March 8, 2013

HUMAN EVENTS
Rand Paul's Republican Critics
by John Hayward
March 7, 2013

At a moment of soaring energy for the Republican Party… after a performance that drew support from not only up-and-coming young GOP stars but also Democrat Ron Wyden and no small number of liberal pundits concerned about civil liberties… with President Obama rocked back on his heels from his second messaging debacle in as many weeks, following the Sequestration Terror… can Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) expect some of his worst criticism to come from fellow Republicans?

You betcha!

First up: Senator Lindsey Graham, who appears near the end of this clip to declare, “The drone program as utilized overseas has made us safer…  This idea that we’re going to use a drone to attack American citizens in a cafe in America is ridiculous, and I think the American people need to understand the threat we face.”

The benefits of the drone program overseas are not the topic of conversation, and have absolutely nothing to do with the propriety of using such weapons against American citizens without due process.  There are lots of other weapons keeping us safe overseas that shouldn’t be dropped on American citizens without a trial, either.  It’s an almost bizarre non sequitur for Graham (and as you’ll see in a moment, John McCain) to hammer that point.  Do they worry that we’re going to hurt the drones’ feelings by questioning their cybernetic patriotism, so they have to step up and defend the service records of the robots?  Do they think it’s somehow logistically impossible to re-deploy unmanned aerial vehicles from the Middle East to the United States, or build new ones to deploy here?

As for the hypothetical Hellfire missile slamming into a Starbucks, well, sure, that sounds pretty outrageous.  So why won’t the Administration simply say that it cannot every happen, and would be illegal?  That would have saved Senator Paul a lot of trouble.

Graham also accused Paul’s supporters of political hypocrisy.  ”To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone.”  So… that disqualifies all Republicans from ever raising the issue?  Including those who were not in Congress when George Bush was President?

Then Graham held up a sign showing the count of Americans killed by al-Qaeda versus those killed by drones, 2,958 to zero.  So if the drones kill less than 2,957 people it’s cool?  Or is he saying we shouldn’t discuss this at all, until the first coffee shop gets wiped out by a Predator?

Here’s McCain lighting into Paul in the most patronizing and insulting terms: “Calm down, Senator, Mr. Holder is right, even if he doesn’t explain the law very well.”  There’s a great sound bite coming from a Republican!  Do you suppose we should perhaps consider insisting upon having an Attorney General who can explain the law very well, Senator McCain?

I can offer Senator McCain a tip of the cap for his witticisms about Jane Fonda, but a lot of what he’s saying here is missing the point.  How did Hanoi Jane get mixed up in all this?  It’s because of a column from Kevin Williamson of National Review, which was quoted by Senator Paul during his filibuster.  Williamson was talking about the role of Anwar al-Awlaki as “first and foremost an al-Qaeda propagandist,” rather than an operational planner directly involved in designing and executing terrorist attacks:

If sympathizing with our enemies and propagandizing on their behalf is the equivalent of making war on the country, then the Johnson and Nixon administrations should have bombed every elite college campus in the country during the 1960s. And as satisfying as putting Jane Fonda on a kill list might have been, I do not think that our understanding of the law of war would encourage such a thing, even though she did give priceless aid to the Communist aggressors in Vietnam. Students in Ann Arbor, Mich., were actively and openly raising funds for the Viet Cong throughout the war. Would it have been proper to put them on kill lists? I do not think that it would. There is a difference between sympathizing with our enemies and taking up arms against the country; there is even a difference between actively aiding our enemies and taking up arms against the country, which is why we have treason trials rather than summary execution.

Or, to use another example I’ve seen kicked around the Internet: if drones had been available in the Sixties, would it have been OK to use one against Obama’s mentor, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers?  Does the answer change depending on whether the kill list would have been drawn up by the sainted JFK or the demonic Richard Nixon?

Nothing about McCain’s answer suggests he has pondered the questions Williamson asked at any great length, or done Rand Paul the courtesy of acknowledging that he wants a firm answer of “no” to the question, “Can we send a Predator to take out Jane Fonda while she’s sipping a latte in Beverly Hills, without first affording her due process?”

McCain accused Paul of stoking needless fear among the dorm-room libertarian set, a charge echoed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, who said Paul’s line of questioning “provokes needless fear and detracts attention from the real threats facing the country.”

So, while the old GOP bulls were busy trying to pull defeat from the fires of victory, Rand Paul got that victory.  Just a few minutes before this post was written, CNN reported that Attorney General Holder sent a new letter to Paul in the wake of his filibuster: 

“It has come to my attention,” the letter states “That you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.” 

Paul said he was satisfied with the response. 

“I’m quite happy with the answer,” the senator from Kentucky said on CNN. “I’m disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it, but we did get the answer.”

No thanks to Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who are evidently very nervous about these trips to the political dentist.

Read more: http://goo.gl/JEABR

AMERICAN THINKER
Rand Paul Shifts Political Orbit
by Jonathon Moseley
March 8, 2013

The political world changed its orbit Wednesday as Rand Paul seized the spotlight in his March 6 filibuster. Rand Paul -- not this author's favorite before -- is probably now the 2016 front-runner for president. But the difference results from fundamental changes in substance.

How can one day be that big of a deal? Because Rand Paul demonstrated a reproducible, winning formula. It was as if Ronald Reagan were granted just one day to come back to Earth to remind the Party of Lincoln of "how it's done." Rand demonstrated a repeatable formula that all Republicans can copy. It is the template that is significant.

But was March 6 "Republicans' Last Stand" or "Rand's First Stand?" What is most optimistic as the basis for this analysis is that Republican senators started showing up. The Senate floor was more crowded at 10:00 and 11:00 PM than it was at 6:00 PM. They felt it. They saw it. They "got" it. (Excepting one superannuated senator from Arizona.) It clicked. In other words, Republicans might possibly do more of same. If Rand disappears back into the woodwork, then March 6 will have meant nothing.

Freshman Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz "got it." Cruz was all over it. Cruz gave voice to the moment best of all. Cruz threatened to go way over the top, reading from the movie "Patton" and Henry the Fifth's St. Crispin's Day speech on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. Yet somehow, flirting with serious rhetorical dangers, Cruz captured the moment just right. Like a roller coaster, you gripped the car fearing Cruz was going to fly off into mid-air, yet to our great surprise Cruz hit his mark. He grasped the significance, to put it mildly. Cruz praised the raw bravery of "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" rather than those who die a thousand deaths in the thicket of their own worried thoughts.

Rand Paul unveiled a conservative answer to the Left's Saul Alinsky tactics:

• Rand Paul shoved Obama's agenda off the public stage. Just getting the political world talking about Republicans' message instead of Obama's means Republicans are winning and Obama is losing.
• Rand picked his issue very carefully. He chose the hill he wanted his opponent to die on. Rand showed what happens when you wisely pick the right issue to defeat your opponent with.
• Yet Rand's issue seamlessly fit within his larger philosophy. He didn't just take a cheap shot. Rand chose an example that proves his larger point. As a caller to the Chris Plante show on Washington's WMAL said, "the biggest minority in America is the individual." Rand's filibuster fit within Rand's overall defense of individual liberty. The specific point created an effective argument supporting his larger theme.
• Rand advanced his strategic goal. The entire filibuster episode portrayed a radically different image of Barack Obama. Even among low information voters, Obama's public image just took a serious hit. Instead of being the cool guy who loves you, Obama is now the tyrant who reserves the right to kill you any time he feels like it. On an emotional level, Rand Paul undid in one day years of spin about Obama.
• Rand had a sense of the role of theatrical drama. Conservatives are rightly wary of selling an invalid argument. But even to promote the truth, one must understand that humans are emotional beings. Communicating a message in a crowded, busy world requires a feel for the dramatic.
• So Rand did this in a way difficult for the news media to ignore. In politics, if a tree falls in the forest and the news media doesn't report it, it never happened.
• Rand then hammered the issue perfectly. Who can defend U.S. Government drones assassinating American citizens inside America if they are not engaged in any violence? The issue is a blinding searchlight leaving the critters nowhere to hide. You can't say it doesn't matter. And there's no defense.
• Rand focused like a laser beam, anticipating the misrepresentation and caricatures he knew would be attempted. He repeatedly emphasized, probably a dozen times an hour, how modest his request was. He understood how his actions would be lied about, and cut the scoundrels off at the pass. He repeated what he wasn't demanding, what he wasn't arguing. He emphasized how he had voted for Obama's other nominees.
• Rand wasn't careless. His argument withstood scrutiny. And it got scrutiny. Yet he had a solid argument. Democrat Senator Dick Durbin asked about killing Osama Bin Laden. But Seal Team 6 was trying to arrest Bin Laden. It was Bin Laden's violence in resisting arrest that got him killed. Rand repeatedly emphasized that inside the USA the government should arrest people and question them, not assassinate them.
• Rand was nimble. He admitted that he hadn't planned the filibuster. But when the Obama Administration repeatedly confirmed that they believe the president has the authority to murder U.S. citizens inside the USA when they are not actively attacking anyone, Rand saw an opening and pounced. But he had the wisdom to know if it was a good opportunity or not.
• Rand Paul had guts.

Yet the GOP will be lost if it does not learn the lesson and follow Rand Paul's brilliant "teachable moment" example. Winston Churchill quipped: "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." We will see how thick-headed Republicans are if they miss the point.

On the same day that Rand Paul showed us how it's done, Republicans in the U.S. House impersonated overboiled cauliflower and caved in to Obama's massive overspending. The U.S. House skipped the chance to slow out-of-control spending. The Republican House passed a Continuing Resolution at the same $3.6 trillion level -- $700 billion per year higher than Federal spending in 2008. Republicans could have passed a Continuing Resolution at a lower level, especially while objecting that the U.S. Senate has not passed any budget.

This author has often criticized Ron Paul on some issues. When Papa Paul is right, he's right, when he's not, he's not. So Senator Rand Paul really had to earn my favorable opinion. But on March 6 he surely did. Count one very impressed convert here.

Read more: http://goo.gl/43n2W

November 15, 2012

NEWSMAX
FBI Agent in Petraeus Hero Who Stopped Terrorist Plot in 2000
by the Associated Press
November 15, 2012

FBI Special Agent Frederick Humphries II played a key role in stopping a terrorist attack aimed at blowing up Los Angeles International Airport just as the year 2000 dawned.

Today, the agent, who also fatally shot a knife-wielding man during a 2010 altercation, finds himself in the middle of the widening scandal that has resulted in CIA Director David Petraeus' resignation.

Humphries, 47, was the agent who initially saw the emails the FBI said Petraeus' biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell, sent to Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, a woman she apparently saw as a rival for Petraeus' affections. She also allegedly sent emails to Gen. John Allen, Kelley's friend and the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Concerned about the emails, Kelley contacted Humphries in June. The two had met at a 2011 FBI Citizens Academy, a program aimed at teaching the public and journalists about what the agency does and how it operates. Kelley was in the class, which Humphries lectured one night about terrorism, according to Natalie Shepherd, a Tampa TV reporter who was there.

Humphries, a former Army captain who worked in military intelligence, thought the emails raised serious concerns because the anonymous author knew the comings and goings of Allen and Petraeus, a former general who had preceded Allen in Afghanistan. His report back to the FBI started the investigation that led to Broadwell and uncovered her affair with Petraeus.

The FBI is reviewing Humphries' later conduct in this case, a federal law enforcement official said Wednesday. Specifically, the bureau is reviewing a telephone call he made in late October to Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., to voice concern that the bureau was not aggressively pursuing a possible national security breach. Reichert arranged to convey the information to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who checked with the FBI at that time. Cantor was assured the bureau was on top of any possible vulnerability.

Lawrence Berger, the general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said in an interview Wednesday that his client, Humphries, did nothing wrong and should not be disciplined. "He's committed no misconduct," Berger said and predicted he would be cleared of any misconduct.

Read more: http://goo.gl/QCnk5

THE WEEKLY STANDARD
Decline and Fall - California votes for more: taxes, spending, debt, government
by Charlotte Allen
November 15, 2012

On November 6 voters in California did something nearly unheard of during the past 30 years: They approved, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, a ballot measure raising state income taxes on the most prosperous Californians and sales taxes on everyone, even though the state’s sales tax is already the highest in the nation.

The successful tax-hike initiative isn’t just a hoped-for generator of revenue: a projected $34 billion over the next seven years, which California desperately needs because it is running a $16 billion budget deficit and its cumulative total debt is at least $618 billion, the highest in the nation. That latter amount includes up to $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities for 220,000 state employees plus billions in unpaid bills, delayed payments to schools, and amounts raided from dedicated funds to cover general expenses.

The new tax is also intensely symbolic. It represents the culmination of a two-decade-long process in which the nation’s most populous state, once a prosperous industrial and high-tech powerhouse and magnet for immigrants from elsewhere in the country, has transformed itself into something else: a high-tax, high-spending, highly regulated, and chronically broke welfare state that is fast losing to out-migration both its middle class and the businesses and industries that create jobs. California factories once housed such industries as steel, automobile manufacturing, tire production, and aerospace. Those are now mostly or entirely gone. Silicon Valley employs only tiny numbers of tech geniuses; the actual manufacturing is done elsewhere. California’s unemployment rate tops 10 percent, in contrast to less than 8 percent for the nation as a whole. A full third of Americans on public assistance reside in California, even though it houses only one-eighth of the nation’s population. It is safe to say that only the very rich and the very poor​—​along with the 1.8 million who collect state and local government paychecks (some of the highest in the nation, according to the Census Bureau) and belong to powerful public-employee unions​—​can afford to make their homes in the Golden State these days. In short, California is the new Massachusetts. Or, given that it now has the worst state credit rating in America, thanks to chronic overspending, massive state debt, and the clout of the pension reform-resisting unions, California is the American Greece.

Until the passage of Proposition 30 last week, California voters had for more than two decades consistently rejected every general taxation measure put before them​—​and going directly to the voters on tax measures is fairly common in California, because the state constitution requires a hard-to-attain supermajority of two-thirds for a tax bill to pass the state legislature. The last time a tax measure on the general ballot had passed was in 1988, when California voters approved a cigarette levy​—​essentially a “vice” tax​—​aimed at funding antismoking and environmental programs. This November, however, voters agreed to raise the state sales tax to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent, which means that consumers in, say, Los Angeles County, which has its own local sales tax, will be paying close to 10 percent in taxes on every item they purchase, save for groceries. Proposition 30 also includes a soak-the-rich so-called millionaires’ tax with an Occupy Wall Street flavor that hits people with household incomes of more than $250,000 a year, the same group that is President Obama’s target for raising federal income taxes. State rates for that 3 percent of Californians, many of whom own small businesses but are taxed as individuals, will rise to anywhere from 10.3 percent to 13.3 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year. Living in California has suddenly become even more expensive than it already was, especially for lower-income people on tight budgets, for whom every dollar paid out in sales taxes is a dollar that can’t be spent on something else. The tax increases are billed as “temporary”​—​if seven years for the income-tax hike and four years for the sales-tax hike can be called temporary.

Read more: http://goo.gl/24HSV

 

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Don't cry now
by Noemie Emery
November 13, 2012

Yes, it's all sad -- and grim, and depressing -- but is Election 2012 truly the end of the GOP universe? Perhaps. But before giving way to unseemly hysterics, here are some thoughts to peruse:

* Timing is everything: This year, the Republicans needed new and appealing young talents to take on Obama, and that, as it happened, was just what they had. The upside was that in 2009 and 2010 they had a crop of new stars, all born to run on a national ticket. The downside was that they would be ready to start running in 2014 at the earliest. And so the most crucial of all nominations would go to one of a number of has-beens or retreads, whose experience was either old or irrelevant, and whose talent at best underwhelmed.

Mitt Romney, the best, left office six years ago, and had a liberal past, a financial career that had netted him millions, and, as the son of another ex-governor, seemed the image of white and upper-class privilege, minus the military heroics, medical problems, or personal tragedies that humanized the Roosevelt cousins, the Kennedy brothers and the elder George Bush.

Near the end, Romney became a good candidate, but he was always less than a good politician; a speaker in tongues that were not his first language, and a technocrat in a profession in which visionaries tend to win the big prize. His loss deprives the country of an effective executive, but it allows the next generation of the GOP, which would have been pushed aside for eight years or more if he had triumphed, to step forward now and make over the party -- a moment that can't come soon enough.

* The country has changed, but the next Republican ticket will have at least one, and possibly two, brownish-skinned children of immigrants, with inspiring stories of rising from nowhere to live the American dream. He and/or she (and "she" must be seen as a real possibility) will never have fired hundreds of people, will not be rich, will not be dogged by multiple changes on issues, will understand modern conservatism from having run and won on it, and also will be a career politician, unlikely to make the unforced verbal errors that haunted this campaign just ended. There are few such "diverse" stars in the Democrats' stable. Hillary Clinton, if she runs in 2016, will be 69, and unlikely to get the nation's young in a tizzy. In the next cycle, the dynamic that worked this year in the Democrats' favor -- race, youth and gender -- may be turned on its head.

Read more: http://goo.gl/z5rjC