Category Archives: Politics

Pocket lint reaches a new low

Posted on by | 2 Comments

In recent weeks I’ve suggested that the shorthand MSM, for “mainstream media,” is inaccurate, and that our old-line media organizations would better be called the Obama-stream media, or OSM, and accused them of being so deep in Barack Obama’s pocket as to be little more than pocket lint.  Even so, I was surprised by a couple things I saw this past week.  One was Newsweek editor Evan Thomas telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that “in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above—above the world, he’s sort of God.”

I can only say that in a way, that’s not even as ridiculous as Thomas’ follow-up statement that “He’s going to bring all different sides together”; I suppose that might make sense if you don’t consider conservative Republicans to qualify as a “side,” but otherwise, you have to wonder if Thomas has simply missed the hyperpartisan way in which the Obama administration has so far conducted business, and the severe disaffection of a significant chunk of the electorate.  (As of now, a full third of the electorate strongly disapproves of the president’s performance, just about as many as strongly approve, according to Rasmussen.)  In any case, if this is what the much-vaunted new Newsweek is going to amount to, then I have to think National Review got it right:

That’s not the only way in which our self-described “independent media” made complete lapdogs of themselves this week, either.  I thought far too much was made of NBC’s Brian Williams’ respectful inclination of the head to the president on taking his leave of the White House (especially since President Obama respectfully returned it), and far too little of the way in which Williams acted like a star-struck teenybopper mooning around ecstatically after the President over the course of the interview.  Amazingly, though, Jon Stewart caught it, and pretty much handed Williams his head on a platter.

Many liberals who believed in the importance of dissent and challenging the government when they were the ones doing the dissenting and challenging suddenly have a very different view:

These people are seeing that attacking “The Man” is not so funny when it is their man in the crosshairs. Suddenly such folks have a new-found respect for the office and a more circumspect behavior toward the president is now du jour.

The upshot of all this is a climate that is truly toxic to free speech, demanding conformity to the Cult of O—to the point that even some liberals are beginning to feel stifled:

If you want to stop a conversation in its tracks, just question something President Barack Obama has said or done. It’s not open to debate—and I don’t think that’s healthy, for the country or the president.

It’s especially unsettling for a free speech girl like me. The First Amendment is important—but lately, it feels like my right of self-expression is being squashed.

One example: Obama’s comment to Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” comparing his bowling abilities to someone in the Special Olympics.

Can you imagine the uproar had Bush said that? He’d be banished from bowling alleys for eternity. His bowling average and IQ would have immediately been compared in Twitter messages demanding his resignation.

But instead, media and water cooler conversations the next day were about bowling scores and how tough the game can be. Anyone bringing up the insensitivity of the president’s remark heard, “Come on, give the guy a chance. So he said one thing wrong. Anyone could have said something like that.” End of discussion. . . .

Don’t get me wrong, there is a whole lot to like about Obama. I want his smart ideas and policies to work. I love his youth, his inclusiveness and the way he cuts through the minutiae of public policy. But when auto execs get the boot, foreign meanies mock us and Special Olympians are insulted, I’m sorry, he rates some disapproving chatter.

I appreciate that Laura Varon Brown has a real commitment to real freedom of speech:

We need to hear both sides. We must hear both sides. But we ought to be listening to each other, not waiting to pounce and then closing down the conversation.

The point is, whatever side you come from, you have the right to talk—which comes with an obligation to listen.

What I think she’s discovering is that many of her fellow leftists don’t really share that commitment; rather, they’re no different than many of the conservatives they despise, commited to free speech for themselves and those who agree with them, and willing to embrace whatever argument they can to shut down those who disagree.  Unfortunately, conservative impulses in that direction are reined in by the fact that conservatives don’t control the big media corporate conglomerates in this country, and thus can’t shut anybody up (except callers into radio talk shows, anyway).  The same is not true of liberals, who really can go a long way to shutting up, shutting out and shouting down competing points of view.  (Websites like Conservatives4Palin are an experiment in how far the Internet can be used to counter this.)

Which makes the floor-scraping boot-licking tail-wagging groveling of media figures like Evan Thomas and Brian Williams not merely shameful, but actively harmful to this country.  I think Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is over the top to declare that “The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias,” but I do think he’s correct to identify it as a threat—and I don’t say that because it’s liberal and I disagree with it.  Rather, I say that because at the moment, we have a liberal hegemony in the elective branches of our federal government, and we have a national media structure which, because of its bias, is disinclined to challenge anything those branches do—which means that one of the major checks on our government isn’t currently functioning.

Any time government can get away with more, it will; any time government can get away without having its mistakes hammered in the media, it’s going to make more and worse ones; and the whole thing will only breed arrogance on the part of our government, and whenever that happens, a crash is coming. And arrogance is exactly what we’re seeing from this government; it is the whole style and approach of the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, which is why the British media have gone into revolt.  The US media are unwilling or afraid or too star-struck to do so, however, which means they’re firmly under Gibbs’ thumb—and for most of them (all but Jake Tapper, really), apparently perfectly content to stay there.  As Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff put it,

They have been handed a most remarkable historical moment—in which they get to remake the media in their own image. They have the power and they are the subject. These people in this White House are in greater control of the media than any administration before them.

And we, the people are the poorer for it.

The campaign continues, and so do the hatchets

Posted on by | No Comments

The latest attempt on Sarah Palin’s political career is a campaign to get people to believe that she’s not a fiscal conservative.  I have a post shredding that argument up on Conservatives4Palin.  If you want to oppose Gov. Palin, fine, go ahead—if your opposition is based on what she’s actually done and what she actually believes.  All these lies and inventions that people are coming up with to try to bring her down are getting very old; the one encouraging thing about them is that they suggest that the Left is too scared of her to let people find out what she actually believes, because they’re afraid of what would happen if the American people took the true measure of this woman.

Sarah Palin on the murder of Pvt. William Long

Posted on by | 5 Comments

Here’s Gov. Palin’s statement (HT:  Mel):

The stories of two very different lives with similar fates crossed through the media’s hands yesterday—both equally important but one lacked the proper attention. The death of 67-year old George Tiller was unacceptable, but equally disgusting was another death that police believe was politically and religiously motivated as well.

William Long died yesterday. The 23-year old Army Recruiter was gunned down by a fanatic; another fellow soldier was wounded in the ambush. The soldiers had just completed their basic training and were talking to potential recruits, just as my son, Track, once did.

Whatever titles we give these murderers, both deserve our attention. Violence like that is no way to solve a political dispute nor a religious one. And the fanatics on all sides do great disservice when they confuse dissention with rage and death.

She’s right on all counts.  Contrary to my initial expectation, the killer here wasn’t a fringe anti-war activist, but rather an American Muslim convert and Yemen-trained Islamic terrorist.  My point still holds, though:  will the media and leftist pundits (but I repeat myself) treat Long’s murder as a terrorist act and go after those whose hateful rhetoric encourages such acts?  So far, nope.  (Go on, tell me you’re surprised.)

Update:  The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg has noticed, as has Toby Harnden of the Telegraph.

Since the Left is throwing the word “terrorism” around

Posted on by | 4 Comments

when it comes to the Tiller assassination, as Michelle Malkin points out, let’s see if they apply it to this guy, too; let’s see if they have the intellectual honesty, consistency and integrity to paint the anti-war movement with the same brush they want to use on the pro-life movement.  On the facts, it’s certainly every bit as warranted; somehow, though, I’m betting not.

Update:  Robert Stacy McCain has a great comment on this over at Hot Air‘s “Green Room”:

The Left always wishes to distance its own utopian idealists from the injustices perpetrated in pursuit of those ideals, while the Right is forever compelled to apologize for crimes that no conservative ever advocated or endorsed. It ought not be necessary to insist on the point that free speech and political activism are different things than the murder of Dr. Tiller, a crime that Michelle Malkin rightly denounces as terrorism.

Update II:  My initial expectation that the killer was an American anti-war activist was incorrect—he was, rather, an American convert to jihadist Islam.  See above.

Wow . . . liberal writer takes hatchet to Barack Obama

Posted on by | 2 Comments

I can’t say I’ve ever been very aware of Ted Rall, but apparently he’s a syndicated columnist and editorial cartoonist of some significance; apparently he’s also an atheist and very liberal, but apparently willing to call out Democrats if he thinks they have it coming, rather than take the party line as a straightjacket.  I think he does a remarkable job of proving that with this column (HT:  Mark Hemingway):

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now—before he drags us further into the abyss.

My oh my.  I’m not sure any conservatives have dared to cut loose with a broadside like that (and if they had, they would have been torn to shreds for it by the OSM); to read this coming from a liberal is nothing short of amazing.  But then, I think the issue that provoked him to this point is one on which liberals and conservatives should agree, and unite in opposing the White House:

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK. . . .

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what George Orwell called “thoughtcrime”—contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

He’s right about that; this proposal would be exactly the sort of banana-republic behavior I’ve been worrying about (as in this post) ever since the campaign, given some of the tactics we saw from Barack Obama and his flunkies then.  In truth, the whole idea here is profoundlyilliberal, and really rather hard to explain.  Either President Obama is one of those folks who has a sneaking hidden admiration for totalitarian techniques (something more common on the Left than one would think, as we saw with Code Pink and other leftist organizations when they snuggled up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), or else this is his solution to the dilemma he faces.  After all, if he’s committed to giving captured terrorists the same rights as any American, and giving them the rights Americans have now would be a threat to national security, what else is he going to do?

The question is, will people go along with it?  Not if Rall has anything to say about it, we won’t—and again, it’s hard to argue with his point:

Locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to “preventive detention” is an outrage. That the president of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

Rall is here addressing the issue of terrorism, but this is in fact a much broader concern and temptation in jurisprudence, perhaps especially with regard to sexual predators—if preventive detention ever becomes a reality in the American criminal-justice system, it won’t be long before the clamor arises to have it applied to violent rapists; there are more than a few people even now who think it would be perfectly appropriate to pre-emptively imprison folks like that until they’re too frail to feed themselves.  (Science fiction plays with this theme at various points; the apotheosis of this would of course be Philip K. Dick’s 1956 short story “The Minority Report,” and the 2002 film based on it, with his concept of the “Precrime” unit that identifies and arrests criminals before they commit their crimes.)

All of this leads Rall to a remarkably strong statement:

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed George W. Bush, I won’t follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

Now, the conclusion that President Bush was a terrible leader is Rall’s, not mine; I don’t happen to think he was.  I do, however, think that all too many Republicans fell into line behind him when we shouldn’t have out of political calculation (calculation which, ultimately, proved incorrect, as that behavior turned out to be unwise politically as well as philosophically).  I also don’t think it correct or fair to call President Obama “a monster”—that’s hysterical hyperbole of the worst sort.

The man’s a politician, nothing more and nothing less—though to be specific, he’s a Chicago politician, which is about the most cynical and manipulative sort our country has—and if there’s “something rotten inside him,” well, there’s something rotten inside each and every one of us.  Traditionally, it’s called sin, though I would imagine that as an atheist, Rall doesn’t think he’s supposed to believe in it.  And yet, it’s there all the same, in Barack Obama no less than in anyone else.

And that, I suspect, is the reason for Rall’s harshness in going after the president:  Barack Obama was supposed to be better, and so far (and here I agree with Rall completely) he’s been worse.  What you hear in this scream of rage is, I think, the anguished fury of severe disillusionment, as it has become apparent that Candidate Obama played the Left the same way he played everyone else.  Such political principles and impulses as he has are hard-left, that much is clear, but (as with Bill Clinton) they are secondary to the main goal of gaining, maintaining, and extending power.  If it suits his particular sort of Realpolitik to keep his promises, then he’ll keep them; if it doesn’t, he won’t; and if he can duck responsibility for not keeping them, or keeping them, or (if most advantageous) for addressing an issue at all, he’ll do that, too.

The political lesson of Ted Rall’s column (apart from its message) is this:  the true believers aren’t going to stand for that very long.  E. J. Dionne, in recognizing (and celebrating!) the fact that President Obama and his administration have been quite deliberately selling different stories to different ideological groups as a tactic for advancing his agenda and isolating conservatives, worried a little that the president might overreach, and that it might not ultimately work:

But establishments have a habit of becoming too confident in their ability to manipulate people and events, and too certain of their own moral righteousness. Obama’s political and substantive gifts are undeniable. What he needs to realize are the limits of his own mastery.

Dionne is correct in his concerns; and given the case of Ted Rall, I suspect that this approach ultimately won’t work, that the president will find that his mastery is ultimately too limited to pull off what he’s attempting.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

—Abraham Lincoln (attributed)

Another Alaskan energy solution

Posted on by | No Comments

While drilling in ANWR is on the shelf with this administration, Investor’s Business Daily points out that another potential Alaskan energy source has turned out to be far more significant than first thought:

Back in July, when IBD first interviewed the then-little-known governor, [Sarah] Palin emphasized developing Alaska’s Chukchi Sea resources. . . .

At the time, it was thought that Chukchi’s waters northwest of Alaska’s landmass held 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone thought—1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world’s supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.

That’s enough U.S. energy to achieve self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again.

Of course, as with ANWR, there are those who will object, claiming environmental reasons; but here, the calculus is a bit different.  Leaving aside the strong proven safety and environmental record of our offshore drilling operations, the fact is that this isn’t a choice between drilling in the Chukchi Sea or not drilling there.  As the IBD points out, Russia also has territorial rights in the Chukchi Sea, and they won’t be restrained by our environmental niceties—they’re bound to drill there whether we do or not.  The question, rather, is this:  do we want Russia to take all that oil and natural gas, or do we want to take our fair share?

HT:  Ron Devito

The Obama administration strong-arming continues

Posted on by | 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted on reports that the White House had intervened with some of Chrysler’s creditors to force them to give up their rights for the benefit of the UAW, changing the rules after the fact to pay off a political debt; I got a couple responses from liberals saying, in essence, “What’s the problem here?”  I posted at greater length answering that question, though I got no comments that time.  Now, in the parallel situation with GM, even the Washington Post has been forced to take notice of the rancid favoritism being shown by the White House,

declaring,

GM’s new owner (the Obama administration) should stop bullying the company’s bondholders. . . .

While the Obama administration has been playing hardball with bondholders, it has been more than happy to play nice with the United Auto Workers. How else to explain why a retiree health-care fund controlled by the UAW is slated to get a 39 percent equity stake in GM for its remaining $10 billion in claims while bondholders are being pressured to take a 10 percent stake for their $27 billion?

I realize that liberals don’t see anything wrong with this—after all, it’s a liberal Democratic president funneling money to a liberal organization that’s practically a wing of the Democratic party—but I can just imagine the ear-splitting shrieks we’d be hearing about “the rule of law” and “undue influence” and “political thuggery” if a Republican administration had tried anything of this sort.

Nor is this the end of the administration’s blatant manipulation of the process.  Last week, I took note briefly of a case in Florida where a Dodge dealer in Florida had his dealership taken away from him without due process for no good reason whatsoever; now it comes out that there’s reason to suspect partisan manipulation in Chrysler’s dealership structure.  A blogger named Doug Ross writes,

A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.

To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn’t an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified. . . .

I have thus far found only a single Obama donor (and a minor one at that: $200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal rightly notes that “Ross’s evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. It does not appear that anyone has yet conducted a complete analysis of Chrysler dealers’ political contributions “; but it’s mighty suggestive indeed, especially as it fits right in with an emerging pattern.  But then, as Taranto says, “Political intervention in private business is an invitation for the most brazen sort of corruption.”

Is Judge Sotomayor the best conservatives could hope for?

Posted on by | No Comments

On reflection, I think so.  It was obvious from the beginning that Barack Obama was going to pick a woman to replace David Souter, which of course meant a liberal woman.  While there were rumblings that he might name a non-judge such as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm or Homeland Security Secretary (and former Arizona governor) Janet Napolitano to the vacancy, the smart betting seemed to have it going to one of three people:  Solicitor General Elena Kagan (the former dean of Harvard Law School), Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and Judge Diane Wood.  Of the three, the most talked-about leading up to the nomination was Judge Wood, which made perfect sense to me since she’s the one who worried me the most; I don’t really want any of these folks on the Court, but given the likely options, I was hoping vaguely for Solicitor General Kagan, who seems to me to be the most reasonable of them.

As for Judge Sotomayor, she’s not only hard-left, she’s also a comparative lightweight (not that she’s not a very bright woman, just that she’s not in the same ballpark as, say, Diane Wood, or Antonin Scalia) and so when she was announced as President Obama’s pick, I was more than a little non-plussed; sure, she’s qualified, but hardly the best-qualified nominee, even off that very short list.  Her record at the 2nd Circuit Court is uninspiring, to say the least, as Ed Morrissey notes:

The current court, including Souter, has already heard oral arguments on [Ricci v. Destefano]. They should rule on this before the end of their current session, which will come next month. If they overturn Sotomayor, that will emphasize both her incorrect decision on the merits as well as a lack of intellectual curiosity, an issue raised by her colleague Judge Cabranes.

A reversal on Ricci will raise the issue of the several reversals Sotomayor has received over her 11 years on the 2nd Circuit (the Washington Times says she bats .400 at the Supreme Court—not a confidence builder). The Supreme Court has reversed her at least four times already, at least one of those a unanimous 8-0 reversal, which makes her look either more liberal than anyone currently on the court or less competent. One of the times the court upheld Sotomayor, the majority scolded her for misrepresenting the statute in her opinion.

So why did President Obama choose her?  Part of it was no doubt the identity-politics aspect of naming the first Hispanic to the court, along with the third woman.  Part of it may well have been that he thought she was a safer nominee.  It will almost certainly take Democratic defections to sustain a filibuster, which isn’t at all likely under normal conditions, but there’s been the suggestion that Judge Wood’s recent record on national-security issues was a red flag; the recent refusal by the Senate to support the closure of the Guantanamo detention center suggests that if Judge Wood’s views on national security worried the Blue Dog Democrats enough, a successful filibuster might be possible.  Judge Sotomayor might lack the sheer intellectual firepower of Judge Wood, but she’ll be an equally reliable liberal vote and the identity politics works in her favor.  Since the president will have a reasonable shot at filling three slots on the court over the course of this term, it appears he decided to take a safer and more politically appealing course for his first shot.

Now, this isn’t to say that Judge Sotomayor has no baggage; she does, and particularly the following remarks:

All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is—Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t “make law,” I know. [audience laughter] Okay, I know. I know. I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it. I’m, you know. [audience laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application.

That line came from a 2005 panel discussion at Duke; I think Michael Eden is right to say from this that “Sotomayor clearly acknowledges her view, even as she recognizes how radical and wrong it is, and therefore says the pro forma things to cover [herself].”  The other much-quoted passage of her thought will likely be this one, from a 2001 speech at Berkeley:

I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. . . .

Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

From this, one can see why some Republicans are talking filibuster; but barring the unforeseen, it won’t work.  They wouldn’t keep Maine in the fold on filibustering Judge Sotomayor, and these sorts of issues aren’t going to cause mass Senate defections.  Aside from discovering that she’s five years in arrears on her taxes, or something like that, Judge Sotomayor will be Justice Sotomayor as soon as the appointed time arrives.

And for that, I think the GOP should be grateful; if they did somehow manage to block her nomination, I believe they’d end up regretting it.  As a matter of pure Realpolitik, Barack Obama is going to put a liberal in that seat and that’s all there is to it; the only question is whatkind of liberal he’ll put there.  Given that, I think the party and its leaders need to listen very carefully to Jonathan Turley’s complaints about the nomination (video below):

You know, we are not selecting a house pet. We’re selecting a Supreme Court justice and as an academic I have a certain bias. And that is does she have the intellectual throw weight to make a difference on the court? And I have to tell you the optics are better than the opinions in this case. I’ve read a couple of dozen of her opinions. They don’t speak well to her being a nominee on the Supreme Court. . . . I think that a lot of academics are a little bit disappointed. I am in the sense that Diane Wood, Harold Koh, were not the ultimate people to prevail. These are people that are blazingly brilliant. They would have brought to the court intellects that would frame in the conceptual way. . . .

I’ve read roughly about 30 of these opinions. She has a much larger library of opinions. But they are notable in one thing and that it’s a lack of depth. There’s nothing particularly profound in her past decisions. She’s been a judge a long time. That’s opposed to people like Judge Wood on the 7th Circuit and she was viewed as a real intellectual powerhouse. You really can’t read the opinions of this nominee and say, “Oh yeah, this person is a natural choice for the Supreme Court.” . . . I have to say that liberals obviously are enjoying rightfully a certain short term elation with this twofer, a woman and a Latina, being put on the court. But in terms of long term satisfaction she does not naturally suggest that she is going to be the equal of Scalia and I think that was the model for liberals. They wanted someone who would shape the intellectual foundations of the court. Her past opinions do not suggest that she is like that. . . .

Ultimately questions about empathy and temperament are less important than whether this person is going to have a profound impact to help shape the court and this nominee really doesn’t have a history to suggest that.

Dr. Turley is unhappy because in his estimation, Justice Sotomayor is unlikely to be anything but a vote on the Court.  She’ll be a reliable leftist vote, to be sure, but she will probably have little effect on the votes of her colleagues—a point which is supported by how unpersuasive they’ve tended to find her reasoning as it’s come to them in her opinions from the 2nd Circuit.  President Obama had the chance to nominate a liberal who would not only be a vote, but would influence the overall direction of the court; as far as we can tell at this point (which is, admittedly, never as far as we think it is), Sonia Sotomayor will not be that kind of justice.  For that, Republicans should be thankful—and should hope that somehow the political climate changes enough between now and the next Supreme Court vacancy that the president will have to nominate someone more moderate.

And in that hope, this nomination may well be useful.  The concerns about Judge Sotomayor won’t be enough to create Democratic opposition, but they may help the GOP make its case to the electorate, as Ed Morrissey argues:

The Republicans have an opportunity with Sotomayor that doesn’t involve knocking her off the court. They have an opportunity to use the hearings to show Sotomayor as a routine appellate jurist with a spotty record who got elevated to this position as an act of political hackery by a President who couldn’t care less about his responsibilities to find the best and brightest for the job. Like many of Obama’s other appointments, it demonstrates a lack of executive talent and intellectual curiosity on his part. This appointment makes an argument for more Republicans in the Senate after the midterms, if for no other reason than to force Obama to start putting a little effort in making his nominations.

Taken all in all, as a conservative, I don’t like the pick, but I think it could and should have been a lot worse.  Given that elections have consequences, and wipeouts have big consequences, that’s practically the best-case scenario.

Jihadis in US prisons = big “Hit it Here” sign

Posted on by | No Comments

I hadn’t gotten around to reading Beldar of late, so I missed his post on why moving the Gitmo detainees to the US would be a really bad idea—a post which raises a far scarier scenario than the one I considered:

The most serious risk is that the same type of terrorist organization that mounted a simultaneous four-plane multi-state flying bomb assault on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11/01 would welcome the opportunity to assault any holding facility on American soil, or whatever community was closest thereto, in an attempt to force the captured terrorists’ release. Simply put, friends and neighbors: Any holding facility for radical Islamic terrorists on American soil would be a target and a potential “rescue mission” for which al Qaeda or its like would delightedly create dozens or hundreds of new “martyrs” from among their own ranks.

Right now—as has been continuously true since the first prisoners were shipped there after we began operating against the Taliban in Afghanistan—these terrorists’ would-be “rescuers” can’t assault Gitmo without first getting to Cuba and then defeating the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps at sea, on land, and in the air. That’s not the kind of fight they want; those aren’t the kind of logistical hurdles they can ever overcome. Keeping all the captured terrorists at Gitmo, in other words, has played directly to our strongest suit as a nation—our superb, unparalleled, and highly professional military strength as continuously projected in a place of our choosing without risk of collateral casualties among American civilians.

But once the scene shifts to American soil, we lose virtually all of that combination of power and flexibility, and surrender back to the terrorists all the advantages upon which they regularly depend. Getting into the U.S., or using “sleepers” already here? In a fight against some local sheriffs or prison guards armed mostly with revolvers and tasers (perhaps supplemented with shotguns or even a few assault rifles, but no heavy weaponry at all)? With the fighting to take place in or even near any American population center? Can the Obama Administration possibly be so stupid as to forfeit all of our own advantages, and give all of the terrorists’ advantages back to them?

(Emphasis in the original.)  Read the whole thing, and you’ll understand why such a move would amount to designating Target #1 for al’Qaeda’s next attack.

Turning prisons into spring training for terrorists

Posted on by | No Comments

So the president tried to one-up Dick Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute, but it seems he failed to do so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qd6WG64dFg

What conclusions one draws from these speeches will depend to a great degree on what assumptions one brings to the viewing. To my way of thinking, the contrast with VP Cheney’s serious, unemotional defense of his position exposes the hollowness of much of Barack Obama’s language.  Your mileage may well vary, but given that President Obama has now essentially given his imprimatur to all those things that he denounces as “violating our core values,” as Victor Davis Hanson points out, I don’t see how one would avoid that conclusion; all that liberal angst looks an awful lot like just the same old cynical political calculation anymore.  I will also admit to wondering why the president is so concerned about the legal rights of terrorists in Guantanamo when he doesn’t seem to care at all about the legal rights of Dodge dealers in Florida, but I digress.

Of greater concern is his ridiculously foolish suggestion that we move Guantanamo detainees to US prisons.  That might make sense were it not for the fact that we already have significant jihadist cells operating in our prisons now, as Michelle Malkin notes:

U.S. Bureau of Prison reports have warned for years that our civilian detention facilities are major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists. There are still not enough legitimately trained and screened Muslim religious leaders to counsel an estimated 9,000 U.S. prison inmates who demand Islamic services. Under the Bush administration, the federal prison bureaucracy had no policy in place to screen out extremist, violence-advocating Islamic chaplains; failed to properly screen the many contractors and volunteers who help provide religious services to Islamic inmates; and shied away from religious profiling. . . .

[President Obama’s] push to transfer violent Muslim warmongers into our civilian prisons—where they have proselytized and plotted with impunity—will only make the problem worse.

The danger here is succinctly summarized by a commenter on one of Jennifer Rubin’s posts on Contentions:

I wonder how long before people (besides, to his credit, Robert Muller of the FBI) figure out that having celebrity terrorists in any U.S. prison—even a super-duper max—will inevitably radicalize the prison population. We are injecting ourselves with a lethal virus, and fooling ourselves that it won’t hurt us. Like putting Napoleon on the Isle of Elba or keeping Lenin on the infamous “sealed train” through Germany, you have to keep ideological foes far at bay. Ideology seeps out. Even if no other prisoner ever comes into direct contact with one of these celebrity terrorists, their mere presence in the same facility will inspire, influence and over time radicalize the population, just like Africanized Honeybees always take over European Honeybee colonies. Obama is scoring a goal in his (our) own net. This is folly in the extreme.

We need to realize that we have a significant home-grown jihadi threat in this country already, and these people recruit in our prisons.  The last thing we need is to hook up wannabe terrorists who’ve been recruited on the inside with experienced terrorists who’ve carried out attacks on the outside; that would be nothing less than turning our maximum-security prisons into a training camp for al’Qaeda.  It’s hard to imagine anything much more unwise than that.