It’s Monday, August 12th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!
First up, all that need be said about the Army’s craven capitulation to Der Obafuhrer’s Socialist agenda:
All kidding aside, everyone involved in this travesty, including the President, should be in the dock with Nidal Hasan.
Speaking of the only President we can ever remember…
…okay, only the second President we can ever remember willing to sacrifice national security for short-term political gain, ABC News (ABC News?!?) reports on…
President Obama’s Surprise Revelation of Sealed Benghazi Indictment
“Personal political profit or national security?”; yeah…like there’s ever been a moment of doubt.
President Obama surprised aides when he revealed today the existence of a sealed indictment in the Benghazi, Libya, attack, leaving some wondering if he crossed a legal line.
At a press conference at the White House, President Obama was asked whether justice would come to those responsible for the terrorist attack nearly a year ago in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. “[W]e have informed, I think, the public that there’s a sealed indictment,” the president responded. “It’s sealed for a reason. But we are intent on capturing those who carried out this attack, and we’re going to stay on it until we get them.”
That marked the only official confirmation so far of a sealed indictment in the Benghazi case. For days, officials across the law enforcement and intelligence communities have refused to publicly confirm reports of a sealed indictment. After all, according to federal law, “no person may disclose [a sealed] indictment’s existence,” and a “knowing violation … may be punished as a contempt of court.” Contempt of court carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called the president’s disclosure “crazy.” “Doesn’t the law apply to the president too?” the official asked, and then jokingly added, “I guess he could pardon himself.”
In fact, though, the president is effectively immune from breaking the law when it comes to a sealed indictment, according to a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. “The [president], by virtue of his position, can’t violate any non-disclosure/confidentiality rule,” said Peter Zeidenberg, now in private practice in Washington. “One of the perks of being the head of the executive branch: Nothing he says is technically a leak. If he does it, it is authorized.”
However, Zeidenberg acknowledged “an argument could be made that a sealed matter can only be unsealed by a court.”
Not that it’s an argument The Obamao’s really worried about anyone in the MSM making with any conviction.
For more on Der Obafuhrer’s last words before the latest of his innumerable vacations, we turn to the WSJ, which details what it terms…
Edward Snowden must be smiling. Fresh from gaining asylum from Vladimir Putin, the self-admitted stealer of U.S. security secrets can now boast that he has caused an American President to retreat on his core powers as Commander in Chief.
That’s the import of President Obama‘s announcement late Friday, before he left for Martha’s Vineyard, that he wants to overhaul the intelligence and data collection programs he inherited from George W. Bush and has used since he took office. Mr. Obama invited Congress to tie him and future Presidents down with new oversight and limits on a surveillance program that no one has found to have been abused in a single instance.
Mr. Obama’s overture is dangerous politically and as policy. A President should explain to the American people why these programs are necessary against a terrorist threat that is far from defeated. As Mr. Obama spoke, the U.S. still had 19 embassies or consulates closed around the world for fear against a terror attack. While most have since been reopened, the uses of surveillance in warning of the potential attack would seem to be clear. Surveillance saves American lives.
Yet Mr. Obama has now joined the debate on his backfoot, conceding that new bureaucratic intrusions are needed to interfere and limit his own war fighters. “It’s not enough for me, as President, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well,” Mr. Obama said. Well, yes, but a President’s job is to give them that confidence, not to undermine that confidence at the start by saying the critics are right…
Two thoughts come to mind; first, this President is the reason people lack confidence in the NSA’s intelligence and data collection efforts; not because of how the NSA might legally use the information for reasons of national security, but how the Administration might illegally misuse it for political gain.
Second, is it not ironic a President only too eager to unlawfully appropriate power in just about every other area of the government not under his purview now looks to relinquish it in one of the few over which the Constitution grants him actual authority?
In a related item, courtesy of NRO, Charles Kruathammer opines on the endless lies which comprise…
Obama’s Lexicological War
Behind euphemisms, the administration hides its incoherent policy on the war on terror.
Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but “a reduction in staff.” This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the “evacuation” — the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country.
Thus continues the administration’s penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano’s famous formulation, terror attacks are now “man-caused disasters.” And the “Global War on Terror” is no more. It’s now an “overseas contingency operation.” Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of “workplace violence.” The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack — and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?
Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. (A commodity in which Liberals are absolutely lacking!)
Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say — for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance — is not another self-serving lie.
And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining the U.S.-embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from “violent extremism.”
The word “extremism” is meaningless. People don’t devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and to its murderous quest for dominion over all others.
But for President Obama, the word “Islamist” may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness. Result? The world’s first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers, and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.
This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn’t reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result of a confusion of policy — which is served by constant obfuscation.
Obama doesn’t like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why “Islamist” is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies — “open hand,” “mutual respect” — have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander-in-chief he must defend the nation.
He must. But he desperately wants to end the whole struggle. This is no secret wish. In a major address to the National Defense University just three months ago he declared that “this war, like all wars, must end.” The plaintive cry of a man hoping that saying so makes it so.
The result is visible ambivalence that leads to vacillating policy reeking of incoherence. Obama defends the vast NSA data dragnet because of the terrible continuing threat of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he calls for not just amending but actually repealing the legal basis for the entire war on terror, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Well, which is it? If the tide of war is receding, why the giant NSA snooping programs? If al-Qaeda is on the run, as he incessantly assured the nation throughout 2012, why is America cowering in 22 closed-down embassies and consulates? Why was Boston put on an unprecedented full lockdown after the marathon bombings? And from Somalia to Afghanistan, why are we raining death by drone on “violent extremists” — every target, amazingly, a jihadist? What a coincidence.
This incoherence of policy and purpose is why an evacuation from Yemen must be passed off as “a reduction in staff.” Why the Benghazi terror attack must be blamed on some hapless Egyptian-American videographer. Why the Fort Hood shooting is nothing but some loony Army doctor gone postal.
In the end, this isn’t about language. It’s about leadership. The wordplay is merely cover for uncertain policy embedded in confusion and ambivalence about the whole enterprise. This is not leading from behind. This is not leading at all.
Which has, unfortunately for America, become the hallmark…
…of this entire Administration.
And since we’re on the subject of a President who believes he’s a law unto himself, the WSJ offers the latest on The Dear Misleader’s continued usurpation of illegitimate power:
Quote-Unquote, the Law
Obama explains why he can ignore the letter of his health-care law.
President Obama left town for Martha’s Vineyard on Friday, but not before holding a late-afternoon press conference that explained a lot about his governing philosophy, and not in a good way. A reporter asked the President about his decision to delay for one year the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate for businesses, in violation of the law’s legally effective date.
Mr. Obama replied that “in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what? This is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote-unquote, ObamaCare.” He blamed his need to act unilaterally on Republicans for their “ideological fixation.”
Which is weird, because the House passed a bill on July 17 giving him that specific power. In fact, 229 Republicans and 35 Democrats passed the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, sponsored by Tim Griffin of Arkansas. Mr. Obama knows this because before the vote the White House issued a formal veto threat saying it “strongly opposes” H.R. 2667 and calling it “unnecessary.”
If Mr. Obama has changed his mind, he ought to call Senate Democrats and persuade them to pass that bill. He could also suggest that they read and consider a companion House bill that would delay the individual insurance purchase mandate for ordinary Americans too, if they want to be fair. Once the bill has cleared both chambers of Congress, it can travel to Mr. Obama’s desk and he can sign it. In a normal political environment, such a remedial lesson in how laws are made would be unnecessary for a President.
Speaking of normal political environments and ideological fixations, until ObamaCare one party had not rushed through a new entitlement on a straight partisan vote over mass public condemnation. The Democratic rush to do so has led to many technical mistakes and failures, and the authors of such a bill are not then entitled to lecture the other party about fixing the problems their law created.
In his Friday remarks, Mr. Obama also claimed that he had the “executive authority” for the mandate delay. But if he really believes that, then why did he say he would normally ask for a legislative “tweak.” Either the fix requires legislation or it doesn’t.
His comments are certainly revealing about his attitudes on Presidential power and the constraints of the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 3 instructs him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, not merely what he thinks is “the essence” of laws.
His self-described constitutional scholarship…
…notwithstanding! By the way, can anyone out there EVER remember purposefully posing for so puissant a picture?!?
And since we’re on the subject of those willing to overturn the Constitution for their own profit and power, courtesy of NRO, Mark Krikorian relates Liberalism’s effort to miraculously create 12 million additional Dimocrats:
“…Whatever the pretext, the supporters of amnesty are clearly moving toward support for extra-constitutional measures if, in the words of the National Journal piece, “Congress can’t get the job done.” The implicit suggestion is that, with regard to immigration, the nation is in a state of emergency that justifies the chief executive to rule by decree. If Congress permits such policies to pass without opposition, the consequences will resonate far beyond today’s immigration debate.”
Next up, James Taranto demonstrates why, at least when it comes to soooo many Liberal rags,…
Political Science
The magazine that styles itself Popular Science yesterday featured two curiously juxtaposed articles on its website. The first, by feminist polemicist Katie McDonough, was reprinted from Salon.com. Its title: “Fetal Pain Is a Lie: How Phony Science Took Over the Abortion Debate.”
McDonough opposes even moderate regulations on abortion, even when the unborn child’s gestational age is more than five months. Bans on late-term abortion, she writes, “rest on the stated premise that a fetus can experience pain at 20 weeks.” This, McDonough asserts, is bunk:
Because the neural structures necessary to feel pain have not yet developed, any observable responses to stimuli at this gestational stage–like the fetal “flinching” during an amniocentesis–are reflexive, not experiential. Which is to say, the fetus at 20 weeks can’t actually feel anything at all. Which is to say, the fundamental justification for these laws is a really big, really popular lie.
The second piece, by Shaunacy Ferro, is titled “Crabs and Lobsters Probably Do Feel Pain, According to New Experiments.” Actually, the results sound highly equivocal:
[Animal behaviorist Robert] Elwood and his colleagues have experimented to see whether crabs can learn from electric shocks. In one experiment, crabs were more likely to relocate when they received electric shocks inside their shelter than when they did not receive any shocks. In another, hermit crabs shocked while inside a type of shell they tend to prefer were quicker to move into new shells when presented with the opportunity.
Yet as Zen Faulkes, a University of Texas-Pan American invertebrate neuroethologist, pointed out in a blog earlier this year, it’s hard to determine if electric shocks are painful for crustaceans in the same way they are for us. Crabs have been known to rip off their own injured limbs, for example, which would be almost unthinkably painful for a human. Electric shocks also provide a completely different kind of stimulus than being immersed in boiling water, so there’s a possibility the results might not translate to that seemingly cruel action.
Just to be safe, though, Elwood “concludes that crustaceans should be protected from the kind of ‘extreme procedures’ they are currently subjected to–things we wouldn’t do to mice, such as lobsters having their legs removed while still alive or crabs being kept tightly bound for days before being sold.”
But McDonough insists no such precautions are due in the case of unborn human beings. Do you think maybe the guys at Popular Science have an agenda?
But those devoted to the wholesale slaughter of the unborn need not fear, at least as long as the Orlando Women’s Center continues to offer its special Sunday snuffing services:
In another junk-science-related story highlighting the highly-improbable impact of sequestrations across-the-board spending cut of less than 5%, FOX News reports…
“The Air Force says it can no longer afford to scan the sky for extraterrestrial threats that could doom the planet, all because of the sequester cuts Washington forced on itself when it failed to rein in the exploding national deficit.“
“Washington” forced on itself? Howz ’bout B. Hussein forced it on Washington?
This is the Air Force version of Chicken Little; except rather than focusing on the possibility of the sky falling, we to be seriously concerned about the potential for either Armageddon and Independence Day.
Yeah…
Turning to today’s installment in Tales From the Darkside…
‘It’s open season’: Samuel L. Jackson warns young brothers to beware
Never mind what the jurors, potential jurors and even prosecutors in the George Zimmerman trial have said — many insist that not only was Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin racially motivated, but that Zimmerman’s acquittal on murder charges was proof that it’s “open season” on young black men. If that’s the case, why have a trial at all?
The embers of the Zimmerman verdict might be dying down, but Samuel L. Jackson is fanning the flames of another case which had a much lower profile. More than a year after 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was shot by a New York City police officer in the bathroom of his grandmother’s home, a grand jury investigating the case decided not to file charges against the officer who shot him. The New York Times notes that the officer, who is white, still faces a federal inquiry and an internal disciplinary review, and Graham’s parents have filed a lawsuit against the police department.
In more than five hours of testimony, Officer Richard Haste said that Graham, who was being pursued following a suspected drug deal, ignored repeated warnings to show his hands. No gun was found at the scene, although a bag of marijuana was found in the toilet.
In a related item from the “MSM Bias…WHAT Bias?!?” segment, Best of the Web provides the latest misuse of statistics:
None of My Friends Are . . .
“About 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll,” Reuters reports:
The figures highlight how segregated the United States remains in the wake of a debate on race sparked by last month’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. President Barack Obama weighed in after the verdict, calling for Americans to do some “soul searching” on whether they harbor racial prejudice.
There are regions and groups where mixing with people of other races is more common, especially in the Hispanic community where only a tenth do not have friends of a different race. About half of Hispanics who have a spouse or partner are in a relationship with non-Hispanics, compared to one tenth of whites and blacks in relationships.
There are three reasons why this poll and Reuters’ analysis of it are meaningless.
First, racial categories are nowhere near as rigidly defined in America as they seem to be in Reuterville. If a black guy on the South Side of Chicago is friends with former state senator Barack Obama, would that count as an interracial friendship or an intraracial one? How about a non-Hispanic white who’s friends with George Zimmerman? (According to the Census Bureau, “Hispanic” isn’t even a racial category; Hispanics can be of any race.)
Second, the definition of “friendship” is highly subjective and variable, and some people are just less sociable than others. Some people have no friends at all, but Reuters makes no distinction between a loner and a bigot.
Third, the analysis takes no account of the mathematical truism that if friendships were formed purely at random–that is, without regard to race or anything else–whites would have fewer interracial friendships than minorities.
And in today’s Money Quote, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown offers a primer for understanding every single Progressive program ever
“News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone. We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it.
In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.“
Any questions? No…seriously…
…any questions?!?
On the Lighter Side…
Then there’s this beauty from Carl Polizzi…
…as well as this gem from Wink Martindale:
Finally, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre, courtesy of Marc Katz…
A Harford County Public Schools behavioral specialist was indicted in April on charges of unnatural or perverted practice.
A Harford County Public Schools behavioral specialist accused of having sex with her family dog was expected go to trial Wednesday, but the trial was instead pushed back to October. Stephanie Mikles, 46, of the 1500 block of North Bend Road in Jarrettsville, was indicted in April on a charge of unnatural or perverted sexual practice, online court records show.
The charges were leveled against Mikles after investigators found 12 photographs that showed her having sexual intercourse with the family’s Labrador Retriever. Assistant State’s Attorney Lisa Marts told the judge that investigators believe Mikles’ husband took the photographs of her and the dog. The photographs were found after police seized the files while investigating allegations of sexual abuse of a minor and child pornography made against Mikles, Marts told the court in July. No evidence of sex abuse or child pornography were found.
Mikles’ lawyer, Leslie Gladstone, made a request to dismiss the case because it violates Mikles’ right to privacy and because the law itself is too vague. “What this statute does is attempt to legislate a moral issue,” Gladstone said. He argued that no animal was injured and his client is not charged with animal cruelty. He said the activity took place in the privacy of her home. Gladstone went on to say that the law does not specifically outline what an “unnatural or perverted” sexual act is.
We stand corrected; Islam HAS had an impact…
Camels become prime suspects in deadly Saudi virus outbreak
…on Western civilization.
Magoo
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