Peter Wehner, CommentaryMagazine.com

 

I have read president Obama’s speech and was struck by several things. Among them is that for a man who insists on not wanting to re-litigate the last eight years, he has certainly done a splendid job of doing just that.

 

President Obama’s core complaint is the Bush Administration “went off course” and was guilty of undermining the rule of law. It failed to “use our values as a compass” and broke faith with the Constitution and basic human rights. And of course the main offense was waterboarding, which was used against exactly three known al Qaeda terrorists and was then discontinued. This is, in the world according to Obama, the main legacy and the overriding achievement of the Bush presidency.

 

But if Mr. Obama wants to tear into past presidents for violations of the Constitution and basic human rights during war time, perhaps he should start with those whom he must surely consider the worst violators of our Constitution and our values: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

 

Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith — who worked in the Bush Justice Department and who opposed waterboarding — has written that in response to the secession crisis that began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln raised armies and borrowed money on the credit of the United States, both powers that the Constitution gave to Congress; he suspended the writ of habeas corpus in many places even though most constitutional scholars, then and now, believed that only Congress could do this; he imposed a blockade on the South without specific congressional approval; he imprisoned thousands of southern sympathizers and war agitators without any charge or due process; and he ignored a judicial order from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to release a prisoner detained illegally. Read article.

 

Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

 

President Obama delivered a major speech May 21 on how he intends to prosecute the war on terror (or whatever it's now called), and in particular his desire to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. As rhetoric, his remarks were at pains to declare a bold new moral direction. On substance, however, the speech and other events this week look more like a vindication of the past seven years.

 

The President's speech came after both houses of Congress had denied his funding requests to shut down Guantanamo and relocate some of the most dangerous prisoners to the U.S. The 90-6 vote in the Senate was especially notable because all but a half-dozen Democrats opposed their own President, on that high-minded principle known as not-in-my-backyard.

 

So, to the idea that isolated Alcatraz Island could serve as one possible location, California's Dianne Feinstein says it is a historic landmark and instead suggests a prison in another state. But the most state-of-the-art "supermax" prison in America is in Colorado, and this week that state's new Democratic Senator, Michael Bennet, vetoed that idea; as it happens, he's running for election in 2010.

 

Then there is the voluble Jim Webb, who in January said Mr. Obama had offered a reasonable timeline in ordering Guantanamo closed in a year. But now the Virginia Democrat opposes closing Gitmo anytime soon while observing to ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that "We spend hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions in Guantanamo to try these cases. There are cases against international law." That was the Bush Administration's point all along. Read article.

Secrets of Vancouver.com

 

Too bad the new president has such thin skin.

 

Obama is now on full defense after Pelosi’s lie and attack on the CIA, and the divisions that are opening up within his supporters. Realizing that far-left anti-war groups cannot be appeased, Obama is on the run.

 

The safety of America is fundamental to the principal of the government - and he knows that if he does what is supporters want him to do, he will be derelict in his duty.

 

When you try to please everyone and lead by opinion poll, it usually ends badly.

 

The Democrats are working feverishly to completely revise history. After 8 years of Bush Derangement Syndrome, they realize that now they are in power, they might have to keep the Bush policies - and in some cases actually do more - and it’s driving them nuts.

 

Obama’s attempt to do so is putting the world at risk, and he knows that now he won’t be able to duck the blame. Read article.

 

IBD Editorials.com

 

President Obama and former Vice President Cheney verbally sparred over how best to fight terrorism in the post-9/11 world. If it had been a real fight, it would have been stopped in the first round.

 

We have to hand it to President Obama. His speech at the National Archives, laden with legal abstractions and defensive rationalizations for his administration's national security policies, at least pays lip service to an "extremist ideology (that) threatens our people" and to the plain fact that "al Qaida is actively planning to attack us again."

 

Both quite true. We're glad he recognizes that much.

 

But he goes on to say that since 9/11, the previous administration "made a series of hasty decisions" based largely on "fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions."

 

In fact, after 9/11, the Bush administration carefully crafted a new national security policy for the U.S. based on a rational calculation of the threat before us — a policy, by the way, that kept the homeland safe from terrorist attack for 7 1/2 years.

 

Bush's White House didn't "trim" facts; it laid them out, as best it could, at a time of great confusion and chaos. And it did so with overwhelming bipartisan agreement — which fell apart only after the polls shifted against the war in Iraq. Yet, Obama ignores the blatant politicization of our national security to portray the Bush administration as unhinged and ideological.

 

This, of course, is false. Read article.

Mark Davis, Political Mavens.com

 

Someone is lying.

 

If it is the CIA, Pelosi should launch an investigation to reveal the spy agency’s dishonesty. If it is Pelosi, we have to figure out how to evaluate the sinister notion of a politician slandering the intelligence community to save her political hide.

 

The future of this story will be infused with political passions on both sides.

 

President Barack Obama and other Democrats are already on the record standing by her, but they have to be wondering how long they will be able to keep that up.

 

Republicans are rubbing their hands with glee, savoring the possible fall from grace of a nemesis blamed for burdening soldiers and interrogators whose efforts prevented further attacks on American soil and paved the way for freedom for Iraq.

 

In that environment, objective truth will be elusive. But it must be found. Either the CIA or the speaker of the House is lying. A deserved heavy price lies ahead for whoever it is. Read article.

Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com

 

Another week, another list:

 

–President Obama decided against releasing photos of alleged detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan after deciding they would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and endanger U.S. forces still in harm’s way. The American Left’s reaction? Hysteria, for one over-riding reason: nothing, and I repeat nothing, is more important than convincing Americans that the previous administration was comprised of “war criminals.” Thus, the greater endangerment of our troops becomes a “reasonable” tradeoff for the “greater good.”.

 

Remember this mindset the next time you hear a leftist say “we support the troops, etc.,etc.” Would that it were possible to put a few of these same folks on the front lines of the terror war–with some of the aforementioned photos taped to their helmets–for “perspective’s sake.” I can’t begin to imagine how much further along we’d be in the war on terror if the American Left despised Islamic terrorists with as much fervor as they reserve for Bush, et al. Fortunately, the current president has tossed their odious ambitions under the bus–at least temporarily. Kudos to him–at least temporarily. Read article.

 

Sher Zieve, Newsbull.com

 

Obama has seized both General Motors and Chrysler and essentially handed them to the UAW. He is closing down multiple Chrysler agencies. Jim Anderer owns—soon to be past-tense—a highly successful and high-performing Chrysler agency on Long Island. Anderer has been advised that his agency is going to be seized by the new ownership—as we already know this is Barack Hussein Obama. Other Chrysler agencies on Long Island are documented to not be fairing nearly as well. However, many of them—the “Obama-okayed” ones—are still planned to be in business.

 

Despite multiple letters, emails and phones calls, Anderer has been given no explanation as to why his dealership was targeted. On Neil Cavuto’s show, Anderer said “They won't give us a solid explanation. They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense” and “but I think there is a lot of favored dealers, there is some collusion.” Anderer continued with:

 

“This is insanity. The government is stealing my business. Well, I cannot accept that as a patriotic American. I was raised in this country to believe that if I work hard and I achieve what I was going after -- and I did! I did it! I got it, and now all of a sudden because, you know, we have a president who pushes Chrysler into bankruptcy and puts all of the UAW workers out...? Didn't have to. Maybe some would have to go out but not all of them, okay. This doesn't happen in America. This is still America, I think. I mean, this isn't Stalinist Russia. This is not Nazi Germany where the troopers say you're out and their buddies are in. That's what I'm faced with.” Read article.

 

Paul Greenberg, JWR.com

 

The 44th president of the United States has quietly declared certain phrases of the 43rd president's verboten — like War on Terror.

 

Yet the war itself continues, and the policies currently being pursued in that war become more and more like his predecessor's. For example:

 

This president originally okayed the release of inflammatory photographs showing how terrorist suspects in Iraq and Afghanistan had been handled: roughly. But he's now changed his mind after realizing what a propaganda coup he'd be handing the enemy by releasing these pictures, for they would surely be used to recruit more young men to kill American and allied soldiers.

 

There is something about a politician's moving into the Oval Office that brings home his responsibility for the safety and welfare of the troops he now commands, not mention the security of the nation and the free world.

 

In Afghanistan, the new commander-in-chief has even adopted a central tenet of the Surge that he used to say would never work in Iraq — making alliances with local tribes while beefing up the American presence. Who says he can't learn from experience? (Though it would never do to acknowledge it.) Read article.

 

Andrew Glass, Politico.com

 

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) predicted Wednesday that despite his current popularity in the polls, President Barack Obama will eventually suffer the same reversal of political fortune that befell President Bill Clinton in 1994.

 

“What they have in common is that everything for them is political. They wage a perpetual campaign. They are both extraordinary politicians. Either one of them could charm the skin off a snake,” Barbour told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

 

Barbour, who was handily reelected to a second term in 2007, served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997. Barbour linked Clinton’s unpopular efforts to raise taxes and to reform health policy in 1993 to the GOP’s capture of both the Senate and House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.

 

The difference, Barbour suggested, is that Clinton, in time, made his peace with the Ronald Reagan revolution, informing Congress that the era of big government is over.

 

“His policies were liberal, but not nearly as far left as those of Obama,” Barbour said. Read article.

 

Jack Ward, Chronwatch-America.com

 

I’m increasingly concerned by the direct or indirect government control over private enterprises. Over the last several decades the federal government has experienced insidious growth.

 

Some may scoff at the suggestion, but, do we have a system of government that: (A) has a centralized authority that enforces stringent socioeconomic controls over the private sector, or (B) owns and controls of the means of production and redistributes the wealth to the masses, or (C) encourages the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and services?

 

While you ponder the question, consider that decades ago the U.S. government took over the control of passenger rail service. The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, (AMTRACK) is a government-owned corporation. Despite the promise of becoming self-sufficient, AMTRACK continues to be heavily subsidized by the U.S government. After decades of subsidies, Amtrak has proven to be incapable of operating as a business and has been described as “mobile money-burning machine.” Read article.

 

JB Williams, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com

 

At this point, every American knows that today’s Democrat Party is the anti-American political party in the United States. Run by the Democratic Socialists of America and their Progressive Caucus, funded by the anti-free market international proletariat cabal, DNC collectivism for the greater communal good rules the day. If you are truly “American,” you don’t really need me to list all of the hard left leaps of the last 110 days…

 

But where is the American Party that stands for founding American principles and values of personal freedom and individual liberty? We have lost thousands of good young Americans around the globe, in defense of freedom and liberty. Surely they did not all die in vain, only to let America slide off into the secular socialist abyss without as much as a whimper…

 

Where is the political counter-balance to the extreme left currently free to assume full control of the free-market economy and every American taxpayer? Read article.

 

Michael Tanner, NRO.com

 

Drip by painful drip, the details of the Democratic health-care-reform plan have been leaking out. And from what we can see so far, it looks like bad news for American taxpayers, health-care providers, and, most important, patients.

 

The plan would not initially create a government-run, single-payer system such as those in Canada and Britain. Private insurance would still exist, at least for a time. But it would be reduced to little more than a public utility, operating much like the electric company, with the government regulating every aspect of its operation.It would be mandated both that employers offer coverage and that individuals buy it. A government-run plan, similar to Medicare, would be set up to compete with private insurers. The government would undertake comparative-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness research, and use the results to impose practice guidelines on providers. Private insurance would face a host of new regulations, including a requirement to insure all applicants and a prohibition on pricing premiums on the basis of risk. Subsidies would be extended to help middle earners purchase insurance. And the government would subsidize and manage the development of a national system of electronic medical records.

 

It would be mandated both that employers offer coverage and that individuals buy it. A government-run plan, similar to Medicare, would be set up to compete with private insurers. The government would undertake comparative-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness research, and use the results to impose practice guidelines on providers. Private insurance would face a host of new regulations, including a requirement to insure all applicants and a prohibition on pricing premiums on the basis of risk. Subsidies would be extended to help middle earners purchase insurance. And the government would subsidize and manage the development of a national system of electronic medical records. Read article.

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