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SATURDAY,  JANUARY 30,  2010

THE SMOKING GUN – AT 9:12 P.M. ET:  Gallup reports a fascinating statistic regarding approval of President Obama:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama's job approval rating, which has averaged 50% since Dec. 1, continues to be significantly above that average among Americans with postgraduate education (58%). Among educational groups, only postgraduates show a rating above the majority level.

Send 'em to graduate school, and that's what happens.

Since July, when Obama last registered an approval rating of 60%, the gap in his approval rating between postgraduates and other educational groups has grown, with his support declining proportionately less among postgraduates than among the other groups.

Okay, I admit it, some of this is due to the fact that a large proportion of postgraduates go into education, a notoriously liberal field.  That probably tilts the numbers.  But, still, we have a Constitutional right to view with alarm and ask what kinda learnin' is goin' on.

January 30, 2010   Permalink

ANOTHER COLLINS SPEAKS – OH DEAR LAWD – AT 8:01 P.M. ET:  We quote Senator Susan Collins, below, making a terrific statement about terrorism.  Now we switch to another Collins – Gail Collins, op-ed writer and former editorial page editor of The New York Times. 

Ms. Collins, ultra-feminist, sixties monument, and otherwise dependable flake, gives us an insight into the kind of thinking that led The New York Times to sink to the position it's in now.  She's upset, Ms. Collins is, about the reversal, in the last day, of the decision to try the mastermind of 9-11 right in the heart of New York City.  Despite overwhelming public and political opposition, led by Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Gail Collins knows best, and she also knows what really motivated those who demanded the reversal:

...the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere else. People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.

But this feels very wrong.

Yeah, how dare those people living right near the courthouse express an opinion.

The Bloomberg rebellion fits right into the sour, us-first mood that’s settled over the country. It’s part of the same impulse that caused Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to decree that a historic overhaul of the country’s messed-up health care system was not going to happen unless his home state got a special exemption from sharing the costs.

Talk about a stretch.

Or the Not-in-My-Backyard uprising that followed President Obama’s attempt to move the Guantánamo prisoners into American maximum-security lockups. No matter how remote the prison, local politicians said that the danger was too great to bear. Both of Montana’s Democratic senators immediately decreed that their entire state was a no-go zone.

All those selfish New Yorkers, not wanting a terrorist bulls-eye painted on their backs again.  All these ridiculous fears.  Why can't they just go along with Eric Holder and his wise lawyers.

It’s all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it’s fine to throw your body in front of any initiative, no matter how important, if resistance looks more profitable.

Ms. Collins apparently forget to get her Zoloft refilled.

The economy has a lot to do with this. So does Washington’s increasing confidence that Barack Obama can be rolled. We’re currently stuck in a place where people no longer feel as though they need to be part of the solution.

Maybe it's been weeks since the bottle was emptied.

Democrats are starting to join the Republicans’ call to toss out the Constitution and try suspected terrorists in military courts.

This is a medical emergency.  Pills!  Pills!

New York’s sudden resistance certainly wasn’t about safety, even though Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a whiny letter to the White House saying a trial in Manhattan could “add to the threat.”

A classic example of the way ultra-feminists treat other women who don't go along with every comma in the party line.  Suddenly DiFi, one of the real adults in the Senate, is "whiny."

COMMENT:  So, we're terrible people.  But we're really not.  Americans have always been willing to sacrifice, and to put themselves on the line.  But they ask for some serious reason.  If they take a risk for a cause, they want it to be a good cause.  Trying the mastermind of 9-11 in a New York City courtroom is not a good cause.  It's a show.

The people are right.  Gail Collins is wrong.  What else is new?

January 30, 2010  Permalink 

QUOTE OF THE DAY – FROM SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS OF MAINE, REGARDING OUR HANDLING OF THE CHRISTMAS-DAY AIRLINE BOMBER – AT 6:19 P.M. ET, VIA THE L.A. TIMES'S TOP OF THE TICKET BLOG:

Less than one hour. That’s right, less than one hour.

In fact, just fifty minutes.

That’s the amount of time that the FBI spent questioning Abdulmutallab, the foreign terrorist who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day.

Then, he was given a Miranda warning and a lawyer, and, not surprisingly, he stopped talking.

And...

President Obama recently used the phrase that "we are at war" with terrorists. But....

... unfortunately his rhetoric does not match the actions of his administration.

The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism.

And, because of that blindness, this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day.

There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal.

COMMENT:  Very well said, and spoken by a moderate Republican who feels free to side with the administration if she thinks they're right.  Those are harsh words from Susan Collins, and a warning to the Obamans to straighten up and fly right.  And get a new attorney general.

January 30, 2010   Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AGAIN, ONCE AGAIN, THE LONDON TIMES NAILS IT ON THE GROWING CLIMATE-CHANGE SCANDAL – AT 5:58 P.M. ET:

And, once again, the disgraceful American press remains silent.  We like to think that the British and European media are stuck in political correctness, and many outlets often are.  But the British press in particular, on some issues (only on some), has shown an admirable independence lately.  From The Times:

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.”

COMMENT:  It turns out he knew last November.  He is the UN's key guy on climate change.  Why does he still have his job?  He has lied, he has deceived.  Fortunately, Copenhagen was a flop, with delegates giving their greatest applause to Hugo Chavez's call for the end of capitalism. 

But the climate-change crowd is still royalty within the Obama administration.  The rising body of evidence against much of the "science" of climate change is ignored.  There are careers to protect, and social goals to achieve. 

The leading Marxist academic of the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse, said that the truth is what supports progressive causes.  We are seeing that played out here.

January 30, 2010   Permalink

GOP ADOPTS MODIFIED LOYALTY OATH – AT 11:15 A.M. ET:  We've been following this.  There's a faction in the GOP that wanted the party to adopt a rigid, drive-voters-away loyalty oath for its candidates.  Sanity prevailed, and a modified structure has been adopted by the Republican National Committee, as the Washington Times reports:

In an unprecedented move, the Republican National Committee on Friday unanimously called on its chairman,Michael S. Steele, to "carefully screen" candidates for their adherence to conservative values before granting them RNC financial help.

The resolution specifically calls on the national chairman to take into account the voting records and statements of all GOP candidates for evidence that they support the "core principles and positions" of the party's national platform, widely regarded as a highly conservative document.

"The brilliant part of the resolution is that it is tied to the party platform ... that has been thought out, debated and passed unanimously at our national convention," North Dakota GOP Chairman Gary Emineth told The Washington Times after he and his fellow RNC members passed the resolution.

COMMENT:  Frankly, I wish they hadn't passed anything like this.  It's not necessary.  Leave the sorting out to primary voters in the several states. 

But, having taken the step, at least the GOP left plenty of loopholes.  Decisions will be up to the national chairman, who's not ideologically rigid, and state parties. 

The procedure might actually do some good if it screens out the small number of crackpots and hopelessly unqualified candidates who slip through each year.  It also reminds us that reasonable adherence to basic principles is necessary in a political party.  The term "core principles and positions" is important.  It doesn't require adherence to every comma and period. 

We'll have to see how this works out.  I'll be writing in coming days of two Republican aspirants for U.S. Senate seats who don't deserve party support.  They'll be test cases. 

January 30, 2010   Permalink

RASMUSSEN ON POST SOTU POLLING – AT 10:37 A.M. ET:  Scott Rasmussen has examined the polls taken after the president's State of the Union message, and gives us his report:

Looking only at interviews conducted on the two nights following the speech, it is clear that the President enjoyed a bounce in the polls and that the bounce came from members of his own party. On the morning of the speech, 50% of Democrats Strongly Approved of the President’s performance. On the two nights following the speech, that number jumped to 65%. There was essentially no change among Republican and unaffiliated voters.

This could suggest that the President’s “pivot” following the Republican upset in Massachusetts is a pivot towards energizing his party base more than reaching out for support from unaffiliated voters. In Massachusetts and the two Governor’s races last fall, a lack of enthusiasm from Democrats contributed to the party’s defeats.

COMMENT:  I suspect that Rasmussen has it right.  Nothing that the Obama administration has done since the speech signals any move toward the center, except possibly the decision to cancel plans to try major terror suspects in New York City.  And that came only after a huge uproar, a good part of it from Democrats in Congress.

And yet, the numbers are against this "dig in" strategy.  The president's victory in 2008 came largely because he could attract independent voters, and even a respectable number of Republicans.  If independents, the unaffiliated, didn't move toward him as a result of his Wednesday night speech, we must conclude that Mr. Obama is still in deep political trouble, with no real strategy for solving the problem.

January 30, 2010   Permalink

THIS IS DEAD SERIOUS – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  The actual New York Times headline reads:

New Teams Connect Dots of Terror Plots

No, I mean it.  That's the actual headline.  Apparently, in the ten years since 9-11, the federal government has decided, after many committee meetings, that a special team is needed that has a particular knack for dot connecting.

As you know, dot connecting is a rare specialty – only three Ph.D.s were given in the subject last year, and we're lucky to have people who know just how to do this.  From The Times:

WASHINGTON — The nation’s main counterterrorism center is creating new teams of specialists to pursue clues of emerging terrorist plots as part of a rapid buildup that will sharply increase its analyst corps, perhaps by hundreds of people over the next year, intelligence officials said Friday.

Nice to see some urgency.

The action by the National Counterterrorism Center is one of the furthest reaching by the government so far to address the failings of several federal agencies in the case of a 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with boarding a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear.

Michael E. Leiter, the center's director, made the breathtaking announcement:

“We’ve been very good at chasing down those threats that come out of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Mr. Leiter told the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week. “We’re going to be better now at chasing down those small bits of information that come out of Yemen or North Africa or East Africa.”

We hope they're better at chasing down the info that comes out of Yemen or Africa than they were in chasing down the threat bursting out of Afghanistan on 9-11.

Time flies, doesn't it?  Why didn't this happen nine years ago?

January 30, 2010   Permalink

ELIMINATE THE MIDDLEMAN – AT 10:21 A.M. ET:  A great idea, actually imported from Britain, may now surface here.

I'm referring to the president's appearance yesterday before House Republicans, in a special meeting.  The questions were respectful, but sharp, and the president gave at least a fair number of substantive answers.  I hope you saw it on TV.

This resembled Prime Minister's Question Time, carried often by CSPAN, in which the British prime minister answers questions from Commons.  The breath of fresh air factor is the elimination of the media.  They get their shots at other times, but the back-and-forth between the chief executive and the loyal opposition is informative, and often entertaining.

One pundit suggested that the president do this once a month.  I agree.  I think it would do more to change the atmosphere in Washington than any other quick and easy step.  And, considering that the questions are usually better than those asked by the press, the media might learn a few things.

January 30,  2010   Permalink

FRIDAY,  JANUARY 29,  2010

COLLAPSE OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY? – AT 6:39 P.M. ET:  Khaled Abu Toameh is a remarkable Palestinian journalist who calls 'em as he sees 'em.  He is one of the stars of our Hudson New York website, as well as a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.  Here he gets behind what could turn out to be a major foreign story of 2010, the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority – the so-called "peace partner" for Israel – and its replacement by Hamas.  A special thanks to one of Urgent Agenda's best sources, international observer Susana Kohan, for alerting us to this:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the corrupt officials who used to work for his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and that’s why Hamas will one day take control of the West Bank, Fahmi Shabaneh, who was appointed by Abbas four years ago to root out corruption in the Palestinian Authority, said on Thursday.

And that would be a disaster for the Middle East and American efforts there.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Shabaneh, who until recently was in charge of the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA’s General Intelligence Service (GIS), warned that what happened in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, when Hamas managed to overthrow the Fatah-controlled regime, is likely to recur in the West Bank.

I wonder if our own State Department is aware of this.  From the way the department acts, I wouldn't think so.

Shabaneh said that many Palestinians in the West Bank have lost hope that the PA would one day be reformed. “The Palestinian Authority is very corrupt and needs to be overhauled,” he said.

Shabaneh cited several specific cases of alleged corruption within Fatah and the PA in the course of the interview, including asserting that Fatah personnel stole much of a $3.2 million donation given by the US to Fatah ahead of the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, won by Hamas, which had been intended to improve Fatah’s image and boost its chances of winning.

Incredible.  That's our money, earned by American workers.  Did we ever ask where it went? 

“In his pre-election platform, President Abbas promised to end financial corruption and implement major reforms, but he hasn’t done much since then,” he said. “Unfortunately, Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public funds and who became icons of financial corruption.”

Shabaneh said that as head of the anti-corruption unit he and his men succeeded in exposing dozens of cases involving senior officials who had stolen public funds but were never held accountable.

“Some of the most senior Palestinian officials didn’t have even $3,000 in their pocket when they arrived [after the signing of the Oslo Accords],” Shabaneh said. “Yet we discovered that some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in their bank accounts.

Again, some of it from America.

Was he serious about Hamas taking over the ? “Yes, no question about that,” he said. “It will happen one day if the state of corruption and anarchy continue in the West Bank.

Finally...

These corrupt officials know no limits. They even used to forge Arafat’s signature to obtain money by fraud,” he said.

COMMENT:  Please remember this the next time someone mouths the words "peace process."

January 29, 2010   Permalink

TAKE THIS, BIN LADEN – AT 6:17 P.M. ET:  Just as Osama bin Laden joins the global-warming movement – see our 9:11 a.m. post today – The Times of London comes out with another devastating article on the collapsing science that presumably underlies it.  The Times has become the international leader in exposing "global warming":

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

When scientists refuse to release their underlying data, there is a very large problem.

The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails...

...Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.

COMMENT:  President Obama has taken the trendy and politically correct view that global warming is settled science, despite increasing evidence that it's anything but settled.  (In fact, science is never settled.) 

The president could learn from the defeat he's now taking on holding terror trials in New York and try to get ahead of the story by appointing an impeccable commission, like the panel that investigated the 1986 Challenger disaster, to examine the claims and counterclaims on global warming. 

Every poll shows that Americans, those ordinary, unlettered people out there, are becoming increasingly dubious about warming.  The nation is entitled to a blue-ribbon inquiry, fully transparent, and open to TV coverage.  What do you think are the chances?

January 29, 2010   Permalink

GOOD MOVE FOR HILLARY – AT 6:01 P.M. ET:  We wonder if this cleared the White House, amidst all the speculation this week that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, inevitably, drifting apart.  Hillary herself said that she wouldn't serve in a second Obama administration, a statement that didn't arouse much surprise.

She couldn't get to the left of Obama politically.  There isn't much room.  But she could get to his right on foreign policy, while maintaining her liberal credentials in domestic affairs.  That was the pattern for the Democratic Party at the height of its power.  Now Hillary makes a firm move in foreign relations, as reported by The New York Times:

PARIS — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday that it would face economic insecurity and diplomatic isolation if it did not sign on to tough new sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, raising the pressure on Beijing to fall in line with an American-led campaign. 

Speaking to students at the École Militaire, the prestigious French war college, Mrs. Clinton said, “China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing effect that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the gulf” — referring to the Persian Gulf — “from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supplies.”

Firmness toward China has not been a distinguishing feature of American foreign policy, and this is refreshing.  The Chinese have acted quite belligerently recently, and must understand that Americans are not marshmallows.  Well, not most of us.  Bush 41 was a notable appeaser of China, sending the "realist," Brent Scowcroft, to make nice to the Chinese while the blood from the Tiananmen Square massacres was still drying.  That set an embarrassing tone that has gone on too long.

Mrs. Clinton — in a flurry of meetings this week in Europe, including one with the Chinese foreign minister — has tried to build momentum for new measures against Iran. Britain, France, and Germany back the effort, and Russia, which has often blocked previous efforts, now seems ready to act.

Only China, which imports crude oil from Iran and has large investments in its oil and gas sector, has said it would prefer to continue negotiating with the Iranian government. With a veto in the United Nations Security Council, it could block a move to impose additional sanctions.

“We understand that right now it seems counterproductive to you to sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs,” Mrs. Clinton said in comments after a speech on European security. “But think about the longer-term implications.”

COMMENT:  It still remains to be seen what kind of real pressure can be applied to China.  But the Chinese, with their burgeoning international trade and influence, certainly wouldn't want to be isolated at the UN on behalf of a rogue nation like Iran.

It will be intriguing to see where Clinton goes with this issue, and whether any daylight will open, in the off-the-record paragraphs of the nation's media, between and Hillary and Barack.

January 29, 2010   Permalink

OH PLEASE – AT 11:23 A.M. ET:  Speak of the pot calling the kettle racially diverse:  The Dems are upset at some Supreme Court justices, as The Politico reports:

Senate Democrats are furious with Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito — and Alito’s silent State of the Union rebuke of the president is the least of their concerns.

Democrats say Alito crossed the line when he mouthed the words “not true” during President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday night. But worse, they say, both Roberts and Alito misled them during their confirmation hearings when they represented themselves as jurists who would respect precedent.

Is this serious?  What line did Alito cross?  What about The One's crossing a very thick line – criticizing a Supreme Court decision in the presence of the justices, and getting the facts wrong?  Guess it doesn't count.

“You bet they misled,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the assistant majority leader and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

At issue is the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the campaign finance decision Obama was discussing Wednesday night when Alito mouthed his objections.

In last week’s 5-4 decision, a majority of the justices — including Roberts and Alito — ruled that the government cannot restrict corporations and labor unions from spending general funds on advertising to support or oppose specific candidates in federal elections. Some analysts predict that the decision will open the door to a flood of campaign advertising by corporations and unions leading up to Election Day — and that Republicans will be the primary beneficiaries.

COMMENT:  Apparently, some Dems are shocked, shocked, to find out that John Roberts and Sam Alito are conservatives. 

As for crossing a line, some senior Democrats, although they must have known that Obama was misstating the facts in denouncing the Court's decision, clapped for him loudly as they sat in a row just behind the Supreme Court justices.  An act of supreme rudeness, if nothing else.

January 29, 2010   Permalink

SANITY IN THE GOP – AT 9:50 A.M. ET:  Political litmus tests surface regularly in American politics.  Try becoming a Democratic presidential candidate if you're pro-life.  But the GOP, which, like the Dems, has its own nut wing to worry about, is resisting efforts to introduce a formal litmus test in this election year.  From Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog:

It looks like the Republican Party won’t be taking names or testing blood samples.

Meeting behind closed doors in Honolulu this afternoon the resolutions committee of the Republican National Committee adopted a watered-down version of the so-called “purity” test advocated by insiders who wanted candidates to complete a check list—8 of 10 needed to pass—to receive financial or organizational help from the party's national controlling body.

The precise wording remains to be worked out.

But the gist is that candidates would have to pledge their fealty to the party platform—which is a lot less stringent than the original resolution sponsored by Indiana’s James Bopp, Jr., a longtime conservative activist.

“No checklist,” Bopp confirmed outside the committee room. “There’s none of that in the resolution.”

COMMENT:  That's dodging a bullet.  James Bopp Jr. represents a kind of rigid, old-style Republican who wants enforced ideological purity for candidates, often the death knell for political parties.  The  Dems have plenty of ideological tests, and I'm not sure we want to use them as an example of greatness. 

It's true that a political party cannot be an infinite tent.  It has to have core principles.  But there must be flexibility in advancing those princples.  Otherwise, the party will wind up meeting in a closet.

January 29, 2010   Permalink

BULLETIN – AT 9:11 A.M. ET:  Osama bin Laden has joined the global warming movement.  Is this a bid for respectability?  From the AP:

CAIRO (AP) - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.

In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.

He says the world should "stop consuming American products" and "refrain from using the dollar," according to a transcript on Al-Jazeera's Web site.

The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.

COMMENT:  We should always be mindful of the fact that bin Laden and his associates are not stupid.  They are tuned in to the world.  They are up on things. 

Before 9-11, bin Laden rarely mentioned the Arab-Israel conflict.  His attention was elsewhere.  But after 9-11, apparently realizing he could reap propaganda benefits among Western leftists, he started championing the Palestinians, leading to the absurd notion, spread in the West, that ending terrorism depends on solving the Israel-Palestine issue.

You may be sure that bin Laden's newest message will find a sympathetic ear among Western leftists and their trendy friends.  "Well, the man does bad things, but if only we stopped polluting..."  You can finish the sentence.  It won't be long before ending terrorism will depend, in weak minds, on cap and trade.

Hey, maybe bin Laden will win the next Nobel Peace Prize.  What a multicultural coup!

January 29, 2010   Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  Charles Krauthammer examines the growing evidence that, with Eric Holder's Justice Department in charge, the Christmas-day bomber was entirely mishandled.  From The Washington Post:

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.

We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI).

Look, maybe they just didn't have the phone numbers handy.  They're new in town.  It's only a year.

The culprit should have been interrogated by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.  But, uh, there was a bit of a problem:

Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council...

...he HIG was not deployed because it does not yet exist. After a year! I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.

These things are so difficult, especially with the health-care bill.

The fact is that Eric Holder and his crowd want us to return to the pre 9-11 view of terror, that it's merely a law-enforcement problem, something for the cops.  It's the view from the left. 

We are tempting fate with Eric Holder as AG.  The president does not seem to understand.  Or maybe he understands all too well...and doesn't really care.

January 29, 2010   Permalink

HOLD THAT HOLDER – AT 8:09 A.M. ET:  As my friend, Silvio Canto Jr., puts it,
"Dismiss Attorney General Holder and call it 'the war on terror' again!"

Can you believe how badly this one attorney general of the United States has messed things up?  This is the man who decided to drop a slam-dunk case against the new Black Panthers for voter intimidation at the polls in 2008, and never explained the outrage.  This is the man who brought decidedly leftist lawyers into the Justice Department, many of whom came from the same firm that made a cult out of defending Gitmo detainees.  This is the man who decided to try the mastermind of 9-11 in a civilian courtroom in New York City, giving this individual the greatest media platform in the world and putting New Yorkers at risk.  This is the man whose foot soldiers read the Christmas-day airline bomber his Miranda rights – even though the bomber isn't an American citizen – after only 50 minutes of interrogation, prompting the terrorist to clam up.

Eric Holder.  What a guy.  Prime candidate for early retirement and a gold watch.

Now, one of Holder's worst decisions seems to be crumbling.  We reported early word last night.  Confirmation has since come, but The New York Times, flying the leftist flag to the last, is grudging about it:

WASHINGTON — Facing mounting pressure from New York politicians concerned about costs and security, the Obama administration on Thursday began considering moving the trial of the chief organizer of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks out of Manhattan, administration officials said.

Considering?  My friend, that corpse is cold.  The trial won't be held in New York.  If Obama hesitates over the change, Congress will refuse to appropriate the funds.

President Obama said through a spokesman that he still believed a civilian criminal trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has admitted planning the attacks, and four accomplices could be conducted “successfully and securely in the United States.” He did not mention New York specifically.

Mr. Obama left the decision on possible alternate sites to the Justice Department, which was scrambling to assess the options, administration officials said.

A decision to move the Sept. 11 trial from Manhattan would be a retreat by the administration from its calculated choice in November to bring the defendants to a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

Yeah.  "Calculated."  But what, precisely, went into the calculation?

The dispute over a trial location, touched off when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York complained of costs and disruption, threatened to reopen the divisive question of how those accused of plotting the murder of more than 3,000 Americans should be brought to justice.

Huh?  The dispute was touched off by Bloomberg?  Do guys on The Times read their own paper?  This dispute has been ongoing since the decision was first announced months ago?  Bloomberg came to the party, this week, a bit late, after a public outcry.

Well, at least the job is getting done, despite Eric Holder.  We'll keep an eye on it.

January 29,  2010   Permalink