The contents are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Obama urges Congress to put off Fort Hood probe
Obama is urging Congress to hold off investigation of the Fort Hood massacre until federal law enforcement and military authorities have completed their probes into the shootings at the Texas Army post, which left 13 people dead.
On an eight-day Asia trip, Obama turned his attention home and pleaded for lawmakers to "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater." He said those who died on the nation's largest Army post deserve justice, not political stagecraft.
Obama’s reaction to this shooting spree by an Islamic radical major, has been strange. He was quick to try to tamp down a “rush to judgment” despite obvious fact and a host of eye witnesses and testimony by many who knew the shooter first hand.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iwYEFasV3WqznkJoN2-BwTxAN4fgD9BV8RHG1
Army says morale down among troops in Afghanistan
Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, with its record violence. Troops in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence, the Army says. It was the first time since 2004 that soldier suicides in Iraq did not increase. Self-inflicted deaths in Afghanistan were on track to go up this year.
Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to craft a new war strategy and planned troop buildup. There is also new focus on the mental health of the force since a shooting rampage at Fort Hood last week in which an Army psychiatrist is charged.
Both surveys showed that soldiers on their third or fourth tours of duty had lower morale and more mental health problems than those with fewer deployments. And an increasing number of troops are having problems with their marriages.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091113/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_troops_mental_health
U.S. Treasury Confident Congress Will Increase Debt Ceiling
The Obama administration is confident Congress will raise the country’s debt limit by year end to avert a showdown similar to the one that shuttered parts of the government in 1995.
The White House wants an increase of at least $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, according to a person familiar with the deliberations between lawmakers and the administration. Record budget deficits are pushing the national debt closer to the $12.1 trillion statutory limit.
The administration’s request, higher than a proposed increase already passed in the House of Representatives, would get the government through the November 2010 midterm congressional elections without needing another increase. Earlier this month, Treasury officials acknowledged they’ll need more borrowing room by year-end to avoid market disruptions.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601074&sid=aWXDnpFProiY
Opinion:
Obama in Asia – cutting side deals on climate extremism?
Reports of Obama meeting with other heads of state to informally discuss what is euphemistically termed “climate change”, are filtering back to this country.
Such reports add to the unease with which a growing number of normal Americans view Obama’s plans and proposals. Openess and transparency are missing in Obama's government and method of operation. HIs failure in settling on strategy in Afghanistan reveals an inability to make hard decisions. He is not a strong personality when he is pressed, as is the case with "climate" issues.
Of particular legislative concern is the status and future of the Obama “Cap and Trade” schemes and conspiracies. Liberals work hard to conceal the real details of this bill – passed by a narrow margin in the House and now pending in the Senate.
Make no mistake about it – the bill is actually a massive new tax on all Americans. If it passes, be prepared to begin writing a check for over $3,000, according to top Washington experts on such matters. As if the tax is not bad enough, prices of groceries and gasoline will also rise. Obama, in a rare moment of candor, admitted costs “will skyrocket”.
As others calculate: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f3b_1243446264.
“They passed it despite the fact that Cap-and-Trade has been a corruption-plagued failure in Europe. They passed it despite the fact that logic says you can’t pile billions of dollars of expenses on the economy without increasing costs. They passed it despite all logic and reason.
“Heritage.org did an analysis that shows this preposterous program will cost the average American family $4,300 per year.
“There have been a lot of numbers floating around measuring the costs of cap and trade. For instance, a study by MIT professor John Reilly shows a carbon cap and trade would cost the average American household $3,900 a year. $800 of that figure comes from, according to Reilly, “the cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases].”
“Our analysis shows it will cost the average family closer to $4,300 per year. Here’s how:
“Our $1,500 number is just the direct impact of household energy bills. Your electricity bill. Your natural gas bill. Your home heating oil bill. And of course, the amount of gas you use in your tank. The increased cost of your direct energy use is $1500 per year.”
Meanwhile, the Obama Oval Office continues its full court press for passage of the Democrat health care scheme which would impose government – run health care on us all. Such a scheme would cost us as much as three trillion dollars and cost us heavily in quality as well.
Did I mention Obama is also plotting to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens?
An early Merry Christmas to one and all.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Rep. Steve King: Bauer was hired to 'erase tracks' between Obama, ACORN - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
Rep. Steve King: Bauer was hired to 'erase tracks' between Obama, ACORN
Tony Romm
Newly appointed White House counsel Bob Bauer is "perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN," one Republican lawmaker charged Friday.
The lawyer's hiring, announced this morning shortly after Greg Craig officially resigned the post, was also an attempt by the White House to deflect any fallout that may arise from an ACORN investigation currently underway in Louisiana, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) added in a statement.
“Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN, the congressman told supporters. "Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN's national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.”
However, the link between Bauer, the president and ACORN's Louisiana office is long, winding and confusing, at best.
(NOTE: Hiding his past had been a frantic effort for Obama. His early life and even his actual place of birth are controversial and subjects of speculation. Deception and avoiding candor have marked much of the Obama presidency – and his rise from obscurity to the Oval Office. There are even serious questions regarding ghost writing of his books that are so acclaimed by liberals.)
According to King, Bauer -- who worked for Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign -- was they key player in a politicized fight between the campaign and President George W. Bush's Justice Department over an investigation of suspected ACORN voting fraud.
While Bauer, for the most part, signaled in a letter he was unconvinced that ACORN had committed any wrongdoing, he compared the investigation itself to the partisan battle over the firing of a number of U.S. attorneys in 2008 because of their political inclinations. Consequently, he asked the Justice Department shortly after to appoint the same special prosecutor who made the attorney determination to look into the ACORN matter.
"With this voter fraud [investigation], we're seeing an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics," Bauer said in October.
King, however, believes that statement was code for "back off from interfering with ACORN's activities," according to his statement. He also said Bauer's return to Obama's team at a time when law enforcement officials just finished raiding an ACORN office in Louisiana -- part of an investigation into whether it committed tax fraud and embezzlement -- signifies malfeasance is again afoot.
The president, however, stressed in a statement on Friday that he trusted Bauer and believed he could do an exemplary job ensuring he and his administration are "held to the highest legal and ethical standards."
“Bob has served as a trusted counselor for many years to many elected officials and is known as a tough and widely respected advocate,” the president said in a statement.
2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574528440210923978.html
Our 'Constitutional Moment'
The New York newspaperman says our founding document is especially vital today, in an age of expanding state power.
JAMES TARANTO
Seth Lipsky has a knack for seeing the bright side of things. A nearly 20-year veteran of this newspaper, including its editorial page, he cheerfully acknowledges the obvious: This is far from a golden age of free-market conservatism. Of President Obama, he tells me over lunch, "I sense that he has a very leftist, socialist-oriented worldview."
Yet this makes Mr. Lipsky anything but grim: "I for one find this very exciting. . . . We're just at a great moment."
Why?
Because, he says, "America is in what I call a constitutional moment." Mr. Obama's efforts to expand government power raise basic questions about the constitutional limits of that power. "The enumerated-powers argument is enormous," Mr. Lipsky says.
"It's just enormous, the ground that is open for contest here. . . . Right now, we're at a moment where we're not going to be able to turn to either the Congress or the executive branch for help on this." He believes "the only defense now, the only tool we have now, is the Constitution. That's why I call it a constitutional moment, as opposed to a political moment."
(NOTE: That said, to what degree the current Supreme Court is prepared and willing to uphold the Constitution as it was devised by the founders, is the crucial question. So far, Obama has not been able to add Justices to cripple this haven for normal America.
However, public opinion has proven an effective weapon – defeating amnesty a few years back and destroying the liberal time line planning for the Cap and Trade tax and government take over of health care.)
That makes it an auspicious moment for Mr. Lipsky's new book, "The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide." The U.S. Constitution is a brief document, taking up just 42 pages in a popular pocket-size edition from the Cato Institute. Mr. Lipsky expands it to 287 pages of 5 by 8 inches, by way of 327 lengthy footnotes in which he discusses each and every constitutional clause in the context of history, case law and current events. There are an additional 36 pages of bibliographic references, making it the only book I've seen in which the footnotes have endnotes.
Mr. Lipsky doesn't remember exactly when he thought of the idea, but he believes it was in the late 1980s. "I got into an argument over abortion and was talking to someone about the right to privacy," he recalls. "I looked at a pamphlet the government had issued with a text-only edition of the Constitution, and I realized I couldn't find the word 'privacy' in the Constitution. I began to think about a better edition."
Mr. Lipsky's edition has an index, where the listing for "privacy, right to" directs the reader to the chapters on the Third, Ninth and 14th amendments.
As a newspaperman for 40-plus years—in addition to working for the Journal, he founded two papers of his own—Mr. Lipsky has built a career on the First Amendment. But his enthusiasm extends as well to the preamble, the original seven articles and the 26 other amendments.
"For years I've been sending memos to people who worked for me—desk editors, reporters, editorial writers—constantly trying to raise their consciousness about the usefulness of the Constitution in editorial work," he says. "Usually these memos that I would send would be simple memos, like, 'Where the hell does the Congress get the power to do that?' or, 'The New York Sun will not carry a dispatch about the Second Amendment which does not quote Justice Story as saying the Second Amendment is the palladium of our liberties.'"
In 1968, after graduating from Harvard, Mr. Lipsky took a reporting job at the Anniston Star in Alabama. He was there just seven months before he was drafted and sent to Vietnam, but it was long enough to provide a formative experience. He visited Frank Johnson, then a federal district judge, who had been a member of the three-judge panel that ordered the desegregation of Montgomery buses after Rosa Parks's arrest. Johnson also presided over Lee v. Macon County, a school-desegregation case that began in 1963.
He told Mr. Lipsky about the trial: "The school board was ready to accede when Gov. [George] Wallace heard about it and ordered them not to. So Johnson gets [Wallace] into court, and he says, 'On what basis are you objecting to this order?' [The governor] says, 'Well, I'm the ex officio chairman of the state board of education, and under that authority, I'm telling them not to integrate the schools.'
"Johnson says, 'As ex officio chairman of the state board of education, you have the power to tell the school board of Macon County, Alabama, that they can't integrate the school?' And the governor says, 'Yes, your honor, I do.' The judge says, 'Well, then, I'm ordering you to integrate all 67 counties in Alabama.'"
In Vietnam, Mr. Lipsky worked as a combat reporter for Pacific Stars and Stripes. Returning to civilian life, he joined the Journal in Detroit, with later postings in Hong Kong, New York and Brussels. He left in 1990 to start an English-language weekly edition of the Forward, a venerable Yiddish newspaper. In 2002, he founded the daily New York Sun—or rather he revived it, the original Sun having folded in 1950. The new Sun attracted a small but influential readership and gave many aspiring writers their start. It ceased publication last year, although Mr. Lipsky and a small stable of writers still publish occasional stories at nysun.com.
The optimism that drove Mr. Lipsky to start a daily newspaper in the Internet age also informs his view of the prospects for American governance.
"One of the wonderful things about the Constitution is that anybody can play," he says. "Ordinary people asking simple questions have affected the country in enormous ways using this document. . . . It's just astounding the way individual predicaments and problems are used by the [Supreme] Court to lay down broad principles in the country."
To prove his point, he cites examples from the 1930s, the 1960s and the current decade.
The 1935 case of Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U.S. was decided at a time when the liberal political juggernaut looked even more unstoppable than today. Mr. Lipsky describes the facts: Enforcing the National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave the president vast powers to regulate business, "government thugs went into the kosher butcher shop of the Schechter family in Brooklyn, and they arrested its proprietor on criminal charges."
Among the charges: permitting a housewife "to pick which chicken she wanted." This measure provoked some levity during oral arguments at the Supreme Court: "The judges are asking a question about, 'How is the housewife supposed to pick out her chicken when she can't look at it?' Schechter's lawyer reaches over his shoulder into an imaginary cage and starts pitching around for a chicken, and the Supreme Court started laughing."
The justices ruled unanimously in Schechter's favor and declared the act unconstitutional. "They ended the New Deal," Mr. Lipsky says. Then, with more feeling: "They ended the New Deal!" (This overstates the case somewhat. The court later upheld the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act.)
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) "involved this guy who was arrested in Florida for robbing a poolroom. He goes into the court and says, 'The Supreme Court says I have a right to a lawyer.' The judge says . . . something to the effect of, 'Not in the state of Florida, you don't.' He gets convicted; he gets sent to prison. While he's in prison, he goes to the prison library. This derelict basically writes an appeal to the Supreme Court . . . in pencil and paper—a pauper's petition that says, 'I have a right to a lawyer.'
The Supreme Court notices it, assigns Abe Fortas"—who himself joined the court in 1965—"to defend him. He wins the right to a lawyer for everyone accused of a crime in America. The name of Clarence Earl Gideon will be remembered as long as there is a law."
Last year's District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms, exemplifies Mr. Lipsky's point that the language of the Constitution retains its power even when long ignored. "We've had 200 years, and nothing's ever been done about this," he says. "For 50 of the 200 years, the New York Times has been sneering at the idea of an individual right, and everybody's been talking about how this right belongs to the 'militia.'"
Yet by carefully analyzing the language of the Second Amendment, the court cast aside that musty conventional wisdom. Mr. Lipsky, who describes himself as "a partisan of the plain-language school of the law," applauds not just the result but the method the justices, in an opinion by Antonin Scalia, employed to reach it: "They really get into the language. I mean, the actual grammar, the sentence structure, the subordinate and not-subordinate clauses, which—forgive me, but I've been arguing for a generation and a half as an editorial writer, the plain language of this thing is plain."
Although anybody can play, not everybody can win. In 2003, the high court ruled against Susette Kelo and allowed the city of New London, Conn., to seize her house under eminent domain and turn the land over to private developers.
It's just unbelievable, that case," Mr. Lipsky says—and all the more so in light of the latest development, or rather the lack of development. On Monday, Pfizer Inc., which was to have built offices on the now-barren site, announced that it was leaving New London altogether as part of a consolidation move.
Such disappointments notwithstanding, Mr. Lipsky's passion for the Constitution is a tonic for political depression. If ObamaCare does become law, to take an especially worrying example, it isn't hard to imagine a lot of Americans facing "individual predicaments," including threats to their lives from government rationing.
It's some comfort to think they'll be able to petition for a stay—and to demand an answer to the question in that old Lipsky memo: "Where the hell does the Congress get the power to do that?"
Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/
Obama's Middle East Policy Falls Apart
Sammy Benoit
President Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. While the U.S. continues to press Israel for a settlement freeze (and a freeze on Jerusalem), Obama's strategy is falling apart piece by piece. He has turned the Israeli populace against him and strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the same time, he has eroded his own support among American Jews and other U.S. friends of Israel. This is why he has pressured political hacks such as Congressman Steve Israel to lend their names to the anti-Israel group known as J Street.
The Arab League nations answered no to the President's request for a peace gesture, and the President of the Palestinian Authority has used Obama's settlement pressure as his "out" from reentering negotiations. Settlement-building didn't start with Netanyahu, but it didn't become a roadblock to negotiations until Obama was elected.
The entire settlement issue was caused by the Obama administration's naïveté. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. This was a major error by the Obama administration. Their insistence on a freeze and their constant public berating of the Jewish State has turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left, whom Obama would look to for support.
His public blasting of Israel has weakened his support among American Jews, who initially bought into his promise that he was a friend of Israel. The news that Obama was breaking a Bush-era pledge to Israel regarding natural expansion in existing settlements only made things worse.
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began lowering expectations on negotiations and praised what Israel is prepared to do -- namely, refrain from constructing new settlements in the West Bank, but impart no limits on construction in East Jerusalem -- as an "unprecedented" concession. The Palestinians went crazy, so Clinton changed her story.
In remarks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit following their November 4 talks in Cairo, Clinton said the United States would like all current and planned Israeli settlement activity to halt. The U.S. policy opposing Israeli settlement activity has not changed, she said.
She also said that Israel's offer to halt all new settlement activities, to end the expropriation of land, and issue no permits or approvals, while "unprecedented," is "not what we would prefer."
"We would like to see everything ended forever," she said. However, she added that it is "at least a positive movement."
In a November 4 interview with Jackie Northam of National Public Radio, Clinton said the issue of settlements has been "a terrible flashpoint" in the region. Settlements never have been a precondition for negotiations in the past, she said, adding that the Israeli government has gone further than its predecessors in its offer. However, she acknowledged that Arabs and Palestinians have said "it wasn't far enough."
If you are looking for the Obama Administration to demand some sort of move from the Palestinian side, don't hold your breath. The POTUS pressures not the Arabs, but only the Jewish State, even though Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to order terrorist acts against Israel. And then there is that new ploy: Mahmoud Abbas, citing the deadlock, said he would not run for another term in the elections scheduled for January.
According to the Jerusalem Post, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham acknowledged during a public appearance in Tel Aviv on Thursday that "there is doubt" among Israelis about Mr. Obama's friendship.
That doubt is well-placed. During the first ten months of his term, Mr. Obama has shown sympathy for the people who would destroy Israel while snubbing the Israelis. Even worse is Obama's desire to cast Israel as the hold-up to peace at every opportunity, whether through his statements, the statements of his subordinates, or his anti-Israel appointments:
• During his first week in office, Obama sat down with Al-Arabiya Arab TV, ignored the issue of terrorism in Palestinie, and indicated that the Israeli government had no desire for peace.
• He named Samantha Power to a key NSA position. Ms. Power has suggested that America invade Israel to enforce a peace plan.
• America did not challenge Anti-Israel motions at the Durban II planning meetings.
• Hilary Clinton demanded in February to open border-crossings to terrorists.
• Obama conferred large sums of money to Gaza, allegedly for reconstruction, that will undoubtedly fall into the hands of Hamas.
• The SHMOTUS Joe Biden has said that Israel should "get used to" a nuclear Iran.
• Ignoring previous agreements with Israel, the Obama administration called for the end of the natural growth of settlements.
• Obama used a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo as an excuse to throw Israel under the bus.
• He also used a trip to Buchenwald to condone Arab propaganda that Israel's legitimacy comes from the Holocaust
• His U.N. Team apologized for not attending the anti-Israel Durban II conference.
• He sent key adviser Valarie Jarrett to an anti-Israel, antisemitic ISNA Conference.
• He has mentored the legitimacy of the anti-Israel organization J street, which poses as a pro-Israel group, and gotten Democrats such as Steve Israel to abandon Israel and help push J Street's pro terrorist agenda.
• The President has made only tepid objections to the Goldstone report.
• He appointed anti-Israel Chuck Hagel to his administration.
• And of course, there is the continuing appeasement of Iran.
With his typical left-wing arrogance, Tom Friedman of the New York Times says that Obama should drop his peace efforts and call a pox on both the Israeli and Palestinian houses because neither side is willing to negotiate. Friedman assumes that President Obama is an idiot who did not understand that peace is unattainable.
I suggest a different scenario. President Obama has a lifetime's worth of anti-Israel sentiments, a cause for great suspicion for Jewish voters during the early part of the campaign. Before the economy collapsed, the Jewish vote was moving away from Obama. In the end it was economics, not Israel, that was the key issue in the 2008 vote. That made it easy for Obama to overcome the Jewish suspicion and win their votes.
Now that he is President, perhaps the reason Obama is pushing for peace so hard is that he knows it is unattainable. It is the very failure of his effort that gives him the excuse to bash and isolate Israel while working to split up the Jewish community. This is exactly what Obama is doing via his anti-Israel statements, anti-Israel appointments, and his "mentor-ship" of J Street.
Last October, just before the election I wrote this about Barack Obama:
Folks the truth is I had many issues with the way George W. Bush ran middle east policy. But there are a few things that are admirable. Bush was the first president that considered a terrorist attack in Israel just as bad as one elsewhere it the world. He constantly supported Israel's right to defend itself against terror, and praised her as America's number one ally in the Middle East. He also authorized an unprecedented level of cooperation between the U.S. military and the Israel Defense Forces including intelligence sharing, anti-terror training, and the joint development of missile defense systems.
A Barack Obama Presidency would return US/Israel relations back to the days of James Baker's "They have my number; they can call me." The days of a US government trying to impose a dangerous one-sided solution on the Jewish State.
I hate admit it, but that prediction was very wrong. Barack Obama has turned out to be much worse than I could have imagined. Just examine the facts and you will agree that in only ten months of work, not only has Obama's policy fallen apart, but he now ranks among the worst presidents in American history with regards to Israel and the Middle East.
Sammy Benoit is the editor of the political blog The Lid.
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