Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

 

President Obama took office loudly promising to be the anti-George W. Bush of foreign policy, vowing to "extend a hand" to adversaries "willing to unclench" their fists. What he has received instead is an education in the reality of global rogues, and how he responds has become a major test of his Presidency.

 

The immediate challenges are North Korea and Iran, governments that the American left claimed were "evil" only because Mr. Bush had declared them so. Perhaps Mr. Obama believed this too, though five months later he has learned otherwise. North Korea has rejected his every overture and is now defying the U.N. to press its nuclear and proliferation ambitions. As for Iran, the mullahs are attempting to crush a popular uprising after a stolen election while also showing disdain for Mr. Obama's diplomatic entreaties.

 

The question is whether Mr. Obama will now adapt his policies to meet challenges he clearly didn't expect. Jimmy Carter took office with similar illusions about the Soviet Union, promising to cure our "inordinate fear of Communism." Our enemies pushed back at what they perceived to be U.S. weakness, and Mr. Carter and his NSC adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski never recovered. We'll soon learn if Mr. Obama is made of sterner stuff. Read article.

 

George Joyce, American Thinker.com

 

In a riveting exploration of America 's coming breakup, Paul Starobin writes in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

 

"Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society."

 

Starobin chronicles in fascinating detail the historical basis for America 's future balkanization. He provides a snapshot of today's most viable and vocal secessionist organizations. Starobin goes on to argue that the overbearing and stifling "Obama planners and their ilk" will probably be doomed to fail in a land replete with the Jeffersonian impulse of radical self-determination. Obama's extreme power grab, in other words, will cause a correspondingly extreme backlash:

 

"All of this adds up to a federal power grab that might make even FDR's New Dealers blush. But that's just the point: Not surprisingly, a lot of folks in the land of Jefferson are taking a stand against an approach that stands to make an indebted citizenry yet more dependent on an already immense federal power. The backlash, already under way, is a prime stimulus for a neo-secessionist movement, the most extreme manifestation of a broader push for some form of devolution."

 

By focusing most of his attention on how big unwieldy entities devolve into creative little ones, Starobin's analysis misses however the more direct personal role Barack Obama himself has played in fracturing America.

 

Back in March of last year for example New York Times columnist Roger Cohen told his audience he could "understand the rage" of Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Without missing a beat Cohen then concluded in his essay that the "clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years." 

 

Has Barack Obama's been an "uplifting" presidency? Mr. Obama knew full well that his Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, dismissed the test results of white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, entitled to promotion but denied because they were of the wrong race. Surely her decision is demeaning to both white males and to those who study diligently for exams. Did the black firefighters feel uplifted or demeaned when Sotomayor ruled in their favor? Was the New Haven firehouse more unified or more divided after Sotomayor's ruling? Was Obama's Sotomayor choice uplifting or demeaning?

 

Indeed, from the Sotomayor pick and anti-business rhetoric to the endless lecturing about America 's sins, Mr. Obama is starting to sound a lot like his former pastor. To be sure Obama is not as grating and shrill as Mr. Wright but closer to something more like Jeremiah-lite. In other words, Mr. Obama's strategy seems to be to convince Americans to drink his socialist tonic out of sheer guilt. I'm not sure what is so inspiring about all of this. Read article.

 

Hans A. von Spakovsky & Todd Gaziano, NRO.com

 

Saying one thing on the campaign trail and doing another after taking office is nothing new. President Obama has done it repeatedly. Some of these policy or legal reversals have been for the better; many decidedly have not. Whenever it happens, though, Obama should (though he rarely does) explain himself carefully and clearly — especially when the reversal looks like it was done for personal or partisan reasons. Moreover, any such reversal must be consistent with the law, especially laws that Obama had a hand in enacting as a senator.

 

Obama’s latest, and perhaps most problematic, change of position is his firing earlier this month of Gerald Walpin, inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency that promotes and coordinates volunteerism. According to the agency’s website, the CNCS inspector general “conducts and supervises independent and objective audits and investigations of Corporation programs and operations . . . to promote economy and efficiency and prevent and detect fraud and abuse in the Corporation’s programs and operations.”

 

Frankly, the inspector-general system in the federal government is vastly overrated and has an undeserved reputation for nonpartisan, objective investigations. In fact, many current and former government employees have been abused by personal, partisan, or ideological witch hunts, conducted by glory-hunting IGs trying to make a name for themselves in the Washington political and media world.

 

But two years ago, then-Senator Obama co-sponsored the Inspector General Reform Act, which was eventually enacted last year as the Improving Government Accountability Act. Part of the purpose of that law, as outlined in the Senate report, was to make sure that IGs operate with “sufficient independence to do their jobs well,” without fear of political repercussions. Thus, the law requires the president to communicate “in writing the reasons for any” removal or transfer of an IG. The Senate report says this provision is intended to “ensure that Inspectors General are not removed for political reasons.” Good luck with that. Read article.

 

George Will, Townhall.com

 

Politicians have extraordinary shoulder joints that enable them to pat themselves on the back, and last week the president, a master of that calisthenic, performed it in the Rose Garden. His subject -- aside from himself, as usual -- was the bill by which Congress authorized the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. The president called this "a bill that truly defines change in Washington" and "changes the way Washington works and who Washington works for."

 

Our leaders are often wrong but rarely so precisely wrong. In two important particulars the bill is a crystalline example of Washington business as usual -- the protection of the strong. The bill was supported by America's biggest tobacco company and by the Democratic Party's fountain of funds, the trial bar.

 

Congress could ban cigarettes, therefore it could ban tobacco advertising. Instead, tobacco advertising and promotions will be even more severely curtailed. These restrictions merit a constitutional challenge. Read article.

 

Alain's Newsletter.com

 

The Democrats’ health care initiative reminds me of the joke about the Boy Scout fighting on a street corner with an old lady.

 

When a passerby asked what was going on, the scout said, "I’m trying to help her across the street but she refuses to go."

 

Health insurance, so far, is not mandatory by law, and we’ve got 16 percent of the population – 47 million or so – without it. Auto insurance is mandatory by law, and according to the Insurance Research Council, 14 percent of drivers nationwide still don’t buy it.

 

Government can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. And it can’t change human nature.

 

Political freedom and capitalism work so well because they reflect the truth that human beings have free choice – but this means individuals take personal responsibility.

 

The left has always been in denial about this, which is why they’re endlessly trying to expand government and reduce freedom. They see individuals as hapless victims the state must take care of.

 

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said "The reason people don’t have health insurance isn’t because they don’t want it. It’s because they can’t afford it."

 

This is largely untrue. Read article.

 

Burt Prelutsky, Townhall.com

 

A while back, I heard Obama bragging about his first few months in the White House. When he claimed he had done as much in that period as any president in history, my initial thought was that for the first time in his life he was being modest. Frankly, I think he’s done more, much more, and I only wish that some of it had been good for America.

 

He’s taken over car companies, banks and lending institutions. He’s printed so much currency that he’s the envy of counterfeiters and con men everywhere. He’s buried the nation in so much debt that children born 40 years down the road will be greeted with a slap on the butt and a lien on future earnings. For good measure, the Community Organizer in Chief has created more czars than the Romanovs.

 

Still, we’re told, a majority of Americans like Obama. That would absolutely confound me if I wasn’t already aware that a lot of people think David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are funny. Read article.

 

Glenn Garvin, JWR.com

 

When U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was investigating the leak of a CIA officer's name a couple of years ago, he bullied witnesses, threw innocent people in jail and generally acted like J. Edgar Hoover on the trail of a commie spy — and his noisiest cheerleaders were American liberals, thrilled by the discovery that prosecutorial abuse can be fun when you're directing it at the Bush administration. I wonder if they'll like it as much now that Fitzgerald is slapping around the First Amendment.

 

Fitzgerald and his Justice Department pals, outraged by this week's publication of a critical book they've tried to kill for two years, are threatening to sue not only the author and publisher, but even bloggers.

 

The book, "Triple Cross" by former ABC reporter Peter Lance, tells the story of al-Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed, who infiltrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI while laying the groundwork for Osama bin Laden's campaign of terror that culminated in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mohamed passed his Green Beret training along to a terrorist cell in New York, which killed Rabbi Meier Kahane, bombed the World Trade Center in 1994 and planned to blow up bridges into the city in what became known as the "Day of Terror" attacks.

 

That Day of Terror never dawned; cell members were successfully prosecuted by Fitzgerald, then an assistant U.S. attorney in New York, in the case that earned him the reputation as the nation's law-enforcement ace on terrorism. "Triple Cross," however, argues that Fitzgerald and the Justice Department muffed chance after chance to roll up al-Qaeda's U.S. network (including some 9/11 hijackers) and deliberately discredited intelligence on al-Qaeda from a jailhouse snitch that might have exposed FBI screw-ups. Read article.

 

Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com

 

George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party - personified in Big Brother, whose menacing image is everywhere - and in which the Thought Police ruthlessly suppress any hint of dissent. The Party enforces its will through constant surveillance, relentless propaganda, and the annihilation of anyone who rebels against its authority, even if only in private thoughts or conversation. Winston engages in such thought-crimes, first by secretly recording his hatred of Big Brother in a diary, then through a love affair with a young woman called Julia. Eventually he is arrested, interrogated, tortured, broken.

 

“Nineteen Eighty-Four’’ was Orwell’s warning of what unchecked state power can become - a warning informed by the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with their contempt for human life and conscience, their cult of personality, their unremitting cruelty and deceit. “I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe . . . that something resembling it could arrive,’’ Orwell wrote after the book was published. “I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences.’’

 

Orwell himself was a committed socialist, and he insisted that “Nineteen Eighty-Four’’ should not be taken as an attack on socialism or the left wing. And, in truth, though the ruling ideology in the book is named Ingsoc (“English Socialism’’ in Oceania’s language of Newspeak), the Party’s aims have nothing to do with collectivizing wealth or any other socialist prescription.

 

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,’’ Winston is told by O’Brien, the Party official who interrogates him. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. . . Power is not a means, it is an end. Read article.

 

Diane Grassi, NMJ.us

 

It was on June 21, 1788, that the United States Constitution was officially adopted with its ratification. And it was at that time that its ratification was contingent upon suggested changes be made to the Constitution, thereafter.

 

And it was in the first session of Congress in 1789 in which 12 amendments were proposed of which 10 were ultimately ratified on December 15, 1791. These amendments became known as the Bill of Rights.

 

Not the least of such rights was Amendment 1, and its often referenced freedom-of-speech clause. Its main purpose is to provide protection or a deterrent against censorship by the government and its officials. And it is implicit that the First Amendment be invulnerable when a law or government action is at issue.

 

And it is crucial that the press remains the watchdog of the people, in order to help decipher fact from fiction and for it to report the facts.

 

If we fast-forward 300 years, we still have two Houses of Congress, more unaccountable than any time in our history, an Executive Branch, creating its own shadow government within the very walls of the White House, and a judicial branch which has evolved into an activist judiciary. And most unfortunately, we have a press corps, a/k/a the media, which no longer remains accountable to the people and at every turn fails to remain objective in its reportage. Read article.

 

N Richard Greenfield, JRW.com

 

"Mark my words," Vice President Joe Biden told donors a few months before the election, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama … We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's going to need help … to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

 

One could easily have said the same thing about American Jews and their relationship with Israel. It is being severely tested. As it turns out, Israel is indeed the focus of U.S. pressure and bullying. The threat to peace in the Middle East, says our current administration, emanates not from Hamas, Hezbollah, Jihad or Arab nationalism, but from Israel. The U.S. is casting Israel in the classic Jewish role of scapegoat, blaming her for all of the region's problems. President Obama has embraced the ever-ready and willing State Department's negativity towards Israel and, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the way, is making demands about Israeli 'settlements' which are harsh and uncompromising. At the same time, State ignores Arab illegal construction which is happening on a much wider and broader scale. State conveniently ignores the fact that if land were truly the issue, Israel and her Arab neighbors would have been at peace for the last 60 years. Even though State has always been biased against Israel, it has never had a Presidency to work with that was in such complete consonance with its views as the Obama Administration is today. The resulting bullying of Israel by the U.S. is without parallel in American-Israeli relations.

 

President Obama has embraced the ever-ready and willing State Department's negativity towards Israel and, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the way, is making demands about Israeli 'settlements' which are harsh and uncompromising. At the same time, State ignores Arab illegal construction which is happening on a much wider and broader scale. State conveniently ignores the fact that if land were truly the issue, Israel and her Arab neighbors would have been at peace for the last 60 years. Even though State has always been biased against Israel, it has never had a Presidency to work with that was in such complete consonance with its views as the Obama Administration is today. The resulting bullying of Israel by the U.S. is without parallel in American-Israeli relations. Read article.

 

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