Volokh Conspiracy have pointed out, it was crass, unpresidential, and demagogic of Obama to make his criticism of the SCOTUS decision part of his SOTU address, a venue at which the Justices are supposed to sit stoney-faced and not respond. Once Obama called the Justices out, Democrat members of Congress surrounding them jumped up to clap and cheer in the usual jack-in-the-box fashion, compounding the public humiliation of another equal branch of government—the judiciary. And, unlike politicians, the Supremes are not allowed to respond as long as they hold office. They were, and still are, sitting ducks.
No wonder Alito made his silent, small (and probably almost unconscious) protest to what was a cheap and profoundly classless shot by Obama and his follower Democrats.
In addition, in characteristic fashion (and this is the thing that makes Obama’s misrepresentations so fascinatingly Orwellian), the activity that Obama falsely said the SCOTUS decision allowed—contributions from foreign corporations—is somewhat akin (although not identical) to the very method Obama most likely used (illegally) in his own campaign for president: foreign contributions, in his case from small donors.
A final observation: Obama’s disrespect for the SCOTUS began with the remark, “with all due deference.” That phrase (or another very much like it, “with all due respect”) is usually a telling clue that the person uttering it is about to say something nondeferential and downright disrespectful. It’s somewhat like Obama’s favorite, “Let me be clear,” which almost inevitably signals that an especially murky remark is coming up.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s more from Randy Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown:
In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.
The tone isn’t so new, if you come from Chicago.]
One of Obama’s favorite ploys—and one prominently displayed last night in his SOTU speech—is to imply that Republicans are obstructionists who are blocking his agenda merely through desire to thwart the bipartisanship he so magnanimously offers. Of course, to Obama, “bipartisanship” means “my way or the highway.”
I thought this comment on the subject, by “foxmark,” worth highlighting:
Of course the righties oppose Barry’s (and Congress’s) initiatives. That’s what I expect from a deliberative process between camps that have different perspectives and philosophies. Is it somehow implied that to advocate against the majority view is obstructive?
And this claim of obstruction ignores the Congressional majority Barry had to work with for his first year. Again, yes, the righties can contest, but they could not block or prevent the lefties from doing anything.
How is the opposition-party “obstruction” Barry faces any different from any other President? It seems it must be less given the (super)majority in Congress.
Ultimately the claim of obstruction is an attack on the character of the opponents: They’re behaving badly, like petty spoilsports in time of genuine suffering.
It’s ad hominem wrapped in nationalism to advance a socialist agenda.
This sort of story is the reason rescuers will not give up, even though it’s been over two weeks since the quake:
A 16-year-old girl has been pulled out of the rubble in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, 15 days after the earthquake struck, rescuers say.
Workers heard a faint voice while clearing away some rubble, and in only an hour they had freed the extremely weak and dehydrated teenager, Darlene Etienne. She is reported to have survived because she was trapped in an air pocket in a bathroom where she was able to drink water from a bathtub.
The mind resists the idea that there are probably many more such stories that will never be told, because the people involved have either died already (or are now dying) despite their heroic and lengthy efforts to survive.
And what of Darlene and her extraordinary ordeal? Although the physical suffering must have been dreadful—and probably required tremendous self-control on her part to ration the remaining water over time, not knowing when (or if) she might ever be rescued—the psychological strength she needed to survive an experience of such profound terror and isolation is almost unimaginable.