The real Bush compared to Photo Op Obama!

Written by Casandra, and borrowed from "Little Miss Attila

Before Bush left the meeting, he paused in the middle of the room and said to the families, “I will never feel the same level of pain and loss you do. I didn’t lose anyone close to me, a member of my family or someone that I love. But I want you to know that I didn’t go into this lightly. This was a decision that I struggle with every day.”

As he spoke, Ascione could see the grief rising through the president’s body. His shoulder slumped and his face turned ashen. He began to cry and his voice choked. He paused, tried to regain his composure and looked around the room. “I am sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said.

But this is more ‘reality’ than the reality based community is ready for. It conflicts with how they wish to see the world - a stark, black and white version of The Truthiness in which it becomes more comforting to believe that our leaders are callous and cold (no matter how many military families say that’s untrue), that they lie (no matter that the official record says otherwise), that they are using our military (no matter that our armed forces are all volunteer and that they keep volunteering).

When hatred is so strong that its adherents fear the truth, no factual rebuttal is likely to pierce the wall of lies that surrounds the willfully ignorant. But the truth remains, regardless of their stubborn refusal to admit it.

I was lucky enough to meet the President of the United States not once, but three times during my husband’s last deployment to Iraq. The third time he was slightly late.

You see, he’d been talking with a Gold Star family in the Oval Office just moments before he met with us and appeared on national TV. And just as he did when he met with Rachel Ascione, he gave them all the time they needed.

No one who has ever seen the President in the company of our armed forces or their families could doubt the genuine love and respect he felt for us. And that feeling was mutual. It mattered. It gave me comfort during those long, dark months when my husband was on the other side of the world. And that’s a comfort I no longer feel from a President whose idea of supporting the troops consists of turning their homecoming into a photo op.

sprechen Sie Deutsches ?

Food for thought come 2010 and beyond

Submitted by Patrick Ruffini on Fri, 10/30/2009


What follows may be akin to one of those crazy ideas Dick Morris used to come up with in the Clinton White House, only one in ten of which turned out to be workable -- but when they worked, oh man, did they work.

The key fact that sticks out in my mind about Doug Hoffman's incredible momentum in NY-23 is that his election would not have been possible had he been the Republican nominee. The fact that we may be about to elect a non-squish from New York has everything to do with the fact that he is running as a third-party independent, and not a Republican (even if the Conservative Party is an auxiliary of the Republicans in most elections).

Hoffman as a Republican would have been too obvious a target and the subject of a relentless barrage of negative TV, websites, mail, and phones branding him as outside the mainstream, anti-choice, anti-worker, etc. But politically, Hoffman has managed to avoid all that until five days out, when it's now clear he's the frontrunner. And as Chris Cillizza points out this morning, Hoffman's success in the polls is built on the back among strong support among independents and (primarily) not Republican regulars disgusted at Scozzafava.

This got me thinking: How many points is an Independent party label worth, assuming you're able to vie for Republican votes in a general election? 5? 10? We know that in races with a plausible third party, that candidate automatically tends to earn more independent and moderate support even if they are ideologically indistinguishable from a Republican (Hoffman) or a Democrat (Chris Daggett in New Jersey).

We also know from Daggett's run in a strong-party, machine state that American politics is entering a phase of third party strength which we last saw in the early '90s with Ross Perot and culminating in the Republican Revolution of '94.

This led me to tweet the following this morning:

Brainstorm: what if Republicans were to withdraw from a series of hot Congressional races and run as conservative independents a la #ny23?

I am not one to believe that a situation exactly like Hoffman's is recreatable across the spectrum. Certainly, we would not want to have to take out every slightly wobbly Republican nominee (Scozzafava's problem was that she was very wobbly) with a third party conservative. With 435 House races on the ballot in 2010, the conservative movement won't have the energy to concentrate its Death Star gamma ray on hapless local establishments in every district.

But what if it were to happen peacefully? Or as a concerted strategy to gain votes?

What if you were to have promising Republican candidates running in Democratic-lean seats say, a few months out from the election, "Let me tell you something. I'm just as sick and tired of the Republicans as I am of the Democrats. So, from this moment forward, I'm running as a common-sense, Independent conservative for Congress."

From one perspective, this would not be helpful to efforts to tie the Republican brand to a broader sense of popular disgust at the Obama/Pelosi overreach. On the other hand, it might be a way for conservatives to invade the center, and thus control the high ground politically.

If you're a party person, don't dismiss this just yet. Say you're the NRCC and you haven't found a good recruit against a vulnerable House Democrat. Say the Republican nominee is a joke, or the incumbent is unopposed. Three months out, you go to your star recruit who turned you down a year ago and ask him to run as an independent. It's a three month campaign as opposed to an 18-month campaign. They don't have to quit their law practice or small business. They enter in the last few miles of the race, and you put serious pressure on the joke nominee to step aside, or put out word through local media and talk radio that this is the guy.

Now, I know one could raise myriad issues here. Ballot access for one. The reflexive aversion to third parties. The relative infrequency of unchallenged vulnerable Democrats, especially because 2010 won't be 2008 or 2006. And the prospect of bloody intra-party battles after the nomination has been settled.

All of these risks are arrayed against a few salient facts. First, the rising disgust at incumbent politicians that will play out over the next couple of years, accompanied by a "pox on both your houses" sentiment. Second, a proven history of entire party blocs picking up and moving to third parties when they need to (NY-23, or Joe Lieberman's 2006 re-election). There are two possibilities for an ideological third party candidate -- they can either flop and pose no serious threat (which happens the vast majority of the time because the candidates are nobodies) or dominate (if they are credible).

In a handful of races, perhaps in places where we can't win with the Republican label alone, it might be more useful for the general election to be a strong Independent versus a Democrat rather than a Republican versus a Democrat. At one extreme of the Cook PVI, let's stipulate that the general election against Charlie Rangel was waged with a Puerto Rican small business owner running on the No More Corrupt Politicians Party line with behind the scenes, logistical support from the GOP. At a minimum, that person would stand a better chance than a Republican in that district.

I'm a strong party guy, but I also believe in Sun Tzu's maxim that you do the unexpected to throw your opponent off balance. Strategically unleashing a swarm of conservative independents may be one such strategy for 2010.

Republicans Write Letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

Today, all 40 Republican senators wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) asking that in the interest of full transparency, as promised by President Obama, that he immediately release the new Senate Democrat health care bill to the American public.

Here's the text:

Hon. Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Leader,

On Monday, you announced that you had sent health care legislation to the Congressional Budget office (CBO). As you know, this legislation will have a profound impact on the lives of every American, including the next generation who will be forced to pay for it. Our national debt stands at nearly $12 trillion, with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. The health care bill will likely be more than 1,000 pages long and is the single most important legislation we will consider and debate this year in Congress.

With an issue this large and complex, we need full transparency at every stage in the legislative process. President Obama was elected, in part, on his promise to bring greater transparency to the workings of the federal government. The American people and every member of Congress should be allowed to read the bill that was sent to CBO. The bill should be made available for taxpayers to read and learn how the federal government is spending their money. We are writing to request that you immediately make all materials sent to CBO publicly available on the internet.

Sincerely,
Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)
Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.)
Sen. Robert Bennett (Utah)
Sen. Christopher Bond (Mo.)
Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.)
Sen. Jim Bunning (Ky.)
Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.)
Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.)
Sen. Susan Collins (Me.)
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas)
Sen. Michael Crapo (Idaho)
Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.)
Sen. John Ensign (Nev.)
Sen. Michael Enzi (Wyo.)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa)
Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.)
Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah)
Sen. Kay Hutchison (Texas)
Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.)
Sen. John Isakson (Ga.)
Sen. Mike Johanns (Neb.)
Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.)
Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.)
Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Aka.)
Sen. Jim Risch (Idaho)
Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.)
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.)
Sen. Olympia Snowe (Me.)
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.)
Sen. David Vitter (La.)
Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio)
Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.)

About Larry David and Sean Penn

I would never comment on T.V. personalities such as the likes of Larry David mainly because I don't watch his type of Jewish pseudo intellectual humor. I find it even less than funny. I dunno maybe I'm stupid or sumpin. But I must comment on the latest uproar about his urinating on a painting of Jesus Christ.

Although raised a Catholic for the first 11 years of my life and milking some of its benefits until the approximate age of 15 I have no real affiliated faith to which I presently ascribe. That said, I now iterate that I profoundly and unequivocally support and defend each and every mans right to practice his own version of religious belief. Provided that it does not infringe upon impair nor harm another mans right to do the same.

That now said I view the act of urinating by Larry David in a very none religious way. In fact I view it as an act of perversion by a very sick individual who needs some serious mental health intervention.

What David did depicts the very roots of a twisted perverted childhood, of a now adult male. What he did is not funny. In no way is it a form of comedy.
David's true skin is revealed in what might even be closer to an act of violence than the act of humor it so perniciously has been promoted as.

David is a sick sick man and needs help. I believe what he did is revolt against his very own upbringing as a jew. It might even be an burst of outrage by a man who in his youth had been molested by someone of his own faith, and that act until now has never been brought to life in such an expression of violent rebellion against a symbol of Jewish repentance.

I leave it up to the shrinks to explain the details to any doubters.

The other sicko

Sean Penn on the other hand is just an idiot. Who really knows what goes through the few brain cells that he might still have remaining. It seems to me that he has never gotten over Madonna. It also seems that every so often when Madonna gets too much press here come Penn with one of his cock-a-mami political views.

Madonna is a wealthy selfish bitch, but she at least earned it the honest way, by selling what she had, her body. Penn on the other hand earns his whatevers by pretending to be smart or intellectual and he is neither. Penn is a brain dead, two bit actor who needs to go back to "whatever mount high" movies where he could continually remain employed. In order to keep him from being exploited by banana republic dictators who are laughing behind his back.

Penn is a punk, a drug abuser, and a just plain stupid fellow with too much money.

So you wonder... Whats the U.S. DEA doing setting up a sting on a Russian Arms dealer? heh?

Borrowed from American Thinker

Lord of War
By Kim Zigfeld
No Hollywood scriptwriter could come up with a protagonist more colorful and chilling than Victor A. Bout of Russia. You can come across all sorts of wild and fanciful statements on the Internet just by surfing at random. But if you spent the next century doing so, you'd not likely come across anything more bizarre than the statement that decorates the home page of Victor A. Bout's website.

The site states that when Bout left the Russian military after being drafted and serving as a translator, his parents (a clerk and an accountant) and his wife "helped" him make a little purchase to start his own business.

What did they help him purchase, you ask? A used slicing machine for his deli? A sewing machine, maybe, or perhaps a bicycle to start a delivery franchise? Nope. Tired of guessing? OK, I'll tell you then: four (count them) Antonov-8 cargo airplanes.

According to his website, Bout then took the four planes to Angola, opened a cargo business and became a multi-millionaire by undercutting his competition.

What was his cargo, you ask? Well, you can search his website until you turn blue, but you won't find out. Victor could tell you, of course, but if he did (as they say), he'd have to kill you.

Now, let's leave aside the question of where the Bout family came up with the cash to buy four giant airplanes and fly them to Angola. Let's turn instead to the cargo, whose nature has become internationally famous: illegal weapons of virtually every kind imaginable, bound for the world's most maniacal dictatorships and terrorist organizations.

And most recently, it consisted of "more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, thousands of guns, high-tech helicopters, and airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and missiles." Where was it going, you ask? To Colombia, to be purchased by the terrorist organization FARC.

The government of Colombia recently filed a document with a court in Thailand offering 607 reasons why FARC should be considered a terrorist group. It did so because thanks to an amazing sting orchestrated by Bush-administration U.S. law-enforcement officers, Victor A. Bout was lured into Thailand in March of last year by an offer of millions from arms buyers he believed were FARC representatives. They were actually from the DEA, and they facilitated Bout's arrest by Thai authorities.

According to Bout, he's a totally honest businessman who has been framed by jealous competitors in Africa. What were they all carrying around Africa, you ask? Don't.

Here's what Sergei Markov, a member of the Russian parliament, says about Bout's case: "Just because the Cold War is over doesn't mean the competition between military-industrial interests has ended. It's not about ideology, but it is about competing interests. Russia extends official support to Bout because he's a citizen, and because the Russian public doesn't see him as any kind of criminal. They expect him to be supported."

In other words, Russia agrees with Bout and intends to help him continue giving the world the business. As for the reams of evidence showing Bout's guilt? Russia could not care less.

Last month, a Thai court refused to extradite Bout to the U.S., finding that FARC is not a terrorist group. That ruling is now on appeal. If Bout is returned to Russia, it's clear he will be treated not as a bloodthirsty killer, but as a national hero. (Andrei Lugovoi, who was fingered in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, sets the precedent: he reentered Russia not just to a hero's welcome, but also to a seat in parliament.)

Bout has been linked to arms shipments to the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and has been accused by the U.S. Justice Department of conspiring to kill Americans. Barack Obama is traveling to Asia next month, and he has promised to lobby for Bout's extradition. But after Obama's festival of Russia-appeasement when he visited Moscow in July, topped off by a unilateral withdrawal of America's missile defense system in Eastern Europe, it's hardly likely anyone will take him seriously, let alone the Russians.

So if somebody else in the U.S. government doesn't do something soon, our little friend Victor is going to slip once again into the Russian night.

The reason why I am right about Afghanistan

Just two weeks before the Afghan presidential runoff, unnamed sources reveal to the New York Times that the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for years.

Oh my.

No, I'm hardly shocked - shocked - that we're paying off Ahmed Wali Karzai for services rendered. That's standard stuff when it comes to our Mideast client states. But the real story is the obvious divide within the United States' military-political leadership over Afghanistan policy and it's reached the point that someone (or more?) was so fed up with our current policy as to rat out a CIA surrogate to the press.

Figuring out why is the harder part. Was it was disgust at underwriting a warlord accused of being a drug runner because, as the Times' story notes, Ahmed Wali has been an asset to the U.S. in its fight against the Taliban. Or was it a way of getting back at Hamid Karzai for stealing the Afghan elections last month?

If the former, then file this one under the header of "scenes we'd like to see" (tip of the hat to Mad Magazine because that would mean Afghanistan is looking more like Vietnam all the time.

Let's assume the story is legit and the CIA is doing business with a drug trafficker who runs a crucial chunk of Afghanistan. Talk about flashbacks. During the 1960s and 1970s, the CIA similarly found itself working along side of unsavory sorts who made their money in the so-called Golden Triangle heroin trade. But they were useful contacts who knew the local terrain so arrangements were reached.

Ahmed Wali also was thought to be a useful contact, though it's now clear that not everyone within the national security bureaucracy shared that view. But this is an extraordinary leak. The last time we heard about the outing of a CIA agent was the Valerie Plame affair and you remember the storm that created.

Another Vietnam parallel. In Vietnam, tensions between the Kennedy administration and Saigon paved the way for Ngo Dinh Diem's removal in a U.S.-approved military coup. Just like Hamid Karzi, Diem was favored by the U.S. early in his administration but had worn out his welcome in Washington after eight years. Whoever was behind the leak knew the disclosure would harm Hamid Karzai's ability to govern the country. Tensions have grown with the U.S., which pressured Hamid Karzai to allow a re-do after the rigged election results. Now, the Afghan leader also has to fight allegations that his corrupt brother is in cahoots with the CIA, the bête noir of every 3rd World conspiracy nut out there.

Coincidence?

Andrew Exum, who participated in General Stanley McChrystal's review of the American strategy in Afghanistan, notes offers this analysis:

"[N]umerous military officials in southern Afghanistan with whom I have spoken identify AWK and his activities as the biggest problem they face—bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban. And so if AWK is "the agency's guy", that leads to a huge point of friction between NATO/ISAF and the CIA. Again, I am not currently serving as an advisor to ISAF and cannot speak for Gen. McChrystal's command."

He doesn't need to. This story landed in McChrystal's inbox almost as soon as it got published. Now it's fated to become fodder for any politician who wants the U.S. to reconsider its troop commitment in Afghanistan.

The reason why I am right about Afghanistan

Just two weeks before the Afghan presidential runoff, unnamed sources reveal to the New York Times that the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for years.

Oh my.

No, I'm hardly shocked - shocked - that we're paying off Ahmed Wali Karzai for services rendered. That's standard stuff when it comes to our Mideast client states. But the real story is the obvious divide within the United States' military-political leadership over Afghanistan policy and it's reached the point that someone (or more?) was so fed up with our current policy as to rat out a CIA surrogate to the press.

Figuring out why is the harder part. Was it was disgust at underwriting a warlord accused of being a drug runner because, as the Times' story notes, Ahmed Wali has been an asset to the U.S. in its fight against the Taliban. Or was it a way of getting back at Hamid Karzai for stealing the Afghan elections last month?

If the former, then file this one under the header of "scenes we'd like to see" (tip of the hat to Mad Magazine because that would mean Afghanistan is looking more like Vietnam all the time.

Let's assume the story is legit and the CIA is doing business with a drug trafficker who runs a crucial chunk of Afghanistan. Talk about flashbacks. During the 1960s and 1970s, the CIA similarly found itself working along side of unsavory sorts who made their money in the so-called Golden Triangle heroin trade. But they were useful contacts who knew the local terrain so arrangements were reached.

Ahmed Wali also was thought to be a useful contact, though it's now clear that not everyone within the national security bureaucracy shared that view. But this is an extraordinary leak. The last time we heard about the outing of a CIA agent was the Valerie Plame affair and you remember the storm that created.

Another Vietnam parallel. In Vietnam, tensions between the Kennedy administration and Saigon paved the way for Ngo Dinh Diem's removal in a U.S.-approved military coup. Just like Hamid Karzi, Diem was favored by the U.S. early in his administration but had worn out his welcome in Washington after eight years. Whoever was behind the leak knew the disclosure would harm Hamid Karzai's ability to govern the country. Tensions have grown with the U.S., which pressured Hamid Karzai to allow a re-do after the rigged election results. Now, the Afghan leader also has to fight allegations that his corrupt brother is in cahoots with the CIA, the bête noir of every 3rd World conspiracy nut out there.

Coincidence?

Andrew Exum, who participated in General Stanley McChrystal's review of the American strategy in Afghanistan, notes offers this analysis:

"[N]umerous military officials in southern Afghanistan with whom I have spoken identify AWK and his activities as the biggest problem they face—bigger than the lack of government services or even the Taliban. And so if AWK is "the agency's guy", that leads to a huge point of friction between NATO/ISAF and the CIA. Again, I am not currently serving as an advisor to ISAF and cannot speak for Gen. McChrystal's command."

He doesn't need to. This story landed in McChrystal's inbox almost as soon as it got published. Now it's fated to become fodder for any politician who wants the U.S. to reconsider its troop commitment in Afghanistan.

Obama , Dover and Afghanistan

I think Obama's trip to Dover and the photo op that took place is nothing more than a publicity stunt at the cost of those who have lost loved ones.

Obama is incapable of performing (notice I did not use the word acting) a sincere gesture towards our fallen heroes.

In the photo published nation wide in all the MSM his poise and stance are meant to portray him as strong. His perfect salute is that of a boy scout who is overzealous in his attempt to do something right.

Obama as I have said all along is preparing to dump Afghanistan. At the very least reduce our forces substantially, forcing Karzi to negotiate with the Taliban for a shared government in order to survive long enough to grab what he can and run when his regime falls to the Taliban pressures.

The Taliban are in a very good position right now to negotiate with Pakistan for a peaceful solution in exchange for their support of a shared government in Afghanistan.And a large slice of the Pakistani badlands within which to develop more autonomy. Pakistan will relent in agreeing to this in the near future (6 months) after Hillary's visit. This is Obama's out. Pakistan has lost confidence in the Obama presidency. So has McChrystal.

The only problem is that Obama will merely be leaving a mess for his predecessor. Of course this is all predicated on the fact the his reign in government will only be for one term. Or else he will once again be faced with the Afghanistan problem.

Even if by a very remote chance Obama is able to recycle himself for another four year term I contend that he will never solve nor commit to a winning solution in Afghanistan. And in the end Russia will be the dominant force within the region sharing its power through proxy with Iran who will be in charge of overseeing the religious enforcement.

All Falling Down .

After reading the following article I can only draw the conclusion that the core constituency of this malfeasance is the boomers. An explosive generation of "have everything"m want for nothing more than perfectionism as long as we don't have to work for it. I am presently writing a reflection upon this theme and will present it in this column when I am done. There is much to point out and even more so to attempt to correct. If the boomers (at least some of us) have any desire to leave a legacy "for the better" than "for the worse" we need to do it now. Time is running out. The truth is as this article points out. It may be too late for most of us.

By Victor Davis Hanson and borrowed from PJM

Obama’s mega-borrowing is predicated on a rather thin margin of safety. We can service nearly $2 trillion in additional debt this year—on top of the existing $11 trillion—only because interest rates are so low.

But as a veteran of the near usury of the 1970s and early 1980s, I see no reason why interest rates won’t shoot up to 10% once the economy recovers and the U.S. has to convince lenders to buy our paper in an inflationary spiral. In other words, we could fork out each year about $150-200 billion in interest costs on our annual red ink, in addition to paying annually another trillion dollars to service the existing debt. (We forget that many of us young people in the 1970s and 1980s simply never bought anything new due to high interest: my first new car was not purchased until 1989 when interest was only 7.2% on it; my parents bought a small condo in 1980 for the unbelievably low rate of 8.8%, due only to redevelopment incentives in a bad neighborhood of Fresno. Inflation will be back, even in this quite different age of globalized competition and low wages.)

When Obama talks of a trillion here for health care, a trillion there for cap-and-trade, it has a chilling effect. Does he include the cost of interest? Where will the money came from? Who will pay the interest? Has he ever experienced the wages of such borrowing in his own life? Did he cut back and save for his college or law school tuition, with part-time jobs? Did he ever run a business and see how hard it was to be $200 ahead at day’s end?

What destroys individuals, ruins families, and fells nations is debt—or rather the inability to service debt, and the cultural ramifications that follow. When farming, I used to see the futility in haggling over diesel prices, trying to buy fertilizer in bulk, or using used vineyard wire—when each day we were paying hundreds in dollars in interest on a “cut-rate” 14% crop loan.

The difference between the 5th century BC and late 4th century BC at Athens is debt–and not caused just by military expenditures or war; the claims on Athenian entitlements grew by the 350s, even as forced liturgies on the productive classes increased, even as the treasury emptied. At Rome by the mid-3rd century AD the state was essentially bribing its own citizens to behave by expanding the bread and circuses dole, while tax avoidance became an art form, while the Roman state tried everything from price controls to inflating the coinage to meet services and pay public debts.

Integral to public debt are two eternal truths: a public demands of the state ever more subsidies, and those who pay for them shrink in number as they seek to avoid the increased burden.

Once the conservative Bush people started talking about trillions in debt in terms of percentages of GDP rather than of real money, I feared we were done for: if a so-called conservative is doing this, I thought, what will the liberal Congress do when it gets back in power?

(One more historical truth: the melodramatic language of people dying, starving, being ignored, etc. increases as the level of government services expands as the fears of public insolvency spread: in the late 1930s our grandparents thought tiny sums from social security were lavish godsends, now we assume a temporary suspension in cost-of-living increases on top of generous pay-outs is nothing short of a national disaster and proof of our collective selfishness.)

Abroad

The same storm clouds pile up on the horizon of foreign policy. One can get away with Carterism for a year or two. Remember, Jimmy Carter was loved up until about 1978, as he bragged of human rights, slashed defense to use the money for more entitlements, promised to get troops out of Korea, sold out the Shah, intrigued with the exiled Khomeini, pooh-poohed communists in Central America, sold warplanes without bomb racks to our allies, lectured on the inordinate fear of communism and sermonized how no one would die on his watch.

We were his Plains Sunday school class, he the sanctimonious prayer leader. The lions abroad would lie down with us, the new lambs, at home. “I will never lie to you” Carter repeated ad nauseam. I used to listen to his call-in empathy radio shows while driving to work as a grad student, and at 24 thought “Does this adult really believe all this?”

And then somewhere around 1979 the world finally sized him up—and the result was a bleeding American goat crossing the Amazon as the piranha swarmed. Radical Islam was on the rise. The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. Nicaragua blew up. Iran took hostages. And in reaction Carter devised brilliant strategies like boycotting the Olympics and arming jihadists in Pakistan—and more lecturing us from the rose garden. He wanted a flashy hostage rescue mission—after slashing defense in 1977-8: but the two don’t mix, as he learned.

Obama likewise is outside the mainstream of bipartisan Democratic foreign policy as practiced by Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton. He’s to the left of Carter, and indeed, on both Afghanistan and Iran, to the left of France and Germany. Readers, none of you thought you would ever see Europeans wanting us to buck up in Afghanistan and get tougher against Ahmadinejad.

For now, however, Obama surely sounds mythic. The world adores us. We apologize for slavery, genocide, the cold war, and Hiroshima; you name the sin, Obama wrinkles his brow and provides the mea culpa. Brazilians love it. Egyptians now say we’re A-OK; even sourpuss Russians now smile. Listen to Obama apologize and you would have thought that Americans have leveled Grozny, or obliterated Hama, or swallowed Tibet.

Our administration officials praise the mass-murdering Mao, or talk up the UN “human rights” commission. We reach out to Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Putin, and others. We snub the Brits, the Europeans, the Japanese, Colombians, Israelis and eastern Europeans. Russia tries a simple gambit—a) lie about helping on Iran, b) in exchange get the US out of the anti-missile business in eastern Europe—it works so well that Putin brags that he expects more of this, as if he is sitting at a rigged roulette wheel in Vegas.

Like our spiraling debt, there will be a reckoning soon, maybe in a year or two—and it will cost more than boycotting the next Olympics.

Fuel

Then there is energy. We are in a very temporary lull of cheap energy, as the world economy catches its breath. And while Obama was right to stiffen efficiency standards and promote alternate energies, he is neglecting the only mechanisms that can tide us over for the next 20 years—more natural gas, domestic oil, shale, tar sands, clean coal, and nuclear energy.

We should be on a dash to build nuclear plants for the coming demand from plug in hybrids and spikes in electricity usage. We should be leasing as much natural gas lands as possible, to gain the supplies to run energy plants and to power vehicles. There is plenty of oil in the Dakotas, California, Texas and in the Gulf and we should be drilling there like mad. Sorry, even Santa Barbara should either ban SUVs or have oil derricks on the horizon. Sarah Palin knows far more about ANWR than does Van Jones.

Instead, we talk grandly of cap and trade, solar and wind, and green lunacies, while very shortly it will cost $5 a gallon to fill up the fleet of Barack Obama’s SUVs. Putin, sly fox that he is, only welcomes a confrontation with Iran: a great way to drive oil speculation sky-high. Ditto the Saudis and the rest. We are one Middle East crisis away from a $100 fill-up.

Terrorism

Here is our anti-terrorism policy.

1) Euphemism: hope that words can change reality—“overseas contingency operations” aimed at “man-caused disasters” (this will mean there is no more terrorism as our enemies are no longer demonized)

2) Apologies to Islam: boast that Muslims fueled the Renaissance, invented printing, pretty much gave the world our present civilization, while we offended them after 9/11 (this will mean no more plotting inside the US to kill us all, as they sense our newfound empathy)

3) “Bush Did it”: a) blame Bush the Impaler for our unpopularity and shredding the Constitution to pacify the Middle East and Europe; while stealthily keeping in play most of his protocols like Predators (more attacks in last 9 months than Bush did in 3 years); tribunals, renditions, intercepts, wiretaps, and Guantanamo, etc.); (this will mean that we copy Bush, but blame him for our failures and claim success as our own).

4) Reach-out: Become socialist at home, and UNish abroad, to convince an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Putin, and others that we are a declining, 1950s British-like socialist state, a threat to no one, exceptional in the manner that Greece is, and becoming, as Pravda boasts daily, more like them than they like us (this will mean, why hate us when we are one of you?)

5) Declare victory and leave: there is a reason why Afghanistan and now Iraq have flared up since Obama took office, and it may well have to do with the fact that radical Islam, defeated in Iraq, stalemated in Afghanistan, suddenly bets that with a little push here and there, Obama will declare victory and leave, with something like “We can’t win Bush’s wars.” If I were a terrorist, I might think, “One or two more big death days, and this American government will Mogadishu its way home”).

In a year or two, al Qaeda will begin to suspect we are the weaker horse. They hated us when we were strong, but they will hate us even more when we appear weak. There will be renewed plots at home, and a fiery Middle East within two years—with all sorts of opportunists like China and Russia ready to capitalize.

Why the pessimism? I think there are a few truths that transcend politics and remain eternal. In life as a general rule, debt has to be paid back, and with greater pain and anger than it was to borrow it. Bullies do not respect magnanimity, but tragically interpret it as weakness to be exploited rather than to be admired.

Hoping that something good comes true —like being self-reliant through solar and wind—does not make it true; neglecting the riches at hand to dream about greater riches that do not exist is adolescent. Radical Islam hates the West, not because of what we do or say, but because of who we are: a dynamic, mercurial culture that challenges all the protocols of a traditional, tribal and religiously fundamentalist society.

Diplomacy is a tool to lessen, but not eliminate, tensions—a way to conduct foreign policy, not a foreign policy in and of itself.

I hope I am wrong about all of the above, and that human nature really has magically changed in the era of Obama. So close your eyes, listen to the Messiah’s voice, and repeat: “Debts will be forgiven by creditors; inflation will not follow from massive borrowing; breakthroughs in solar and wind will power our cars and heat our homes; enemies will admire our compassion and join us to achieve world peace; and terrorists are either misunderstood or provoked needlessly by our bellicosity that alone stands in the way of peace.”

Believe all that and you can lie back and enjoy the age of Obama.

Hmmm things may be heating up regarding contributions

By Matthew Mosk/Washington Times Investigative Reporter

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.


One top donor described in an interview with The Times being given a birthday visit to the Oval Office. Another was allowed use of a White House-complex bowling alley for his family. Bundlers closest to the president were invited to watch a movie in the red-walled theater in the basement of the presidential mansion.

Mr. Obama invited his top New York bundler, UBS Americas CEO Robert Wolf, to golf with him during the president's Martha's Vineyard vacation in August. At least 39 donors and fundraisers also were treated to a lavish White House reception on St. Patrick's Day, where the fountains on the North and South Lawns were dyed green, photos and video reviewed by The Times and CBS News also show.


Presidential aides said there has been no systematic effort to use the White House complex to aid fundraising, though they acknowledge the DNC has paid for some events at the presidential mansion.

Many guests at the White House not only had fundraising connections, but also have personal friendships with the president, Mr. Obama's aides said.

"Contributing does not guarantee a ticket to the White House, nor does it prohibit the contributor from visiting," said Dan Pfeiffer, deputy White House communications director.

Beck's Populist Revolution

Nothing irritates the elite more than being shown up by those they consider their inferiors. Make the "conservative" media aristocracy look bad (not a particularly difficult thing to do), and charges of populism, or worse, will slide down their noses, as they grumble about the hoi polloi over cocktails and cigars in the Brooks-Frum “New Majority” smoking lounge.

Imagine you discover a way to decrease costs, increase revenue, and give the employees a greater stake in the company. Your senior manager, however, hates the idea and its radical nature. “It is not how we do things around here,” you’re told. Undaunted, you go around him, show the CEO the idea, and she loves it.

It is implemented across the company to great success. There’s a perceptible shift in the company culture. The senior manager, who shot it down, despises you because the organization now sees him, if not as an obstacle to advancement, as someone unwilling to shake up the status quo because it might put his authority at risk. Some wonder if he ever cared about the company at all, or was it just the salary and office perks that concerned him.

Some among the conservative intellectual elite are sounding like that self-serving senior manager. They are irritated with the populist rhetoric coming from Glenn Beck and the Tea Party activists for what appears to be no other reason than its effectiveness at mobilizing the public into action.

David Brooks took this potshot: “For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. … [T]he slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.”

Glenn Beck, according to David Frum, is “paranoid,” “hysterical,” “none too scrupulous about facts and truth,” and, perhaps worst of all, “working for himself … [choosing] his targets according to his own scheme of priorities,” which are limited to making “a pleasant living for himself by reckless defamation.” I wonder if Mr. Frum is familiar with the term projection.

Stephen F. Hayward is a bit more charitable than Frum and Brooks. Unfortunately, he still sees the boots on the ground in the political battles as “unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete ideology.” While less dismissive of Beck and his fans, Hayward believes good conservatives come with law degrees (Hugh Hewitt –Michigan Law, Michael Medved – Yale Law, William Bennet – Harvard Law) or write serious books like William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman or Irving Kristol. “Today,” Hayward writes, “the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating.”

My bookshelves are full of tomes by conservative intellectuals (Buckley, Hayek, Kirk, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nisbet). I ask myself at the end of the day, however, did their books reduce the size and scope of government? No. Have they curtailed federal regulatory infringement on the lives of everyday folks? No. Has a single conservative intellectual done anything to reverse the trends S.T. Karnick described:

“Since the end of World War II, the American culture has trended toward ever-greater promotion of narcissism, self-expression, antinomianism, identity politics, and questioning of all conventions and authority. It has become an instrument for the devaluation of all values.”

In a word: No. And yet, for many Republicans these intellectuals are the conservative movement.

Brooks, Frum and other conservative opinion-shapers have been the source for Republican talking points. Michael Medved, one of those shapers, with the fifth largest audience on talk radio, has stated the only way beat Obamunism is by “electing more Republicans to high office.”

In one sense, Medved is right. If we want to curtail the Left-wing fast track into the Euro States of America, then Republicans are the way to go. However, arguing, as often Medved does, that electing Republicans, especially of the moderate brand, is a way to “fight back against the menacing expansion of government” flies in the face of facts.

Consider a Heritage Foundation report on welfare spending in America. Spending has seen a steady upward climb, beginning in 1964 with LBJ and his “War on Poverty” dolling out about $50 billion (in 2008 dollars). In 1981, Reagan was elected and spending dipped, for a brief time, below $300 Billion. In 1996, with welfare eating up about $500 billion, along came Newt Gingrich, the Contract with America, and “reform” intended to “end welfare” as we know it. In 2008, spending is over $700 billion. Please explain how electing Republicans has stopped the “expansion of government.”

Concerning the intellectuals’ embrace of Reagan (David Brooks notwithstanding), one can only comment that nothing succeeds like success. In the 1970s, when Reagan’s conservatism inspired him to oppose Carter’s plan to abandon the Panama Canal the conservative elite, as represented by Buckley, National Review, et al, stood four-square with … Jimmy Carter.

What really has conservative intellectuals’ panties in a bunch? Are Tea Party folks, as Hayward says, “brain-dead?” Before these intellectual elites continue down that road, they might want to check with Mark Steyn, writing at National Review:

The intellectual heft at the tea-party protests consists of the animating principles of the American idea: the Founding Fathers writ large in comic-book lettering---TRADE FREEDOM FOR SECURITY AND YOU WILL HAVE NEITHER! That so many conservative sophisticates regard this as either hopelessly provincial or beyond the bounds of political viability testifies to the real intellectual bankruptcy out there.

From where I sit, in the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest, Glenn Beck has done, in about a year’s time, what the right-wing intellectual elite residing in the New York-Washington DC megalopolis have never done. Beck got people to put down the books, get off their couches, and get out in the street. He is not satisfied with simply reading about America’s Founding Fathers or the history of Progressivism in America. He demands that the People make their views known to their elected officials. And people are responding.

William F. Buckley Jr. the godfather of conservative punditry, famously stated, “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Glenn Beck inspired not 2,000 but hundreds of thousands of average citizens to travel across America on planes, trains, buses, and automobiles to demand that their elected representatives live up to their oath of office and “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” Today, many of Buckley’s intellectual progeny bemoan this unseemly behavior; telling this phone directory riff-raff that they should listen to their betters.

I appreciate the information and intellectual stimulation that comes from the great minds on the Right, both past and present. Today, however, we have a chance to cleanse the Right of big-government Republicans and their intellectual defenders with a free-market, liberty-oriented populist movement. It would be a shame if this opportunity were lost to a few squishy conservatives writing for the movement's bitter enemies at the New York Times and USA Today.

The Great Writ Then and Now

Habeas corpus is a rarely invoked legal writ, or document, widely considered to be the cornerstone of individual liberty. Also known as The Great Writ, habeas corpus (ad subjiciendum) is Latin for “you may have the body” (subject to examination). The writ is a civil action with the force of a court order, which requires a custodian, usually the government, to produce a detainee.

The purpose is not to determine the detainee’s innocence or guilt but to evaluate whether the detention itself is lawful; that is, does it satisfy the standard set by the law of the land? If the imprisonment is judged to be valid, the person must submit to a trial or whatever procedure is prescribed. If the imprisonment is invalid, the person must be released. In short, the government cannot imprison you without just cause and due process.

Although habeas corpus is not commonly raised as a legal challenge, it has been mentioned with some frequency in recent issues—from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the detention of illegal immigrants to the FLDS ranch raid by Texas
child-welfare services. Critics of these government actions claim that they erode the principle of habeas corpus. The word “unconstitutional” is often used because the Constitution is the legal standard that an imprisonment must ultimately satisfy in the United States.

In the course of discussing such events, theoretical questions about The Great Writ arise. Is it a natural right or a privilege granted by government? If habeas corpus is a privilege, does government have an obligation to extend it to all people regardless of citizen-ship? If it is extended only to citizens, are there circumstances through which a citizen can lose the “privilege”? Purely practical questions arise as well. For example, do constitutional constraints bind only the federal government and not the states?

Apart from rights theory and practical considerations, another aspect of habeas corpus deserves attention because it explains why the writ is invoked so often in debate though so rarely in court: namely, its psychological impact. Habeas corpus is a powerful concept that evokes strong emotions. This is largely because it is viewed as a litmus test for whether a government is a dictatorship. In his article “Habeas Corpus: The Lynchpin of Freedom,” Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation explains how habeas corpus is the enforcement arm of all other rights.

Using First Amendment guarantees of free speech as an example, he writes,
[H]ow is that provision enforced? Editors, critics, and protestors would be languishing in some military detention center. . . .What good would it do to point out that people have the constitutional right to speak their mind, criticize government policy, and petition the government for redress of grievances? The president and the military would be in charge.
. . . The doors to the cells would remain locked.

The prisoners would be unconditionally subject to whatever treatment their jailers wished to impose. The prisoners would be prohibited from going to court to complain or to seek redress. That’s where habeas corpus . . . comes in.
Michael Zander, emeritus professor of law at the London School of Economics, expands on the psychological importance of the Great Writ: “Habeas corpus has a mythical status. . . . In reality it is no longer of great practical significance as there are today very few habeas corpus applications, but it still represents the fundamental principle that unlawful detention can be challenged by immediate access to a judge—even by telephone in the middle of the night.”

Thus, despite debate and periodic suspension by government, habeas corpus has endured within law because the idea of an authority having the power to imprison someone without cause is abhorrent to general sensibilities.
Historical Background

According to the eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone, the first instance of the term “habeas corpus” appeared in 1305. But the concept is generally assumed to have been part of the common-law tradition at the time of Magna Carta. Signed in 1215 by King John, Article 39 states: “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed—nor will we go upon or send upon him—save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law.” (The wording evolved over time.)

Magna Carta assumed political and legal prominence in the early seventeenth century when it was reinterpreted and used to advantage by the lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Edward Coke. Coke was a passionate advocate of common law over supreme monarchy; he famously proclaimed in Parliament, “Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.” In 1628 he helped to draft the Petition of Right, which became a foundational document of the English Constitution. The Petition detailed the specific liberties of freemen, which legally constrained the king. For example, martial law could not be declared during a time of peace, and prisoners could use habeas corpus to challenge the legitimacy of their imprisonment.

The reinterpretation of Magna Carta had a profound impact on the American colonies, the charters for which were drafted during this period. Indeed, Coke may well have been one of the authors of the Virginia Company charter. These charters guaranteed that colonists would enjoy “all the rights and immunities of free and natural subjects.” Moreover, American revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were intimately familiar with Coke’s four-volume Institutes of the Laws of England. When drafting their own documents to ensure liberty, the Founding Fathers drew heavily on his ideas. For example, the Third Amendment of the Bill of Rights derives from the Petition of Right’s ban on billeting troops.

The Founding Fathers also drew on the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which passed Parliament during the reign of King Charles II and strengthened that right against the power of the king. When it crossed the Atlantic to America, however, habeas corpus underwent a subtle but significant change. In England it was a weapon against monarchy that originated in the “rights” of nobles and only later grew to embrace the average person. In America it began as a core protection that every individual enjoyed against any governing authority.

The only specific reference in the Constitution occurs in the Suspension Clause (Article I, Section 9—“Limits on Congress,” Clause 2): “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Although the reference is brief, it is highly significant that this particular protection of civil liberty is in the body of the Constitution while similar protections, such as the right to trial by jury, occur only in the appended Bill of Rights. There, the closest reference to habeas corpus occurs in the Sixth Amendment, which states a defendant must “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” Thus the explicit inclusion of The Great Writ in the body of the Constitution suggests its importance for the Founding Fathers.
Nevertheless, the constitutional guarantee was a federal one and did not extend to those in state custody.
Habeas Corpus in the U.S.

The most famous habeas corpus case in pre–Civil War America was that of the slave Dred Scott, who attempted to sue for his freedom. An earlier and similar case in England would have given Scott reason for hope. In 1772 an African-American slave named James Somersett ran away from his master while they were both in England. He was recaptured but sympathizers obtained a writ of habeas corpus that required his captors to produce Somersett in court where he sued for and won his freedom. This case set the legal precedent that slavery was unlawful within England proper.

Almost a century later Dred Scott petitioned the U.S. federal court for a writ of habeas corpus; it was granted and later upheld by a court of appeals. Nevertheless, in 1857, in one of the most controversial cases in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Scott seven to two. The court found that no slave or descendant of a slave could be an American citizen and so Scott was not a “person” within the purview of the Constitution. He did not possess the right of habeas corpus.

The writ continued to be intimately connected with slavery. During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in both 1861 and 1862; it was not restored until 1866.
The first suspension came early in the Civil War through an edict in 1861, when an estimated 20,000 Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore tried to block the movement of Union troops to Washington, D.C.
John Merryman, an officer in the Maryland cavalry and a secessionist, was among the thousands arrested. He petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney—the same Justice who presided over the Dred Scott case. Taney ordered the military to bring Merryman before the court; the military refused, citing Lincoln’s edict of suspension, Taney ruled that Lincoln’s suspension was unconstitutional because such a measure required an act of Congress. Lincoln basically ignored the ruling and continued to expand the territory throughout which habeas corpus was suspended.

The second suspension occurred when Congress instituted America’s first national military draft in July 1862, which incited widespread rebellion. On March 3, 1863, Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act, legitimizing Lincoln’s former suspensions and approving any others he might make for the duration of the war.
Lincoln’s earlier suspension had been so broad as to allow local authorities to arbitrarily arrest anyone they personally considered to be disloyal or whose politics they simply disliked. Some of those arrested had done nothing more than criticize Lincoln. Union General Henry Halleck famously arrested a Missouri man merely for saying, “[I] wouldn’t wipe my ass with the stars and stripes.” Estimates of those arrested range widely, but overall 10,000 to 15,000 were probably imprisoned and denied a prompt trial. The Habeas Corpus Act, however, limited the time a person could be held without trial and so removed one of the most contentious aspects of the imprisonments.

It was not until 1866, with the court case ex parte Milligan, that the impropriety of the imprisonments themselves was put on trial. But the issue was legal-
istic and not based on civil liberty. The Supreme
Court ruled that applying military tribunals to civil-
ians in areas where civilian courts still operated was unconstitutional.
The post–Civil War period also resolved the issue of whether the right to petition for habeas corpus was purely federal or extended to the states. A Reconstruction act established that those held in state prisons and jails had the right to petition for a habeas review in federal court; this meant the writ applied to everyone imprisoned in America. Since then, the majority of habeas petitions reviewed in federal court have come from state prisoners through state courts for state crimes. This makes habeas corpus a rich area in terms of the relationship between federal and state courts and federal and state law.
Contemporary Implications

History seems arcane but it assumes a living, breathing status when courts rule based on precedent. This was apparent in what is arguably the most signifi-
cant development in habeas corpus within the last decade: Boumediene v. Bush (2008). The case began with a writ of habeas corpus submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the foreign citizen Lakhdar Boumediene, who was detained in the American military camp at Guantanamo Bay.

In November 2001 President Bush had asserted the authority of military commissions to try prisoners taken in Afghanistan or Iraq as “enemy combatants.” In early 2002 he established Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo and claimed that since the camp is not on American soil, the prisoners had no rights under the Constitution or the American legal system. Representatives of almost 200 detainees filed habeas corpus submissions over the next three years.

In 2004 the Supreme Court heard the first of these cases—Rasul v. Bush. The court’s landmark ruling found that the American legal system had authority to decide whether foreign “enemy combatants” were being wrongfully detained. In response, the Defense Department established Combatant Status Review Tribunals—nonpublic hearings that reviewed whether detainees met the criteria necessary to satisfy the designation “enemy combatant.” These tribunals were widely criticized as not fulfilling the requirements of Rasul. For example, the Court had affirmed a detainee’s right to be assisted by counsel, yet the tribunals did not permit this.
To quell growing criticism over the Guantanamo detainees, Bush signed the U.S. Military Commissions Act (MCA) in October 2006. Congress stated its intention “to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” The MCA explicitly abolished habeas corpus rights for noncitizens.
Boumediene—which consolidated with the earlier petition Al Odah v. United States (2002)—tested the constitutionality of the MCA, specifically appealing to the clause in the Con-stitution stating that the right to challenge detention “shall not be suspended” except in cases of “rebellion or invasion.” In June 2008 the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision effectively struck down the MCA as an unconstitutional denial of habeas corpus; the ruling also asserted the jurisdiction of federal courts over such petitions from Guantanamo detainees who had been tried under the MCA.
Theoretical Questions
Along with history, theoretical debates have driven the evolution of habeas corpus.
The key theoretical debate concerns whether habeas corpus is an inalienable natural right that preceded the State or a privilege granted by government. An inalienable right is one that cannot be transferred or taken away.
The Declaration of Independence, of course, embraced natural rights as the basis of liberty when it stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
If any right can be called “inalienable,” habeas
corpus must be included on that list. As noted earlier, the right not to be imprisoned unjustly is the foundation on which all others rest. Indeed, in the absence
of habeas corpus, the rights of due process—including trial by jury and facing your accuser—become meaningless.
The body of the Constitution contradicts both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on habeas corpus, however, because the Suspension Clause makes it alienable and a privilege granted by government. Under certain circumstances defined by government, it can suspend habeas corpus, putting all other rights at the pleasure of the authorities.
Despite the contradictions and political maneuvering, the United States enshrined habeas corpus as a foundational right for every human being on American soil.
No external threat or internal problem can dismantle the individual freedoms on which America was created. Only government and the American public can accomplish that.

Habeas corpus is a rarely invoked legal writ, or document, widely considered to be the cornerstone of individual liberty. Also known as The Great Writ, habeas corpus (ad subjiciendum) is Latin for “you may have the body” (subject to examination). The writ is a civil action with the force of a court order, which requires a custodian, usually the government, to produce a detainee.

The purpose is not to determine the detainee’s innocence or guilt but to evaluate whether the detention itself is lawful; that is, does it satisfy the standard set by the law of the land? If the imprisonment is judged to be valid, the person must submit to a trial or whatever procedure is prescribed. If the imprisonment is invalid, the person must be released. In short, the government cannot imprison you without just cause and due process.

Although habeas corpus is not commonly raised as a legal challenge, it has been mentioned with some frequency in recent issues—from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the detention of illegal immigrants to the FLDS ranch raid by Texas child-welfare services. Critics of these government actions claim that they erode the principle of habeas corpus. The word “unconstitutional” is often used because the Constitution is the legal standard that an imprisonment must ultimately satisfy in the United States.

In the course of discussing such events, theoretical questions about The Great Writ arise. Is it a natural right or a privilege granted by government? If habeas corpus is a privilege, does government have an obligation to extend it to all people regardless of citizenship? If it is extended only to citizens, are there circumstances through which a citizen can lose the “privilege”? Purely practical questions arise as well. For example, do constitutional constraints bind only the federal government and not the states?

Apart from rights theory and practical considerations, another aspect of habeas corpus deserves attention because it explains why the writ is invoked so often in debate though so rarely in court: namely, its psychological impact. Habeas corpus is a powerful concept that evokes strong emotions. This is largely because it is viewed as a litmus test for whether a government is a dictatorship. In his article “Habeas Corpus: The Lynchpin of Freedom,” Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation explains how habeas corpus is the enforcement arm of all other rights. Using First Amendment guarantees of free speech as an example, he writes,

[H]ow is that provision enforced? Editors, critics, and protestors would be languishing in some military detention center. . . .What good would it do to point out that people have the constitutional right to speak their mind, criticize government policy, and petition the government for redress of grievances? The president and the military would be in charge. . . . The doors to the cells would remain locked. The prisoners would be unconditionally subject to whatever treatment their jailers wished to impose. The prisoners would be prohibited from going to court to complain or to seek redress. That’s where habeas corpus . . . comes in.

Michael Zander, emeritus professor of law at the London School of Economics, expands on the psychological importance of the Great Writ: “Habeas corpus has a mythical status. . . . In reality it is no longer of great practical significance as there are today very few habeas corpus applications, but it still represents the fundamental principle that unlawful detention can be challenged by immediate access to a judge—even by telephone in the middle of the night.”

Thus, despite debate and periodic suspension by government, habeas corpus has endured within law because the idea of an authority having the power to imprison someone without cause is abhorrent to general sensibilities.
Historical Background

HISTORICAL BACKROUND

According to the eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone, the first instance of the term “habeas corpus” appeared in 1305. But the concept is generally assumed to have been part of the common-law tradition at the time of Magna Carta. Signed in 1215 by King John, Article 39 states: “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed—nor will we go upon or send upon him—save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law.” (The wording evolved over time.)

Magna Carta assumed political and legal prominence in the early seventeenth century when it was reinterpreted and used to advantage by the lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Edward Coke. Coke was a passionate advocate of common law over supreme monarchy; he famously proclaimed in Parliament, “Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.” In 1628 he helped to draft the Petition of Right, which became a foundational document of the English Constitution. The Petition detailed the specific liberties of freemen, which legally constrained the king. For example, martial law could not be declared during a time of peace, and prisoners could use habeas corpus to challenge the legitimacy of their imprisonment.

The reinterpretation of Magna Carta had a profound impact on the American colonies, the charters for which were drafted during this period. Indeed, Coke may well have been one of the authors of the Virginia Company charter. These charters guaranteed that colonists would enjoy “all the rights and immunities of free and natural subjects.” Moreover, American revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were intimately familiar with Coke’s four-volume Institutes of the Laws of England. When drafting their own documents to ensure liberty, the Founding Fathers drew heavily on his ideas. For example, the Third Amendment of the Bill of Rights derives from the Petition of Right’s ban on billeting troops.

The Founding Fathers also drew on the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which passed Parliament during the reign of King Charles II and strengthened that right against the power of the king. When it crossed the Atlantic to America, however, habeas corpus underwent a subtle but significant change. In England it was a weapon against monarchy that originated in the “rights” of nobles and only later grew to embrace the average person. In America it began as a core protection that every individual enjoyed against any governing authority.

The only specific reference in the Constitution occurs in the Suspension Clause (Article I, Section 9—“Limits on Congress,” Clause 2): “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Although the reference is brief, it is highly significant that this particular protection of civil liberty is in the body of the Constitution while similar protections, such as the right to trial by jury, occur only in the appended Bill of Rights. There, the closest reference to habeas corpus occurs in the Sixth Amendment, which states a defendant must “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” Thus the explicit inclusion of The Great Writ in the body of the Constitution suggests its importance for the Founding Fathers.

Nevertheless, the constitutional guarantee was a federal one and did not extend to those in state custody.

Tommorrow To Be Continued

The Dethroning of King Dollar? What the currency turmoil means. In the long run not good for America's future prosperity

Borrowed from American Standard

by Irwin M. Stelzer
"Dollar murdered. Drowned in red ink. Clues point to the White House." So might a tabloid headline read as the angry mourners gathered to affix blame for the end of the era in which the dollar served as the currency in which the world does business -- its reserve currency, to use the economists' jargon. But if such a funeral ever takes place, the mourners should remember that right now they aren't too happy with the existing system.

The Chinese are cross because the falling dollar means the stacks of US IOUs they have in their vaults will be paid back in a devalued currency. The Americans are cross because the Chinese refusal to allow the renminbi to rise in value meant goods made in Chinese factories will continue to displace made-in-America products, and provide jobs for Chinese rather than American workers. The Europeans are cross because the strong euro threatens to abort the export growth on which they are depending to fuel their economic recovery. The British are cross because the weak pound is causing sticker shock when they travel abroad, and suggests that a spurt of inflation is just around the corner. In short, everyone seems to be terribly unhappy with developments in the currency markets when the dollar was king. Well, not terribly.

The Chinese might be unhappy that the dollar is declining in value, but are delighted that their policy of pegging the renminbi to the dollar is keeping their export machine humming -- they need millions of new jobs to prevent their still-poor masses from wondering whether some other form of political organization might provide a better life. The Americans might be fearful that further declines in the dollar will dethrone it as the world's reserve currency, but the Obama administration, talking the talk of dollar strength but walking the walk of dollar weakness, is hoping that a cheap dollar will make imports more expensive and exports more competitive, creating jobs by the time the 2012 presidential election rolls around. European exporters might be groaning about the growth-stifling effect of their high-flying currency (although German manufacturers seem to be doing just fine), but eurocrats are secretly delighted that the euro is proving a source of strength in these difficult times for members of euroland, and preventing inflation from taking hold.

Other players are also trying to cope with the falling dollar. Brazil has tried to stem the rise of its currency, which has appreciated over 40% against the dollar since March. To no avail. Oil and other commodity producers are raising prices to make up for the declining value of each dollar they receive by earning more of them. But these are minor players compared with the geopolitical players who see an opportunity to replace the dollar as the currency in which the world does business, to cut the US down to size -- think China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran.

It is one thing to want to replace the dollar, quite another to find a suitable substitute. The renminbi can't be the chosen currency so long as it is pegged to the dollar, for its value will move with the dollar. The ruble is not a candidate, since there is not enough of the currency around to handle the volume of world trade and, besides, it is not the sort of money on which you can rely to hold its value, especially if oil prices collapse. Which brings us to the euro.

As Jean Pisani-Ferry and Adam Posen, director of Brussels think tank Bruegel and fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, respectively, have pointed out, "There is no sign of a move to the euro as a global currency. The share of dollars in global reserves remains almost three times that of the euro." The reasons for this failure of the euro to advance further as a global currency are not clear, but seem to be rooted in the failure of the EU to encourage economic growth, to develop better systems of economic governance, and to broaden the euro area by taking on new members. Talk about pricing oil in euros instead of dollars remains just that -- talk. And in the recent crisis it was the Federal Reserve Board that was called upon to provide currency to meet emergency needs for liquidity -- that means dollars.

Still, doubts about the dollar's future persist. Its recent decline may be consistent with its performance in previous currency cycles. And the drop might be due to a willingness by investors to take on more risk, now that the recession seems to be ending, rather than to a lack of faith in the safety of the dollar, to which they will scamper back at the first sign of international trouble. But investors do remain worried that the dollar's decline, so far acceptably gradual, will turn into a rout, perhaps not next year, but by 2011.

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke says that can be avoided if two policy steps are taken. First, the US government must make "a clear commitment to substantially reduce federal deficits over time." Second, Asian countries must boost domestic demand so that they don't have to rely so heavily on exports to the US, and allow their currencies to appreciate against the dollar so that the US trade deficit continues to fall as a percent of the American GDP.

What Bernanke did not say, either because he was playing the discrete central banker or because he doesn't believe it, is that neither of these things is likely. The Obama administration has already penciled in huge deficits for a decade and more, and is in the process of adding perhaps another trillion to the US deficit by "reforming" health care -- claims of savings are somewhere between delusions and lies. It will then turn its attention to the energy sector, and the subsidies required to fund its green revolution. Only Obama knows what spending comes next as he seeks to go down in history as the president who "transformed" the American economy.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are unlikely to allow their currency to appreciate in value, and other Asian nations will continue to intervene to prevent their currencies from rising against both the dollar and renminbi. Trade imbalances therefore will persist.

Which puts the ball right back in the Fed's court. Unless Bernanke drains liquidity from the financial system, and shrinks the Fed's balance sheet by winding down $2 trillion in support programs -- and does so precisely when the recovery takes hold so as not to cause a relapse by moving too early -- the dollar's decline will accelerate, shattering confidence in its long-term value. One well-respected expert tells me that in two-to-five years the dollar will no longer be considered safe enough to be the currency in which the world does business. Its replacement: separate deals in local currencies -- the Chinese paying for Brazil's oil in renminbi, which the Brazilians use to purchase stuff made in China -- and the International Monetary Fund's drawing rights, bits of paper backed by a basket of currencies, including but not limited to the dollar. That would mark the end of an era that has seen world trade flourish and millions emerge from poverty. Sad.

Another bill; more harm than good!

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving forward aggressively to regulate fossil fuels in the name of fighting global warming. Recent agency proposals would start with emissions standards for cars and trucks, but these would likely lead to subsequent regulations affecting a million or more businesses and other energy-using entities.

Even the EPA itself admits that regulations will be burdensome, and it has not hidden the Obama Administration's strategy of threatening unworkable regulations to spur Congress to pass legislation instead.[1] The Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills, like the proposed regulations, are an expensive and ineffective response to the overstated threat of global warming. Indeed, the best answer is: none of the above.

EPA v. the U.S. Economy

In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court held that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. However, the decision did not require the agency to take this step. The Bush Administration refrained from rushing to do so, opting instead to gather information on the potential economic and environmental consequences of addressing global warming in this manner. This was a wise move: Even putting aside growing doubts about the seriousness of the global warming threat, regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is a very poor way of addressing it.[2]

Nonetheless, the Obama Administration has reversed course and accelerated the regulatory process, proposing both a new motor vehicle emissions rule as well as an overall finding that carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare.

Although the proposed rules address all greenhouse gases, the main target is carbon dioxide, which is the unavoidable byproduct of fossil fuel combustion--the coal, oil, and natural gas that provides Americans with 85 percent of their energy. The only way to reduce emissions is with costly measures that drive up the price of using this energy. The EPA's proposed new motor vehicle standards would increase the sticker price of new cars and trucks by $1,300 according to the agency. Others say much more.[3]

A Regulatory Pandora's Box

New motor vehicle regulations are bad enough, but the Clean Air Act does not end there. Once something is regulated as a pollutant under one section of the act, it is automatically regulated under several other sections. Fully applying the rest of the Clean Air Act to sources of carbon dioxide emissions would result in severe adverse economic consequences.

For example, the stringent New Source Review permitting program applies to any source that emits 250 tons of any regulated pollutant per year, and in some cases as little as 100 tons per year. Most pollutants currently regulated are trace compounds like smog or mercury that are typically measured in parts per billion, so this threshold level sensibly distinguishes between minor contributors and significant ones.

But carbon dioxide is not a trace compound. Background levels of naturally occurring carbon dioxide alone measure 275 parts per million, and even relatively small usage of fossil fuels could reach 250 tons. Thus, even the kitchen in a restaurant, the heating system in an apartment or office building, or the activities associated with running a farm could cause these and other entities to be regulated--potentially more than a million buildings, 200,000 manufacturing operations, and 20,000 farms.[4]

New Source Review permitting imposes an average of $125,000 in costs and takes 866 hours to complete.[5] These and other onerous programs would now be imposed, for the first time, on a million or more entities beyond the large power plants and factories that have already been regulated in this manner.

EPA admits the unworkability of applying Clean Air Act red tape to nearly everything that uses more than minimal amounts of energy.[6] Indeed, the agency concedes that state and federal permitting authorities would "be paralyzed by enormous numbers of these permit applications"[7] The agency's solution is to try to rewrite the statute, turning the 250-ton threshold into 25,000 tons, thus exempting all but the largest industrial sources.[8] However, past EPA attempts to take liberties with the Clean Air Act language have failed to survive the inevitable court challenges.

The Threat of Regulation to Spur Legislation

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has candidly admitted that one of the goals of the highly problematic regulatory proposal is to spur on legislation: "Legislation is so important because it will combine the most efficient, most economy-wide, least costly, least disruptive way to deal with carbon dioxide pollution," she recently stated, adding that "we get further faster without top-down regulation."[9]

While the regulations would be disruptive to the economy, the legislation currently in Congress would be very damaging as well. The Heritage Foundation's analysis of the economic impacts of Waxman-Markey found $393 billion in lost gross domestic product each year, nearly $3,000 in annual energy costs for a household of four, and over a million net job losses.[10] The Kerry-Boxer Senate bill was introduced with many details missing, but it appears to be at least as costly.

Both the regulatory and the legislative approaches unilaterally target American emissions and leave the rest of the world off the hook; thus, it would accomplish little. Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger estimates that, even assuming continued man-made global warming, the Waxman-Markey bill would reduce the earth's future temperature by no more than 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100[11]--an amount probably too small to verify and certainly too small to matter. The proposed regulations would be just as ineffective.

Rather than settle for the least bad of two undesirable options, there is a better approach to the issue: Do not pursue any problematic policy, regulatory or legislative. H.R. 391, sponsored by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), would eliminate any EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It is currently the subject of a discharge petition, which would allow it to come to a vote before the full House.

Remove the Threat

Rather than respond to the threat of problematic regulation by enacting problematic legislation, Congress should remove the regulatory threat and then debate various global warming legislative proposals on their merits. The merits of costly cap-and-trade proposals are highly dubious, but they are not made any better by the specter of EPA regulation.

The Obama Administration notified Poland and the Czech Republic about cancellation of major missile-defense facilities "at the last minute in midnight

Dick Cheney on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 in a speech to the Center for Security Policy
Cheney accuses Obama of telling allies of canceled projects in "midnight" calls
Truesays the Truth-O-Meter


Former Vice President Dick Cheney made news on Oct. 21, 2009, when he accused the White House of "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger" in Afghanistan. That was just one of many fireballs he lobbed at the Obama administration’s policies with Iran, Iraq and the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Cheney also rapped the White House for sloppy diplomacy in its decision to cancel a planned missile-defense radar in the Czech Republic and planned missile interceptors in Poland. The administration decided that the facilities were designed with a less-severe threat – long range missiles – in mind, and that missile-defense efforts should instead be focused on countering short- and medium-range missiles.

Work on the missile-defense facilities – which had prompted strenuous opposition from Russia and mixed feelings by residents of the two Eastern European countries – was conceived during the tenure of Cheney and President George W. Bush. So Cheney’s opposition to Obama’s canceling the project was not surprising.

However, in his speech, Cheney went beyond the substance of the decision and accused the White House of bumbling diplomatic protocol in making its announcement.

"It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls," Cheney told an awards dinner sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, a conservative group. "It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation. Seventy years to the day after the Soviets invaded Poland, it was an odd way to mark the occasion."

In this item, we will try to determine the timing of when the Obama administration told the Czech Republic and Poland of the decision.

According to many news accounts, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer was indeed told shortly after midnight, Warsaw time, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009. (That is, indeed, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion.)

"Just after midnight I was informed," Fischer said, according to the Independent, a British newspaper. The Russian newspaper Vremya Novostey pinpointed the call to 12:21 in the morning.

A call received at 12:21 a.m. in Warsaw would have been placed six hours earlier – 6:21 p.m. in Washington.

News of the decision began to leak out the following morning, Washington time. CNN, for example, reported the decision in its 9 a.m. block of CNN Newsroom. Obama announced it at 10:21 a.m. in a brief address in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.

So, the time between Obama’s call to Fischer and the formal White House announcement was about 16 hours, most of which was nighttime in one country or the other.

Pinning down the time that Obama contacted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is a little trickier.

According to Agence France Presse, the Czech leader said that Poland "had been informed in the same way" as he himself had been. But the Russian paper, Vremya Novostey, citing "Polish news media reports," said that a "technical" glitch prevented Obama from speaking to Tusk late Wednesday night, so the conversation "took place only [on Thursday] afternoon." (We presume that is Warsaw time.)

If Obama did finally make personal contact with Tusk that late, it still would have been before the formal White House announcement, though barely.

The White House declined to provide additional details about the timing.

By way of context, it’s worth noting that the announcement was not exactly a surprise.

After Obama's announcement, Fischer himself said that "we knew the United States was reviewing its plan to build the radar ... within a reassessment of specific threats, and that one option might be to give up the plan to build the radar," according to Agence France Presse. "The threats now rest in short- and medium-range missiles, not long-range ones. The American side decided this was the most serious threat and this is their reaction."

It's not clear why the White House chose to make the announcement when it did. Obama still had six days left if he wanted to get the news out before world leaders arrived in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Asked by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at a Senate Armed Services hearing whether the announcement could have been handled any better, undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy blamed leak-fueled speculation.

''We too would have preferred a longer period for consultation and rollout, but leaks and speculation in the press sort of forced us to go sooner to set the record straight,'' she said.

As for Cheney's statement, he's definitely right about Fischer, the Czech leader, being contacted about midnight. And although there is a discrepency about the time of the final notification for Poland, the reports indicate that Obama first tried about midnight. So we find Cheney's claim to be True.

The Obama Administration notified Poland and the Czech Republic about cancellation of major missile-defense facilities "at the last minute in midnight

Dick Cheney on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 in a speech to the Center for Security Policy
Cheney accuses Obama of telling allies of canceled projects in "midnight" calls
Truesays the Truth-O-Meter


Former Vice President Dick Cheney made news on Oct. 21, 2009, when he accused the White House of "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger" in Afghanistan. That was just one of many fireballs he lobbed at the Obama administration’s policies with Iran, Iraq and the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Cheney also rapped the White House for sloppy diplomacy in its decision to cancel a planned missile-defense radar in the Czech Republic and planned missile interceptors in Poland. The administration decided that the facilities were designed with a less-severe threat – long range missiles – in mind, and that missile-defense efforts should instead be focused on countering short- and medium-range missiles.

Work on the missile-defense facilities – which had prompted strenuous opposition from Russia and mixed feelings by residents of the two Eastern European countries – was conceived during the tenure of Cheney and President George W. Bush. So Cheney’s opposition to Obama’s canceling the project was not surprising.

However, in his speech, Cheney went beyond the substance of the decision and accused the White House of bumbling diplomatic protocol in making its announcement.

"It is certainly not a model of diplomacy when the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic are informed of such a decision at the last minute in midnight phone calls," Cheney told an awards dinner sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, a conservative group. "It took a long time and lot of political courage in those countries to arrange for our interceptor system in Poland and the radar system in the Czech Republic. Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved, just like that – with apparently little, if any, consultation. Seventy years to the day after the Soviets invaded Poland, it was an odd way to mark the occasion."

In this item, we will try to determine the timing of when the Obama administration told the Czech Republic and Poland of the decision.

According to many news accounts, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer was indeed told shortly after midnight, Warsaw time, on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009. (That is, indeed, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion.)

"Just after midnight I was informed," Fischer said, according to the Independent, a British newspaper. The Russian newspaper Vremya Novostey pinpointed the call to 12:21 in the morning.

A call received at 12:21 a.m. in Warsaw would have been placed six hours earlier – 6:21 p.m. in Washington.

News of the decision began to leak out the following morning, Washington time. CNN, for example, reported the decision in its 9 a.m. block of CNN Newsroom. Obama announced it at 10:21 a.m. in a brief address in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.

So, the time between Obama’s call to Fischer and the formal White House announcement was about 16 hours, most of which was nighttime in one country or the other.

Pinning down the time that Obama contacted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is a little trickier.

According to Agence France Presse, the Czech leader said that Poland "had been informed in the same way" as he himself had been. But the Russian paper, Vremya Novostey, citing "Polish news media reports," said that a "technical" glitch prevented Obama from speaking to Tusk late Wednesday night, so the conversation "took place only [on Thursday] afternoon." (We presume that is Warsaw time.)

If Obama did finally make personal contact with Tusk that late, it still would have been before the formal White House announcement, though barely.

The White House declined to provide additional details about the timing.

By way of context, it’s worth noting that the announcement was not exactly a surprise.

After Obama's announcement, Fischer himself said that "we knew the United States was reviewing its plan to build the radar ... within a reassessment of specific threats, and that one option might be to give up the plan to build the radar," according to Agence France Presse. "The threats now rest in short- and medium-range missiles, not long-range ones. The American side decided this was the most serious threat and this is their reaction."

It's not clear why the White House chose to make the announcement when it did. Obama still had six days left if he wanted to get the news out before world leaders arrived in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Asked by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at a Senate Armed Services hearing whether the announcement could have been handled any better, undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy blamed leak-fueled speculation.

''We too would have preferred a longer period for consultation and rollout, but leaks and speculation in the press sort of forced us to go sooner to set the record straight,'' she said.

As for Cheney's statement, he's definitely right about Fischer, the Czech leader, being contacted about midnight. And although there is a discrepency about the time of the final notification for Poland, the reports indicate that Obama first tried about midnight. So we find Cheney's claim to be True.

Say it ain't so Joe!

Sheriff Arpaio's Office Is Only Law Enforcement Agency in U.S. Denied Authority to Enforce Immigration Laws

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told CNSNews.com that after reviewing the Memorandum of Agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state and local law enforcement agencies in 23 states, the only agency to lose its authority under the 287(g) program to operate task forces that can enforce federal immigration laws is the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s the only one,” Matt Chandler, spokesman for the DHS, said on Thursday.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who oversees the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, is well-known for arresting illegal immigrants to be deported, and his success in catching illegals has been criticized largely by liberal public leaders and activists.

On Oct. 16, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that 67 agreements had been renewed, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s department, which retained its authority to check the immigration status of individuals who are booked into Maricopa County jails but is no longer authorized to check immigration status during street operations.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 added Section 287(g), which explains performance of immigration-officer functions by state officers and employees, to the Immigration and Nationality Act. It authorizes the secretary of DHS to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting officers trained and certified by ICE to perform immigration law enforcement functions.

Since January 2006, the 287(g) program is credited with identifying more than 130,000 potentially removable aliens, the majority of which are incarcerated in local jails. More than 1,075 law-enforcement officers have been trained and certified through the program.

“Coordinating with our state and local partners is important to smart and effective enforcement of our immigration laws,” Napolitano said in announcing the renewals. “These new agreements promote public safety by prioritizing the identification and removal of dangerous criminal aliens, and ensure consistency and stronger federal oversight of state and local immigration law enforcement efforts across the nation.”

“The rules set forth in these agreements will enhance our efforts to work together effectively with our local partners,” Napolitano said.

But critics charge that the Obama administration is trying to appease people who oppose amnesty for the 12 to 14 million people who are believed to be in the United States illegally.

“We are troubled by this administration’s promotion of 287(g) contracts and other programs that continue to hijack state and local criminal justice systems to enforce federal civil immigration law,” Margaret Huang, executive director of the pro-amnesty Rights Working Group, said ahead of a demonstration at DHS headquarters on Thursday to oppose the agreements.

“While Arizona is an egregious case, this is only one example of the abuses that can occur under such programs,” Huang added.

As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, the Hispanic Congressional Caucus has asked the Obama administration to terminate the 287(g) program because it claims the program uses racial profiling to target immigrant communities.

“These agreements are the subject of serious concern as local law enforcement agencies have used the new powers to target communities of color, including a disproportionate number of Latinos, for arrest,” the caucus wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama on Sept. 28.

“The 287(g) program, which was significantly expanded throughout the Bush administration, relinquishes the power to enforce federal immigration laws to local law enforcement and corrections agencies,” the caucus added.

“The misuse of the 287(g) program by its current participants has rendered it ineffective and dangerous to community safety,” the letter said.

CNSNews.com also earlier reported that Sheriff Arpaio could use another federal law to continue to enforce immigration laws in Maricopa County.

Kris Kobach, former counsel to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and a professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, told CNSNews.com that there is a federal statute that addresses immigration law and local law enforcement.

“Federal law does expressly authorize state and local police to make immigration arrests of previously deported felons who return to the United States and are in the country unlawfully,” Kobach said.

“That federal statute is found at 8 U.S.C. 1252c. In addition, as the U.S. Department of Justice officially recognized in 2002, state and local police possess the inherent authority to arrest illegal aliens and detain them briefly in order to transfer them to federal custody,” Kobach added.

“Those are two forms of arrest authority that Sheriff Arpaio possesses, apart from Section 287(g) authority,” Kobach said.

Arpaio claims that more than 30,000 individuals have been identified as illegal aliens since his department signed on with ICE in 2007.

Arpaio said he plans to continue to arrest people who are in the United States illegally.

“We’ve been doing it for two years and have been very successful, but I guess they don’t like to enforce illegal immigration laws,” Arpaio told CNSNews.com. “[It] doesn’t make any difference. I’m still going to continue my programs, regardless of what the feds like or don’t like.”

In the Oct. 16 announcement, the DHS said that 55 agreements had been signed by ICE and the partnering agency; 12 agreements had been reached and await approval by the local jurisdiction's supervisory authority; and six agreements had negotiations underway.

Six jurisdictions did not re-sign the new 287(g) agreement or withdrew during negotiations for a variety of reasons, including implementation of the Secure Communities program, budgetary constraints and limited program utilization, according to the DHS