Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.

 

Dear Governor Lingle,

 

I am hereby requesting, in the legal sense, “demanding” to know the factual eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to serve as President of the United States under the provisions of Article II Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America. You have the ability to settle that matter once and for all by directing that the vault copy of Obama’s birth certificate be made available for forensic examination and public viewing.

 

It would seem common courtesy, much less satisfaction of Constitutional requirement for one to show proof of eligibility for the office of President. The requirement does not have to be translated into law, it is in the Constitution. But, Obama has denied access to his records including his birth records and you are enabling potentially the most egregious violation of the Constitution in U.S. History.

 

Dr. Fukino’s attempt to put Obama’s eligibility issue to rest has not succeeded. Hawaii law in force at the time of Obama’s birth would allow one born at the South Pole to register birth in Hawaii. So, Dr. Fukino’s statement means exactly nothing.

 

We, soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen have earned a right to know that orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief are valid, and they are not valid if he is ineligible to hold the office notwithstanding election results and pompous ceremonies. To refuse to substantiate eligibility he and you effectively make a mockery of the law, the Constitution and the lives that stand in the breach between evil and good. Read article.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, NY Times.com

 

Whatever happens in Iran in the aftermath of this month’s fraudulent elections, one thing is clear: we are witnessing not just a fascinating power struggle among men who’ve known each other intimately for 30 years, but the unraveling of the religious idea that has shaped the growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism since the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.

 

The Islamic revolution in Iran encompassed two incompatible ideas: that God’s law — as interpreted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — would rule, and that the people of Iran had the right to elect representatives who would advance and protect their interests. When Khomeini was alive and Iran was at war with Iraq, the tension between theocracy and democracy never became acute.

 

Upon his death in 1989, however, the revolution’s democratic promise started to gain ground. With the presidential campaign of Mohammad Khatami in 1997, it exploded and briefly paralyzed Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the theocratic elite. God’s will and the people’s wants were no longer compatible.

 

To the dismay of Ayatollah Khamenei, who remains supreme leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the candidate whom President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “defeated” in the rigged elections, has become the new Khatami — except he is far more powerful. While Mr. Moussavi lacks Mr. Khatami’s reformist credentials, he is a far steelier politician. And the frustrations of President Khatami’s failed tenure have grown exponentially among a new generation that is less respectful of mullahs and revolutionary ideology. Read article.

 

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com

 

Here is the one immutable fact of Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda as it relates to Iran: It's over. The rule book he came in with is as irrelevant as a tourist guide to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

 

If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama's plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone. And if the forces of reform are crushed into submission by the regime, Obama's plan is moot, because the regime will still be there.

 

Politics and decency will simply demand that the world condemn or shun the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if they come out on top. Even the most soulless realists will be repulsed by the blood on the regime's collective hands.

 

But now, if the clerical junta prevails, anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands.

 

What is dismaying is how reluctant the administration has been to accept this. As even some of Obama's most stalwart defenders are admitting, the president was caught flat-footed by the events in Iran. Read article.

 

Anne Bayefsky, Forbes.com

 

President Obama has staked his reputation on being a human rights guru to people around the world. But his remarks at Tuesday's news conference and behavior since taking office have instead exposed a different persona--that of human rights charlatan.

 

This is a man who embodies the opposite of the courage to act. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at his press conference that "the Iranian people … aren't paying a lot of attention to what's being said … here." On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here--as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense.

 

The president's storyline that we don't know what has transpired in Iran is an insult to the intelligence of both Americans and Iranians. Our absence from the polling booths doesn't mean the results are a mystery. The rules of the election were quite clear. Candidates for president must be approved by the 12-member Council of Guardians. As reported by the BBC, more than 450 Iranians registered as prospective candidates while four contenders were accepted. All 42 women who attempted to run were rejected. So exactly what part of rigged does President Obama not understand? Read article.

 

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO.com

 

As the Iranian government’s murderous repression of the Iranian people continues, critics right and left agitate over the deafening silence of an American president who, as a candidate, derided the Bush administration’s ambitious democracy promotion as too timid. They speculate as to why Barack Obama won’t speak out: Why won’t he condemn the mullahs? Is he daft enough to believe he can charm the regime into abandoning its nuclear ambitions? Does the self-described realist so prize stability that he thinks it’s worth abandoning the cause of freedom — and the best chance in 30 years of dislodging an implacable American enemy?

 

In truth, it’s worse than that. Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.

 

Prepare to be infuriated. Read article.

 

Michael Isikoff, Newsweek.com

 

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications."

 

The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

 

The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, instructed federal agencies to adopt a "presumption" of disclosure for FOIA requests. This reversal of Bush policy was intended to restore a standard set by President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the Reno policy. Read article.

 

John Stossel, JWR.com

 

President Obama has announced his "sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system."

 

We can debate endlessly whether the Constitution authorizes any president to "overhaul" the financial system. But I want to focus on a different matter: whether any president, with all his advisers, is capable of overseeing something as complex as the financial system.

 

My answer is no, and it is ominous that a bright guy like Obama doesn't know this. He thinks he must regulate the system because it is so complicated and important. In fact, those are the reasons why he cannot regulate it, and should not try.

 

Yet Obama is so confident.

 

"[W]e will … coordinate and share information, to identify gaps in regulation, … solve problems in oversight before they can become crises … that will allow us to protect the economy ." (Emphasis added.)

 

What Obama cannot tell us is why these are anything more than words. We've heard them before. Why should we be comforted? Read article.

 

Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com

 

The choice presented by the democracy protests in Iran could hardly have been clearer.

 

On one side: a brutal theocratic regime that jails and tortures its critics at home and is a deadly sponsor of terrorism abroad; that loudly proclaims its enmity for the United States and has murdered many Americans to prove it; that barely conceals its drive to amass a nuclear arsenal; that lusts for the annihilation of Israel; and that for 30 years has pursued a far-flung Islamist jihad.

 

On the other side: throngs of Iranians calling for an end to their government’s abuses.

 

With whom should America stand - the bloody tyranny or the people opposing it? For most Americans the question answers itself, which is why both houses of Congress voted all but unanimously last week to condemn the Iranian government and support the protesters’ embrace of human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

 

So why was President Obama’s response initially so ambivalent? Why was he more interested in preserving “dialogue’’ with Iran’s dictatorial rulers than in providing moral support for their freedom-seeking subjects? Read article.

 

Eric Lichtblau, NY Times.com

 

Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

 

 

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents relat ed to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

 

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

 

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country. Read article.

 

David Yerushalmi, NRO.com

 

What makes the Justice Department’s position unimaginable is that its brief concedes that the Second Circuit’s ruling got the law wrong (although the brief maintains that it fortuitously got the result right) and that it is in conflict with other circuit courts that have ruled on the issue.

 

The two situations in which the Supreme Court is most likely to accept the type of discretionary appeal known as a writ of certiorari are when the circuits below “split,” or when a circuit has issued a bad ruling that will have serious implications for federal law. The Obama-Holder Justice Department admits that both conditions are met in this case, yet it still favors immunity. Worse, it believes the Supreme Court should not even review the matter. In other words, the Obama administration concedes that the Second Circuit, one of the more influential federal appellate courts, got the rationale for its holding wrong, but it nonetheless opposes giving the victims of 9/11 their day in court.

 

The other unimaginable position maintained by the U.S. government is that the Saudi princes acting as private individuals should be immunized from lawsuits by the victims of 9/11 — not on the basis of sovereign immunity, but because the Obama administration doesn’t feel there is enough evidence against them. But even the Second Circuit recognized there was a wealth of evidence to show that these princes knowingly funded al-Qaeda’s terrorism via Muslim charities.

 

What makes this position even more outrageous is that the only valid basis for the Justice Department to step in and offer its opinion in this case was to clarify for the Supreme Court the executive’s view of the interpretation of sovereign immunity under the FSIA. That the Justice Department would even venture its opinion on the wholly unrelated issue of whether there was sufficient evidence presented in the complaint to justify allowing the case to go forward against the individual princes is, at the very least, problematic.

 

The question now crying out to be asked: How far will the Obama administration go to prevent private plaintiffs from exposing the quite personal ties between our Saudi “friends” — who love to host U.S. presidents bearing words of praise — and our jihadi enemies fighting to impose the rule of sharia around the world? Read article.

 

Tony Allen-Mills, Times Online.co.uk

 

Over the past five months Michelle Obama has basked in some of the most flattering reviews ever earned by an American first lady. Yet the first stirrings of discontent are beginning to surface as President Barack Obama’s wife emerges from her newly installed White House vegetable garden in search of a meatier political role.

 

Reports last week that she is seeking to expand her influence in her husband’s administration set alarm bells ringing among Democratic veterans.

 

Despite denials from White House officials that Michelle Obama is suffering from “Hillary-itis” — a burning desire to help her husband run the country — her long-running interest in healthcare has raised painful memories of 1994, when Hillary Clinton presided over a political debacle as her health reform proposals collapsed in Congress.

 

As a Harvard-educated lawyer and a former hospital administrator from Chicago, Michelle Obama has been dealing with the shortcomings of US healthcare for much of the past decade. Read article.

 

Print This E-mail This

Share It: