Laura Blumenfeld’s excellent story was run by the Washington Post on Sunday, July 4^th.  Was that a way of burying it? It was, after all, right there on the front page. But there aren’t many people who race to read the Post on the nation’s birthday. In her report, Miss Blumenfeld details all kinds of interesting information about our national security team.  It’s filled with the kind of portentous sentences (“Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel…”) that give Tom Clancy readers their sense of being in on really big events.

Why did this story appear at all? Was it a good idea to splash all over the front pages specific information on who is briefed by whom, where, and about what?

We are led to believe by the weighty headline—Up All Night—that some very important people are very serious about our security. Why, Attorney General Eric Holder is described as occupying the “loneliest perch” among the President’s nighthawks. Here he is at 1 a.m., munching Chips Ahoy and deciding that the 9/11 terrorists should be tried in a civilian court in Lower Manhattan. His late-night deliberations are so important that he’s even left his Jay-Z and Tupac music back at his massive office in the Justice Department. Here, we are told in ponderous tones, Holder is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States and the President’s good friend. “The tension is to be independent, yet part of the administration,” he says. Chip Chip Ahoy!

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano can’t quite get her antiquated FAX machine to function reliably. But she’s dead sure that the borders have been secured. She’s depicted fussing in a matronly manner over her midnight cup of tea. Tea party, anyone?

Most indelible of all the impressions in this longish holiday article is the portrait of retired Marine Gen. James Jones. He’s the President’s National Security Advisor. And he just resigned today.

He should be remembered well. It is with Gen. Jones that we get inside the White House Situation Room. The story is worth quoting here:

12:35 a.m.

White House Situation Room

The night duty officer can’t hear his own voice. A White House maid is vacuuming. “Can you wrap it up?” He plugs a finger in his ear and presses his mouth to the classified, yellow phone: “This is the Situation Room. We are going to try to connect Gen. Jones with his Russian counterpart.”

“Yes, sir,” replies a communications officer at the end of the line, cruising with Jones on the C-40 toward Pakistan.

The national security adviser is 37,000 feet over the Atlantic, bunking with Leon Panetta. Jones has changed out of charcoal pinstripes into a Georgetown sweat shirt. He checked an e-mail update about his pregnant daughter-in-law. “No baby yet,” his son said. There are complications, and Jones is concerned.

Before he can sleep, Jones also needs to talk to Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko, to help negotiate a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear program. The Situation Room officer who handles secure calls for the West Wing is trying to locate Prikhodko, who’s traveling in Kiev.

All most impressive, perhaps even reassuring—if you didn’t know anything about national security. While I thank Gen. Jones for his service and revere his Marine Corps, I am not comforted by the fact that he felt the need to connect with his Russian counterpart.

Gen. Jones does not have a Russian counterpart. The general serves a constitutional republic. The leaders of this republic, ever since that first Fourth of July in 1776, have been chosen by our free people.

Segei Phkhodko serves the regime of Vladimir Putin. Putin spent a career in the Soviet KGB before making a quick transition to become Prime Minister to the last democratic leader in the Kremlin, the only freely chosen leader in Russia’s thousand-year history of tyranny. That was the heroic, but drunken Boris Yeltsin.

It was Putin who gave President Yeltsin the heave-ho on New Year’s Eve, 2000. While the West was distracted by Millennium celebrations and absorbed with Y2K jitters, Yeltsin doubtless woke up on Jan. 1, 2000 with a hangover, a pension, and a security detail whose purpose it was to keep him closely guarded. Interesting, isn’t it, that no one ever saw ex-President Yeltsin anywhere in the West?

President George W. Bush gushed early in his administration met President Putin. It was then that he looked into the Russian ruler’s eyes, had seen into his soul, and pronounced him “a good man.”

Nice to hear it. Vladimir Bukovsky, the great Russian dissident, said he had looked into the eyes of many a KGB agent. He didn’t find the experience especially souful. Nor did he pronounce any of his jailers and torturers good men.

On the same day Gen. Jones has resigned, the Post reports a memorial service in Moscow. Four years after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politikovskaya, there have been no breakthroughs in the investigation of her killers. Brave Russians gather to remember this wonderful woman. Does anyone think Sergei Phikhodko would be among her mourners? Or that he and Putin would stir themselves to find her killers? Politikovskaya is one of fifty-two Russian journalists murdered since 1992.

It is deeply depressing to learn that our emperors are naked, that they have no idea what they are doing to render us safe from espionage and foreign attack. I never had the chance to meet anyone so powerful as Vladimir Putin or Sergei Prikhodko. I operated at the lowest level, dealing with Soviets as a Russian language interpreter for the Coast Guard.

We were doing fisheries patrols in the Bering Sea, boarding the floating garbage scows they call trawlers. Very low level stuff. But I learned then not to trust the Soviets. I saw their newly printed posters—approved by the state censors at Glavlit in Moscow—that showed nothing but a violent hatred of the United States of America.

I did not hate the Russians. I felt compassion for them in their cheap, shoddy clothing, their cardboard shoes, and their ill-fitting uniforms. I tried always to respect their human dignity. I could feel their resentment, though, their wounded sense of inferiority that made them a dangerous adversary.

Never for a moment did I forgot that I was a representative of the Great Republic. My authority came from a good and free people whose liberties and constitutional government are the wonder of the world. I never doubted American Exceptionalism. And I had no Russian counterpart.

Gushing all this sensitive information to the Washington Post is unwise in the extreme. Has anyone in this administration ever heard of the spetsnats, the Soviet-era assassination teams whose function it was to decapitate the governments of Western democracies, to render them incapable of responding to a Soviet assault? Do we seriously think that all those spetsnats units have been disbanded? If we’re not worried about Russians, do we think jihadists in nearby Falls Church, Virginia, can’t read the Post?

Winston Churchill explained Russia’s behavior to us at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, back in 1946. It was that famous speech in which he described an Iron Curtain, giving that phrase currency for the first time. He said the Russians did not want a war. What they wanted was the fruits of war without war.

They wanted all they could get through espionage, deception, and Western naivety. And now, with this administration, they are getting all they want. The Post article, “Up All Night,” has had me up all night on a number of occasions. I find myself praying late nights that our unprepared, irresolute leaders learn what we need to know before a tragedy strikes.

Robert Morrison served as a Russian language interpreter and Top Secret Control Officer in the Coast Guard, when we had top secrets.

Comments: 1 |

The National Portrait Gallery, across from my office in Washington, has a fine poster of President Barack Obama. He is shown wearing a rumpled fedora, riding in an open car, smiling that dazzling smile of his, and clenching a cigarette holder in his teeth at that same jaunty angle that was familiar to millions of Americans as that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Every Democratic president tries to recap FDR.

I thought about that poster today as word of President Obama’s most recent misery spread. It seems he has folks in Los Angeles in a fury about his recent fund-raising trip to the City of Angels. His motorcade held up traffic for hours—the one thing you definitely do not want to do to harried California commuters.

This great city ought to be Obama’s oyster. After all, he carried California by three million votes in 2008. But the president is increasingly getting raspberries wherever he goes.

Just last Friday night, he was speaking at an iftar dinner in the White House to a group of his Muslim admirers. I didn’t even know they had iftar dinners in the White House. But he began his remarks in that deep and resonant tobacco baritone of his: “Let me be clear…” He proceeded to offer a very clear endorsement of building a mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. His dinner guests applauded enthusiastically.

Next morning, the president began backpedaling furiously. He was not commenting on the “wisdom” of putting the mosque near the place where 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11, only on the Muslims’ constitutional right to build it. In other words: “Let me be less clear. Let me try to lay down a smokescreen and beat a hasty retreat.”

I can imagine Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) burning up the wires to the White House political operation after hearing that one. He is his party’s campaign chairman for this fall. “Are you trying to lose control of the House of Representatives,” Van Hollen might have said.

The mosque at Ground Zero issue is a 70%-30% split. By a commanding margin, Americans do not want a mosque built near the site of the bloodiest attack yet on our homeland. Public officials who defy the people so heedlessly can expect to feel their wrath in the voting booths come November.

I have a recommendation for our beleaguered president: Do what FDR did. Show less of yourself. Yes, I know that was before the TV era. But Roosevelt knew that the mystery and aura of the presidency was enhanced by making presidential speeches and appearances less frequent. President Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, cannot resist being in our faces 24/7. Hasn’t he ever heard the old saw “familiarity breeds contempt?”

One of my favorite political photographs is on sale at the store of the New York Times. Notice how the people are gathered on the train platform in Warm Springs, Georgia. Franklin D. Roosevelt is nowhere to be seen in this classic black and white picture. But his presence is felt.

Those hopeful, expectant Americans are excited at the prospect of seeing their elected chief.

Like all conservatives, I have serious questions about FDR’s economic policies. And detailed study has shown me how seriously Roosevelt misjudged the threat of Communism. Still, as a political actor, he had no rivals.

An unapologetic Christian, Roosevelt never neglected religious minorities in this country. He faced down the bigots of his day who said his New Deal was actually a “Jew Deal.”  FDR regularly worshiped in his Episcopal Church and his administration was not afraid to express an openly religious sentiment when fighting the Nazi menace.

The U.S. Government published this poster showing Nazis trying to destroy the Christian Bible. The Obama administration is afraid even to mention jihadist terrorists or speak of Muslim extremists.

The hope for change expressed by that Obama-as-FDR poster at the National Portrait Gallery seems to have faded. Now, the only common tie between our 32^nd and  44^th presidents is the cigarette smoke. And, tragically, that smoke probably killed Franklin Roosevelt.

Comments: - |

The fashion columns and the political news seem to have joined efforts to comment on First Lady Michelle Obama’s vacation trip to Spain’s fabled Costa del Sol. The blogs show our elegant and stately First Lady having her hand kissed by King Juan Carlos. How charming. How wrong.

First, in defense of Mrs. Obama, let it be noted that she did not bow to the king. It’s not as bad as what her husband did when he bowed to the odious King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia last year. President Obama then became the first U.S. President in history to bow to a monarch. Americans should bow to no king, but nobody should bow to that king.

Second, while it’s not that bad, it’s still bad. We have been told endless times how highly educated the President and the First Lady are. That they are highly educated and highly intelligent there is no dispute.

But they could both use some basic lessons in how to represent the Great Republic on the world stage.  To be seen bowing to kings and having your hand kissed by royals is wholly contrary to America’s republican spirit. Small “r.”

When Thomas Jefferson was presented to King George III in London, after American independence was assured, the king turned his back on the author of the  Declaration of Independence. Jefferson waited patiently for 16 years. Then, when King  George’s ambassador to Washington came to the White House to present his credentials, President Jefferson received him wearing a dressing gown and down at the heels carpet slippers. Probably, Mr. Jefferson’s pet mocking bird was in attendance to record the scene. Jefferson’s point was not vengeance, it was to play down all pretentions to monarchy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was happy to take Prime Minister Winston Churchill to church with him on New  Year’s Day, 1942. They attended worship services at Christ Church in nearby Alexandria, Virginia.Roosevelt had requested “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” be sung. Note the republic in the title.

Churchill, the lifelong monarchist, loved the tune. He immediately requested that it be included in his own funeral ceremonies–and it was in 1965.

But FDR was making an important point for the American people. Many of our people were very distrustful of kings and queens and the very idea of monarchs and empires. They grew up reciting the Pledge of  Allegiance, including the line :’…and to the republic for which it stands.” Americans in those days did not all attend Harvard Law  School, but they did know what a republic is.

And they understood why Americans don’t bow to kings–or have their hands kissed by them.

Our First Family needs to spend more time with Americans.  Pensacola, Florida, has plenty of Spanish history and culture. It has beautiful beaches. It has a great Navy aviation museum to rival Washington’s Air and Space Museum.. It would have been the perfect place for our First Family to go on vacation. And better still, it’s full of Americans.

Comments: - |

In addition to being Wednesday, today is also the birthday of FRC’s Washington, D.C. neighbor, President Obama. To mark the occasion, our neighborly FRC Senior Fellow Robert Morrison penned the president a greeting that turned out a tad too long for a Hallmark card, so our friends at The American Thinker have kindly agreed to publish it:

Today, August 4th, is your forty-ninth birthday, Mr. President. You share your special day with the U.S. Coast Guard. When I served in the Coast Guard as a Russian interpreter, I learned this birthday greeting: Sto lyet. May you live a hundred years!

The Coast Guard recently distinguished itself in attacking the BP oil spill. Although a few are grousing about the Coast Guard authorizing the use of chemical dispersants, my guess is that the embattled folks of the Gulf shore are cheering the Coast Guard. They certainly cheered the Guardsmen back at the time of Hurricane Katrina. The Coast Guard is one of the few federal agencies that nobody is mad at.

Birthdays are a good time for self-reflection. You must be wondering how things seem to have gone awry for you and your administration. You came in promising that the oceans would cease to rise, that the planet would begin to heal. You promised this, only to have billions of gallons of oil spilled on your watch. That BP, the perpetrator, was one of the major supporters of your presidential campaign hardly seems fair.

Read the rest of Bob’s birthday greeting at The American Thinker…

Comments: - |

On Sunday, the New York Times carried a story by reporter Katharine Q. Seelye on the 100th anniversary Jamboree of American Scouting being held at Ft. A.P. Hill in Virginia.

In the dextrous patois of the elite Left, Ms. Seelye succeeded in talking down to nearly three million boys and their families. Instead of celebrating the myriad contributions of Scouting to our nation, her agenda-heavy story raised every shibboleth of American liberalism in an attempt to belittle a great organization.

In her account, we read nothing about young men mentored by older boys who become like brothers and strong men who serve as the father-figures many lads would never otherwise have. We never learn that Scouting has produced more presidents, astronauts, scientists, and leaders in business and religion and industry than readily could be numbered. Scouts provide millions of hours serving their communities — including some of the neediest people among us — each year. An incredibly impressive list of Scouting’s achievements and contributions can be found here.

This is, for me, a personal matter: My sons are Scouts, on track to make Eagle, and we attended part of the Jamboree. Our time was spent talking with boys from Seattle and Dallas, eating with others from New Jersey, trading patches of every shape and variety and seeing, in many displays and activities, the panoply of American ingenuity, grit and bravery (our Armed Forces were admirably represented) spread before us.

I have seen Scouts take boys and help turn them into confident, capable, resourceful young men whose character is well-defined and whose ambitions are informed by service and teamwork. Each week of the school year, and frequently throughout the summer, my sons join with boys of every race and ethnic heritage to laugh uproariously at ridiculous jokes and absurd skits, learn more skills than I could likely ever teach them and, through cooperation and friendly competition, subtly but indisputably get honed for manhood.

That’s what Scouting really is about: Manhood. Scouting teaches youths to become fine men, physically and mentally, men who believe in God and honor the law and defend our country. This seems to drive many liberals to distraction.

Here are some responses to the more piquant quips in Ms. Seelye’s recitation of Scouting’s inadequacies, through which she reveals not insight but a sad and clueless bitterness:

1. Scouts do not bar atheists. Scouts affirm faith in God. Thereby, atheists bar themselves.
2. Scouts bar homosexuals because homosexuality is incompatible with Scouts’ Judeo-Christian foundations and because of the many case of homosexual abuse of boys in Scouts over the decades, as Seelye herself notes in her article.
3. Scouting does represent “wholesomeness,” but in today’s morally failing America that should be a source of celebration, not condescension.
4. Admittance of girls would fundamentally change the nature of an inherently masculine organization. Although girls are allowed in Scouting until the age of 13, the name of the group is “Boy Scouts,” not “Child Scouts” or “Teen Scouts.” Girls Scouts of America and American Heritage Girls exist for a reason.
5. Scouting actively reaches out to minority populations. Many of America’s most prominent African-American and Latino leaders have been involved in Scouting, and were it not for Scouting, many inner city youth would never experience the out-of-doors in a meaningful way. Perhaps if Ms. Seelye had taken a moment to visit BSA’s Website, she would have seen the large section devoted to “Ethnic and Generational Diversity,” and read the extensive report on Scouting’s demographic outlook.
6. Scouting has lost numbers due the relentless assault on the family and on the virtues that long have been the bedrock of our nation. This is not the fault of Scouting but is, rather, a reflection on the values and conduct of a society that is losing its moral moorings. All the more reason for Boy Scouts.
7. Scouting is not “in the woods,” as Seelye claims. Scouting is not some kind of quaint reliquary of an earlier age. It is alive and well, and knows exactly where it is.

Every week, millions of boys across America lift their right hands and, with three fingers pointing upward, recite the following. If these commitments are anachronistic or irrelevant to our national life, our country is in dire straits indeed:

Scout Oath (or Promise):

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Scout Law:

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

Comments: 2 |

Our own Tom McClusky wrote a funny blog this week about DC’s beautiful people. Today on a more serious note I would like to take up the topic of beauty and the dignity of the human person.

I am motivated by deep beauty. To me, that which is real, true and good is always beautiful. Part of what makes something beautiful is that it is inherently creative and mysterious. I believe that when something is contrived, it becomes less beautiful. For example, we can think of any number of famous actresses or TV personalities who undergo plastic surgery and emerge looking more artificial and, thus, much less beautiful.

Beauty frequently communicates a deeper reality. It has been said, “The most beautiful act in the world was Christ dying on the cross.” Intended as an execution, Jesus’ death was the ultimate expression of love. It defined and illustrated beauty in its truest sense.

With this as our backdrop, I learned of a most unattractive, ugly reality this morning: there is now available to our American consumer a fertility clinic to create “beautiful babies.”

“Ever worried about having an ugly baby? Fret not, a popular dating website exclusively for beautiful people has branched out to provide a fertility forum aimed at creating beautiful babies. Criticized by some as narcissism gone mad, the project was launched in June, shortly after BeautifulPeople.com booted out 5,000 people who gained weight and were deemed too ugly to remain members. Presented as a solution for parents who worry about having ugly children, the Fertility Forum is “like any charitable work,” according to managing director Greg Hodge, a good‑looking Brit.

There is so much wrong about this it is hard to know where to begin.

Clearly, one of the most amazing aspects of life is the way in which a human being is created. We take it for granted even as our society does everything possible to control and manipulate this ability. But the truth is that a human being is the miraculous co-creation of an act of love between his or her parents. It is one of the greatest miracles on earth that the act of love would bear fruit in the miracle of life. In doing so, parents become co-creators with God.

Every baby is a gift. A baby is not a right. It is a gift from God, its co-creator. He chose, deliberately, to make every little one conceived within a womb.

A baby is a creation. A unique masterpiece. That does not mean that in order to be beautiful a baby need possess perfect, asymmetrical features. One of the most attractive babies I have even seen was a little girl with Down Syndrome. This baby glowed and had a smile that lit up the room (and her parents’ lives).

Another masterpiece was my friend’s son who had a heart defect and lived only a few days after birth. If you could have seen how this newborn radiated, your heart would permanently be strengthened.

Manipulating how life is created to produce physically attractive babies is wrong. Not only does it take the Creator and loving act which envelopes conception out of the equation, but it attempts to control and manipulate what is, in essence, a miracle. It moves in the direction of defining human beings by their features, rather than by their dignity and personhood.

In the process of producing beautiful children, many (beautiful) embryos will be killed because they somehow did not measure up to the qualifications the sponsors were hoping for, or perhaps the parents only wanted one baby, but five were created, etc.

This is a dangerous trend – one that will not have pretty consequences. Persons are not items to be designed for appearance or utility but are co-created to love and to be a unique reflection of their Creator.

Comments: 2 |

The marvels of the Internet continue to stun us. We now have at our fingertips the power to reach deeply into our own past and to pull it into our own day. We can access the spoken words of our long-dead leaders and compare them with what we hear today.

And we can visit the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. There, we will have a chance to smile, perhaps to laugh, at the parody magazine cover they’ve displayed. It shows President Barack Obama riding in an open car, a battered fedora atop his head, his head thrown back, and his dazzling smile radiating throughout the room. In his brilliant teeth is clenched a cigarette holder, held at a jaunty angle.

It’s a sight gag. It’s a throwback. It’s a pose so familiar to older Americans that it’s instantly recognizable.

Franklin D. Roosevelt died when I was still in my mother’s womb. Still, I grew up with stories about him. His voice was familiar in our home–if not on records, certainly from TV documentaries of World War II. My relatives would delightedly mimic his head-tossing delivery and his stentorian eloquence.

Now, you can hear him, too. The Miller Center at the University of Virginia has archived many original recordings. Included in their collection is President Roosevelt’s great speech from June 10, 1940, delivered seventy years ago this week to the graduating class at U.Va.

For context, you must realize that the British Expeditionary Force, the main British army, had just been evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk, France. The French army was in a state of stunned collapse, reeling from the powerful blows of German panzers rolling swiftly through Northeastern France and strafed from above by Nazi Stukas. Hitler’s Luftwaffe chief, the hugely menacing Marshal Goering, had fitted sirens to the wings of his dive bombers for the express purpose of terrifying the women and children upon whom their wicked fury was wreaked.

The peoples of the Americas looked on as newsreels and newspaper photos showed fleeing refugees. These refugees–old men and women and little children crowded the roads and market squares of quiet Belgian, Dutch, and French villages. French reinforcements couldn’t get to the scene of the battle.

It would not have been surprising if young people in America–those like the U.Va. Class of 1940 –felt that the world was just too threatening a place and retreated from it.. But that is not how they reacted. Despite the terrors of war–in the air, on the seas, under the oceans–the reaction of President Roosevelt’s audience that day was strong, thunderous, and like Roosevelt himself, confident.

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

The phone rang insistently just after 8:32 that quiet Sunday morning in Silverdale, Washington. My wife and I were getting up, planning on going to church in our quiet community. My mother was on the line, calling from Roanoke, Virginia, and quite agitated: “Are you alright? Did the blast harm your home? Will you be covered by lava, by ash?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Oh, the mountain has been rumbling for weeks,” I told her, trying to assuage her concerns. “NO! It’s erupted. Mount Saint Helens is all over the news.”

I ran to the window, straining to see any evidence of the volcano’s dense cloud of ash. I saw nothing. We were about 100 miles north of the mountain.

Turning on the television, we learned that the volcano had indeed erupted, with the force a nuclear bomb, and with devastating results. The top of the mountain was blown away. Volcanic ash rose violently and menacingly sixteen miles into the air. Spirit Lake was destroyed.

Washington State’s rich agricultural regions—Eastern Washington—were all in the path of the ash cloud. Soon, pictures on television showed towns and villages blanketed with ash, like some weird blizzard in May. And the TV stations provided maps of the expected path of the ash cloud.

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

It’s another classic bureaucratic report from the Pentagon. In the wake of the murders of 14 persons by Nidal Hasan last November, the Secretary of Defense demanded a full report. [Yes, there were fourteen victims. One of those killed was a pregnant woman.] Well, the Secretary got his report. It’s another doorstop of a document replete with all the usual verbiage when it comes to pop psychology and busy-work buzz words. Here’s what the Department of Defense press release tells us:

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

New York Times columnists Charles M. Blow (“Whose Country Is It?”, March 27) and Frank Rich (“The Rage is Not About Health Care,” March 28, 2010) are denouncing with smug delight and stentorian admonition the “bullying, threats, and acts of violence” (Blow) following the passage of the Obama health care bill.

“Small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht” is what Rich calls the apparent excesses of a tiny minority of anti-Democratic health care bill protestors.  His own crypto-racist presuppositions are apparent in Blow’s evisceration of those he terms “extremists:”

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Let me posit for Mr. Blow an alternative scenario: For the Left,

Even the optics must be disturbing.  A (nationally recognized) woman (Sarah Palin) opposed the health care bill that passed the House.  The bill’s most visible and vocal opponents included a practicing Catholic (John Boehner) and a Jew (Eric Cantor).  And prominent black men (former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and former Godfathers Pizza chairman Herman Cain) didn’t want the black man in the White House to sign the bill into law.  It’s enough to make a New York secular liberal go crazy.

Frank Rich., fueled by the same reactionary unction as Mr. Blow, writes something eerily similar in his piece:

The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.

Again, allow me to rephrase:

The conjunction of a black Republican National Committee Chairman and a female conservative vice-presidential candidate – topped off by a wise African-American conservative on the Supreme Court and a powerful evangelical committee chairman – would sow fears of disenfranchisement among the tiny self-anointed secular elite in the media and the academy no matter what policies were in play.

However, unsatisfied with smarmily tarring all conservatives with the base brush of bigotry, Rich returns to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as further evidence of the Right’s calumny (apparently ignorant of the fact that more House Republicans voted for it than Democrats).  Blow goes one better, asserting that Tea Partiers, per a Quinnipiac University Poll, shows them to be “disproportionately white, evangelical Christians and ‘less educated … than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack’.”

Ah, the Evangelical Slur rears its head: conservative Christians just don’t have the smarts the rest of society possesses.  This assertion is to intellectual credibility what the Big Mac is to nutrition.  The tired asseveration that evangelicals are pear-headed ignoramuses fails the test of serious scrutiny.  According to a comprehensive poll done in 2004 by GreenbergQuinlanRosner Research for the PBS program “Religion and Ethics,” “About 22 percent of white evangelicals hold 4-year college degrees, compared with 27 percent of the general population. (One) quarter (27 percent) of white evangelicals have some sort of post-secondary education, compared to 26 percent of the general population.”

Sadly, Blow and Rich were silent when images of a decapitated George W. Bush, of guns being placed to his head, and tee-shirts bearing the message, “Kill Bush” were rampant among the Left.  Throughout most of the 2000s, the blogosphere was flooded by horrible messages of hate and vileness and violence directed at the 43^rd President.  Most of us on the Right attributed these sickening things to a minority of political opinion, yet remained troubled that MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington and other pop culture “acceptables” accepted and encouraged Bush hatred as though it were merely boisterous patriotism.  Jonah Goldberg correctly calls this “liberal fascism.”  Now that a handful of people go too far, suddenly conservatives (both Tea Partiers and Republicans) are (I derive this list from exactly two op-eds over a three day period in the New York Times):

• Frothing
• Copper-faced
• Apoplectic
• Goons
• Vigilantes
• Unglued
• Homicidal (at least rhetorically)
• Apocalyptic (not to be confused with apoplectic – see above)
• Petulant
• Hysterical
• Bullies
• Desperate
• Extremists
• Angry
• Frustrated
• Nefarious
• Mad (Tea Partiers)
• Anemic (Republicans)
• Bigoted (Tea Partiers)
• Violent (Tea Partiers)
• Anachronistic

And most are, I suppose, bad dressers, to boot.

Both Blow and Rich conclude triumphantly that white conservatives are a dying breed and that the demographics of America doom the (overwhelmingly white) Tea Party movement to failure.  Here, to borrow a phrase from the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, Blow and Rich experience “an isolated spasm of lucidity.”

America’s racial and ethnic composition is indeed changing.  Conservatives need to take seriously the reality that sometime in the mid- to late-century, American whites will become merely the largest plurality in a multi-ethnic nation.  We have to do a far better job of winsomely and thoughtfully engaging people of color and persuading them that the conservative vision of personal responsibility, limited government, lower taxes and true social justice (for the born and the unborn) is the best course for our – and I emphasize, our – nation.

But Blow and Rich should consider the wisdom of America’s greatest President, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican, no less!): The hen is the wisest of all the animals because she never cackles until her eggs are hatched.

The battle over the ideas and convictions that should shape our country should never include in its ranks those pathetic souls on either extreme whose malevolence, whether racial, ethnic or ideological, inspires their political conduct.  But Charles Blow and Frank Rich should beware of cackling too soon.

Whose country is it?  All of ours.  Of “We, the people,” who lived not under a whimsical state manipulated by a Leftist bourgeoisie elite, but a constituted political order grounded in a written text and the unwritten but palpable virtue of an informed citizenry.  Conservatives are fighting to keep it.  And we’ve just begun to fight.

Comments: - |

The New York Daily News reported last night (Thursday, 1/29/2010):

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Well, the dam appears to be breaking on ostensibly what is the easiest of the “Jack Bauer War” issues facing the Obama Administration: that is, where to try KSM.  I say “ostensibly” because the matter of where to try KSM will not be as easy it may seem.

All this being said, there are all sorts of conflicting stories about whether or not this will happen.  See Jack Foster’s piece at NRO.

According to the Daily News’ account four options are being considered – all in New York State:  1) Governors Island (near Manhattan and Brooklyn); 2) West Point, N.Y. (U.S. Military Academy); 3) Newburgh, N.Y. (Stewart Air National Guard Base); and 4) Otisville, NY (Federal Correction Institution).

Why won’t this be so easy?  First, leaving aside Governor’s Island, these communities will go crazy in opposition.  Even Governor’s Island may not leave New Yorkers feeling warm and fuzzy.  Second, a civilian trial will still be a disaster.  Think Slobodan Milošević turning the Hague into a circus for a year.  Enormous damage will be done to the national security.  Third, the cost will still be enormous.  Fourth, what civilian will risk his or his family’s well-being to sit on the jury?  Can the jurors identity be protected?

I guess the good news is that they can always move the trial back to Guantanamo.  Didn’t KSM already plead guilty before a military commission down there and ask to be executed?  Oh, I forgot, he was given the mass-murdering-jihadist-criminal-procedure-do-over-and-mulligan.

So, how long does Eric Holder have left as Attorney General?

Comments: - |

I follow national security news stories pretty closely, but I have to admit to being shocked by Human Events magazine’s publication of an excerpt from a new book.  It is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen.  Thiessen was a top speechwriter for President George W. Bush.  For that reason he had access to very highly classified national security documents and information.

One excerpt about information gathered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM”) is astounding, mind-boggling:

[KSM’s] resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.”  Eventually, however, the techniques work….

He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets  He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda’s operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics.  He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids.   He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications.  He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,

KSM’s questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

Perhaps I’ve been under a rock, but I never heard these details before.  I assume they are correct.

Some of the KSM information appears to have foiled an August 2006 plot to destroy seven airliners flying across the Atlantic from London-Heathrow in a revised version of KSM’s failed 1994-1995 Bojinka operation.

Top CIA officials are clear that the enhanced interrogation methods in the Bush counter-terrorism program were essential to obtaining extremely valuable, life-saving information. According to Thiessen, Obama shut the program down within 48 hours of assuming office when he signed Executive Order 13491.  That order allowed only interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual 2 22.3.  The manual does not permit water boarding, for example.

The Left and President Obama have completely misread the desires of the American people on this matter.  I put it this way:  Jack Bauer – Yes; Nation Building – No.  That is, the American people want to fight the jihadists in any manner necessary to kill and defeat them anywhere in the world.  They have never waivered on this principle, and that includes keeping Guantanamo prison open in Cuba.  It also means keeping it filled.  That said, the American people have never been keen on protracted wars of attrition, counter-insurgency, and/or nation-building – see, Iraq and Afghanistan.

To be fair, President Obama may have been fooled by John McCain’s idiosyncratic positions on interrogations and Gitmo.  I mean idiosyncratic for a Republican.  Inside the GOP there are very few people who agree with McCain on either position.

That said, the Obama Administration clearly does not understand how Americans feel about Jack Bauer’s War.  Consequently, its behavior after capturing the underwear bomber left bare a policy which American’s deem to be ill-advised and dangerous.  Instead of treating Flight 253’s Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant, Obama/Holder have decided to try him in federal courts.  After singing for a mere six hours, Abdulmutallab was given a lawyer and has stopped talking.  Now he’s negotiating with prosecutors.

Look above at Thiessen’s quote and think about the information that would have been lost had KSM only talked to us for six hours.  Seven planes lost over the Atlantic?  That’s a pretty high price to pay for adherence to glib liberalism.

This is a public opinion cancer that will not go away for the administration.  The KSM trial in New York City may decimate the Democrat Party in that State, and it will go on for months and years.  Now there will be a trial in Detroit for Abdulmutallab.  And, heaven forbid, that an actual attack on the United States or Americans overseas succeeds.  Obama would be finished instantaneously.  Every Gitmo prisoner brought to the United States will constitute a new crisis.

Therefore, it is completely unsurprising that Scott Brown, the senator-elect from Massachusetts, was able to pound Martha Coakley on this point.  Brown is a USAF reserve JAG officer who was able to hammer away at the Dem’s soft position on terrorism.  This he succeeded in doing even in ultra-liberal Massachusetts.

In sum, while we are correct in focusing on the health care legislation as the core political issue at present.  I would argue that the Obama Administration’s foreign policy and national security strategy are hurting it and doing so at an increasing rate of damage with the passage of time.

Comments: - |

He’s probably the world’s funniest vegan. Fred Grandy is known to millions of Americans as “Gopher” from the hit 70s comedy series, The Love Boat. The Harvard-educated Grandy is the former four-term Republican Congressman from Iowa. He narrowly lost the GOP nomination for Governor in 1994 and went on to serve ably as president of Goodwill Industries. Since 2003, he had had a better platform to reach workers in the nation’s capital as co-host of the drive-time Grandy and Andy [Parks] Morning Show on radio station WMAL. I’ll confess that when I should be listening to books-on-disk, I often give an ear to Fred Grandy’s offbeat humor and generally smart conservative chatter. He’s not reflexively right wing. Few Iowans are. But, in addition to some side-splitting jokes, he brings some Midwest common sense to a capital badly in need of somebody’s common sense.

That’s why it matters when a good man like Fred Grandy launches into a shtick that includes this: “Oh, the Founders, they thought black people were just three-fifths of a person.” Maybe Fred was joking. Maybe he was pulling everyone’s leg. But it didn’t sound like it.

Political theorists can get pretty heavy duty. Which is why morning drive time includes very few of them as talk show hosts. Bill Bennett is one of the few who can pull it off successfully. But political theorists talk about “ideological hegemony.” That means you get the other guy–your opponent–to think in categories that you’ve determined in advance. Another phrase would be “setting the terms of the debate.”

If even conservatives seriously think that the Founders were so racist as to deny the full humanity of black people, then, “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” Grandy’s “three-fifths” crack echoes Al Gore’s infamous rants during the 2000 campaign. Gore demagogically whipped up crowds in Pennsylvania saying that those who favored “original intent” in constitutional interpretation wanted to deprive black people of their civil rights. They thought you were only three-fifths of a person, Gore suggested.

The Founders thought no such thing. The much-misunderstood Three-Fifths Compromise was just that, a compromise. Northern, anti-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention would have preferred not to count slaves at all for purposes of representation in Congress. This would have penalized slaveholding states and given them lesser influence in the House of Representatives. Just as important, it would have penalized them in the Electoral College that chooses our Presidents. Delegates from slaveholding states would have preferred to count slaves fully for purposes of representation, but they didn’t want to be taxed fully for slaves.

So the Founders compromised. It’s important to point out that such a compromise also existed in the Articles of Confederation, prior to the Constitution, when all taxation was by state.

A little-noted feature of the Three-Fifths Compromise is that it gave a reward–an electoral bump, if you will–to all states that emancipated their slaves. Free the black people of your state, and you get to count them fully for Congress. Then, American you can increase your numbers in the House and in the Electoral College.

Seven of the original Thirteen States got that reward. Tragically, six of the original thirteen failed to free their slaves. And other slaveholding states were later admitted to the Union.

The Founders were anti-slavery. They took pains never to use the words “slave,” “Negro,” “African,” etc, in the great charter of freedom they gave us.

Abraham Lincoln’s Midwest common sense exceeded even that of Fred Grandy. Lincoln said the Founders hid away in the Constitution the fact that we had slavery, just as a man who has a tumor or wen or other defect tries to hide it from view. Frederick Douglass hailed the Founders’ Constitution and said not of word of it would have to be changed if the states would only agree to free their slaves. They were both right.

Why does any of this matter today? Because President Barack Obama is using the tragedy of American slavery in 1787 as a pretext for casting aspersions on the Founders’ great work. Why should we listen to the authors of the Constitution? They allowed slavery to exist. They thought black people were only three-fifths of a person. So goes the liberal take on the Constitution.

It wasn’t true then. It’s not true now. Lincoln knew that if the Founders had tried to ban slavery outright in 1787, the liberty-promoting Constitution would never have been adopted. But the principles of the Declaration of Independence as embodied in the Constitution were, Lincoln said, like “apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Lincoln used the words of Scripture to speak of his awe and reverence for the Founders’ work. Should we have less?

Comments: - |

While the U.S. is drawing down forces in Iraq and building up, by some 30,000, our troops in Afghanistan, thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard are returning to the homeland. Thanks to Operation Welcome Home Maryland, those who come into Baltimore-Washington International airport will not come home alone.

They’ll be greeted by dozens of people from the local community, many of them former service members themselves. Some of these older veterans can tell sad stories of returning from Vietnam to a cold and sullen airport arrival. No more. Operation Welcome Home is determined to give our all-volunteer servicemen and women the homecoming they deserve.

Incoming flights are posted on the organization’s website—www.operationwelcomehomemd.org.  Greeters are invited to bring “goodie bags” of food, water, and other favors from home. When the uniformed service members come through those arrival gates, many are stunned to see the reception committee yelling, cheering, applauding, and playing “I’m proud to be an American” on iPods. To be hugged by total strangers is an unusual experience, to say the least.

But they are not total strangers. They cannot be total strangers. For those who have worn the uniform, no one in the military will ever again be a total stranger. Perhaps watching the made-for-TV series, Band of Brothers, can explain that all-too-bloodless term “unit cohesion.” It might better be called the Bond of Brothers.

The most shocking thing about Fort Hood is that an obvious traitor in our midst was allowed–for reasons of political correctness–to move freely among our troops. Someone at the highest levels should pay with his stars for allowing such a hostile environment to exist.

Our best young soldiers and sailors today say without hesitation “I’d take a bullet for my brother.” Many of them, sadly, have done just that. No one should ever take a bullet from a traitor in the ranks.

This week, thankfully, hundreds of veterans from Iraq have passed through BWI. They’re given special Christmas cheer as they come home in time for the holidays. They are all volunteers. And the ones who welcome them home are all volunteers, too. It’s another reminder that Liberty is the most precious gift under our tree and that we are the land of the free because of the brave.

Comments: - |

The steel-cold eyes of Vladimir Putin have a way of unnerving his opponents.  When one of those happens to be the President of the United States, the latter might well feel a bit shaken.

Following their meeting, Mr. Obama reported, “On areas where we disagree … I don’t anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon.”  Welcome, Mr. President, to the real world.

This must be jarring for the former community organizer, whose utopianism was his presidential campaign’s stock-in-trade.  Shortly before his election in November 2008, he told a Missouri audience that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

The Carrie Underwood Christmas Special aired last week.  I was looking forward to it.  I put on my fuzzy slippers, dropped a couple of extra marshmallows into my hot cocoa, and snuggled up in front of the TV.  I couldn’t wait to hear her sing my favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night”.  I reached for the Kleenex box.  One must be prepared for tears, especially when she hits that ever-famous note toward the end: “Diviiiiiiiiiine.”  I was like a kid at Christmas, bursting with anticipation.

So, you can imagine my shock, sitting there on the floor in my living room, staring at the TV, mouth agape, at the opening of the Carrie Underwood Christmas Special: Miss Underwood rises from under the stage in a throne-like chair, smoke swirling and lights flashing.  She’s clad in skin-tight, black leather from head to toe.  I didn’t know hair spray could get hair that high?  I didn’t know Christmas was about Carrie Underwood.  Male dancers (wearing only pants – yikes – and matching, black leather, of course) flanked her on all sides.  They all started dancing… err, more like flailing, all over the stage.  The song she sang (though, is it technically a “song” if it lacks a discernable melody?) was no more a Christmas song than fruitcake is cake.

I grabbed the remote and hit “OFF”.  Sigh.  “Speaking of fruitcake…”  I trot off to the kitchen.  I figure I’ll have better luck getting into the Christmas spirit with a slice of grandma’s fruitcake.  And that’s not sayin’ much.  Sorry, Grandma.

But, Christmas is about rejuvenation and re-birth, and last night, I got my second chance.  I was on the treadmill at the gym, of all places, barely eeking out that first mile.  (One too many marshmallows, apparently).  There were about eight TVs on the wall, each broadcasting a different channel.  “Let’s see, what can I watch to help me reach mile two?”  TV one: news.  Pass.  TV two: news.  Pass.  TV three: …what’s this?  I see a church sanctuary, brightly lit with candles and adorned with wreaths and garland.  A gospel choir is swaying back and forth.  I see Jennifer Hudson belting something out at a microphone.  Could it be?  I scrambled for my headset so I could listen.  They’re singing, “Silent Night!”

Alleluia!  Throughout the next forty-five minutes, I was delighted by one traditional, Christmas carol after the next.  No self-glorification or self-aggrandizement.  No dance choreography.  Not even any Rudolf.  Only the beautiful singing of the old, great Christmas carols and hymns.  Only the celebration of love, giving and family.  At one point, during an interview before a song, Jennifer Hudson tells us, “Jesus is the light of the world.”  Now this is a Christmas Special.  I was invigorated.  I looked down at my treadmill’s screen.  Five miles?!  I haven’t run five miles in at least five years!  (Okay, a decade, at least).

Thank you, Jennifer Hudson, for producing an appropriate, traditional Christmas special.  In an age where Christmas decorations are stripped from public buildings, and citizens are forced to take down nativity scenes displayed in their yards, I know I speak for many when I say, I appreciate you remembering Christ in Christmas.  And thank you ABC (did I actually say that?) for your bravery in broadcasting Hudson’s show.  And P.S., Miss Hudson, the note you struck in “Diiiiiiiiiivine”, was far more beautiful than Carrie Underwood’s ever could have been.

Comments: 7 |

Yes, the Nobel Committee gave its Peace Prize Barack Obama as a slam at George W. Bush and as a message to the United States that they like us best when we act more like a hand-wringing Uriah Heep (“I’m a very “humble man”) than a confident Ronald Reagan.

Yes, President Obama should have declined the award. A person with more humility and moral courage would have done so, although the temptation to accept it would be high for anyone.

Yes, he omitted any mention of our engagement in Iraq other than to say that our efforts there are “winding down,” and hypocritically mentioned that “the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression” without mentioning that the same consensus existed to remove Saddam in 2003-2004.

Continue reading »

Comments: - |

In December, more than 170 countries are meeting in Copenhagen to talk about a world treaty to cut greenhouse gasses.  (A conference, ironically, that’s estimated to create 40,584 tons of carbon emissions—roughly the same amount that the entire country of Morocco generated in 2006).  Liberals are hoping to put the environment on the front burner before Denmark—but that might be difficult considering the political climate in America.

A recent Pew poll found that Americans don’t think global warming is a serious problem.  The number that do fell sharply—from 44% last year to 35% now.  Others are skeptical that climate change was even a problem to begin with!  That percent is bound to double or triple after scientists at the University of East Anglia admitted to “throwing away” raw temperature data to support their claim for global warming.  According to the U.K. Times, “The CRU is the world’s leading center for reconstructing past climate and temperatures.  Climate change skeptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled.  That is now impossible.”  This news, combined with ClimateGate and Americans’ doubts, should be more than enough to put off any international agreements on global warming indefinitely.  President Obama has agreed to make the trip to the conference to lobby for cutting emissions by 17% in 2020.  Given the revelations of disagreement in the scientific community and the growing skepticism in the public, the President should back away from a treaty that will cut U.S. jobs and raise energy costs for families.

Comments: 13 |

President Obama is said to be taking his time, carefully weighing all alternatives, “calibrating” our response to the situation in Afghanistan with precision and judgment. The point of all these statements is to reinforce the Obama administration’s theme that George W. Bush rushed off pell-mell and did not assess the situation properly before committing U.S. troops.

Not since the famed King Ethelred the Unready have we seen such a long, drawn-out, and public process of decision-making. Despite his name, however, this ancient English king was not called “the unready” because he was unprepared. The word comes from Middle English and means he was ill-advised.

That appellation certainly fits today. We have seen a succession of unconfirmed, unconfirmable czars comes and go. The latest departure has been Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director. She cited Mao Zedong as her favorite political philosopher. If any adviser in any conservative administration had listed some notorious mass murderer as a political model, the roof of the press room would have fallen in.

Now, part of President Obama’s delay must be attributed to the kind of advisers he has chosen and the kind of advice they are giving him. One of these, Bruce Riedel, recently spoke at Tel Aviv University. Riedel is a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institute and a former CIA official.

Riedel is telling the President that we are fighting a losing battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan and that with our forces bogged down there, we are incapable of responding militarily to the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. “Israelis need to understand that there’s going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital [in Afghanistan], and that will have implications,” Reidel said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

Well. One has to wonder if Bruce Riedel has ever read U.S. history. In World War II, there were many who thought–for less than 24 hours–that we had too much on our hands fighting Japan to enter into a war with Nazi Germany. President Roosevelt responded with speed not just to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but also to Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war on the U.S.

To meet those combined threats, the United States had to resort to a draft. We eventually put in uniform one in every 11 Americans. (Today, that figure is less than one in two hundred.) America’s industrial capacity made us the Arsenal of Democracy. During the war, Britain tripled her output, excelling both Germany and Russia, who merely doubled theirs. Japan, incredibly, saw a four-fold increase in production. And America? The United States increased its war production twenty-five times.

Does Bruce Riedel, or any of President Obama’s timorous advisers, have any idea of the capacity for greatness that this country possesses? My diplomatic history prof, Norman A. Graebner, used to tell standing room only lecture halls that the United States was like the great boxer, Joe Louis.

We had power to spare.

If this nation’s life is threatened by murderous mullahs in Tehran, or by Al Qaeda harboring Taliban in Afghanistan, we can do what we have to do. Who else will protect us? The UN?

Comments: 1 |

So the emails the terrorist Hasan sent to a jihadist imam in Yemen were not deemed threatening? What if they were in code? American cryptographers succeeded in breaking the Japanese naval codes before Pearl Harbor. But they got messages like: “Climb Mount Iitaka.” How were U.S. intelligence officers supposed to know that that was the code name for the attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Hawaii?

Shouldn’t it be our policy that any contact between anyone in the U.S. and any jihadist abroad would be enough to bring the FBI swooping in? We should not care if our “person of interest” is asking the radical about the weather, or mountain climbing.

That’s what we would be doing if this administration were serious about the war on terror, which it is not. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most liberal President before Barack Obama. But FDR was serious about our nation’s defense. When German-Americans came ashore planning to blow up electric power grids, Roosevelt had them arrested. He didn’t send them to Club Gitmo to read Mein Kampf under the palms. He had the captured saboteurs tried–in secret, by military tribunal–at the Washington Navy Yard. To make sure his Attorney General didn’t spend his time searching for new precedents on the civil liberties of would-be mass murderers, Roosevelt assigned Attorney General Biddle to lead the prosecution. The convicted terrorists were swiftly executed, by electric chair.

Continue reading »

Comments: 1 |