Another Obama Dichotomy

There are enough dichotomous issues about Obama to fill a laundry list, with the most discordant being Obama’s claim to be a post racial candidate while adopting as a preacher and mentor for twenty years the lunatic racist Rev. Wright. Then there is Obama’s claim to be able to heal the bi-partisan divide of the country while never having once in his career attempted to reach across the aisle on an issue of bi-partisan controversy. And there is Obama’s claim that he will clean Washington of special interests even as he panders shamelessly to Democratic special interests for their support. In that latter category today, there is news that Obama has agreed to work for release of the Teamsters Labor Union from federal oversight for corruption and ties to organized crime - an oversight the Justice Dept. has refused to end - thus earning the Teamsters' support.

Obama’s claim that he will clean Washington of special interests is hypocrisy writ on a grand scale. He has pandered to most Democratic special interests during his term as Senator, there being priot to today two particularly egregious examples. There was his recent support for the tort bar over our national security on the issue of immunity from prosecution for the telecom industry. And there was his vote to pay off Big Labor with the jaw droppingly anti-democratic and Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act. Add to that a third example. In order to gain the support of the Teamsters – a union whose history is rife with corruption and Mafia influence – Obama has agreed to seek the end of federal oversight of the Teamsters instituted in 1992 to try and clean up the union. This today from the WSJ:

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.

Sen. Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, has declined to take a stance on Teamsters oversight. During his eight years in office, President Bill Clinton took no action to end the special board. Democratic presidential nominees in 2000 and 2004 -- Al Gore and John Kerry -- didn't address the issue, according to Teamsters officials.

Neither Sen. Obama nor Teamsters President James P. Hoffa has spoken publicly about easing up federal oversight, a top priority for Mr. Hoffa since he became union president in 1999. On the campaign trail, Mr. Hoffa stresses Sen. Obama's criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement as the big factor in winning the 1.4-million member union's support.

But John Coli, vice president for the Teamsters central region, who brokered the Teamsters endorsement, said Sen. Obama was "pretty definitive that the time had come to start the beginning of the end" of the three-member independent review board that investigates suspect activity in the union. Mr. Coli said that Sen. Obama conveyed that view in a series of phone conversations and meetings with Teamsters officials last year.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed the candidate's position in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, saying that Sen. Obama believes that the board "has run its course," because "organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined." Mr. Vietor said Sen. Obama took that position last year.

. . . And, board members say, it would be extraordinary for a president to try to alter the oversight. "Presidents very rarely try to tell the Justice Department what is the right thing to do in matters of judicial administration," said William Webster, a member of the board since 1992 and a former director of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Teamsters' backing has been particularly important for Sen. Obama, who is struggling to win over the white working-class voters who dominate the union's core membership of truckers and warehouse and port workers.

Read the entire article. And Obama is going to clean up special interests? The divide between Obama’s words and his deeds is not merely a gap, it is an immense canyon. Is there anything that this man has said that is backed by his deeds?

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Spitzer, FISA And Our National Priorities

Spitzer got in bed with a prostitute and paid with his money. Our House Democratic leadership are far worse. They are in bed with trial lawyers and they are paying them with our money - and degrading our national security in the process.






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The telecommunications industry cooperated with the requests of our intelligence agencies in the wake of 9-11. For their trouble, they received no money. Instead, they have been served with class action lawsuits asking for $40 billion in damages. What makes this matter worse is that our intelligence agencies must, in any case, work closely with our telecommunications industry in order to effectively pursue intelligence. It goes without saying that such cooperation will not come willingly if the industry must pay out $40 billion. And our national intelligence leadership are adamant that such cooperation is necessary.

And let's be realistic about this. The costs of litigation are not simply eaten by a corporation. They are a business cost and, ultimately, they get paid by every one of us that uses those services. Meanwhile, in class action law suits, the only people that get any substantive money are the lawyers.

So what do you think of elected representatives who would screw our intelligence collection capabilities and screw we, the consumers, in order to pay one of their discrete special interests. Give me Spitzer any day. At least he only screwed a prostitute and paid for it with his own money. What adds insult to injury is that there is sufficient bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House to pass the FISA reform bill to return our intelligence collection capabilities to what they should be and to grant immunity to the telecom entities that cooperated with our intelligence agencies.

Read the whole sordid story here. Then if you want to read something more family oriented and wholesome, you can go back to reading about Spitzer.

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President Bush Addresses The House's Failure To Vote On The FISA Reform Bill

The Senate, passed a bill that combined FISA reform and retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that voluntarilly cooperated with our intelligence community in the wake of 9-11. With authorization for the FISA reform expiring at midnight last night, the House, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, refused to vote on the bill and instead disbanded for a ten day vacation. This was the topic of President Bush's weekly radio address.

On the day of President Bush's State of the Union speech, the Senate rescheduled their vote on the "Protect America Act" because they were concerned with whether or not it would pass, and if it did not, they did not want Bush beating them over the head with it in the State of the Union speech. Subsequently, the measure passed the Senate with a bipartisan and filibuster proof majority that beat off an attempt by Chris Dodd - supported by Barack Obama - to strip the retroactive immunity provision. The bill has sufficient support in the House to pass as is. But that has not stopped Nancy Pelosi - pandering to special interests - from refusing to schedule a vote.

This today from President Bush:

Good morning. At the stroke of midnight tonight, a vital intelligence law that is helping protect our nation will expire. Congress had the power to prevent this from happening, but chose not to.

The Senate passed a good bill that would have given our intelligence professionals the tools they need to keep us safe. But leaders in the House of Representatives blocked a House vote on the Senate bill, and then left on a 10-day recess.

Some congressional leaders claim that this will not affect our security. They are wrong. Because Congress failed to act, it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack. At midnight, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence will be stripped of their power to authorize new surveillance against terrorist threats abroad. This means that as terrorists change their tactics to avoid our surveillance, we may not have the tools we need to continue tracking them -- and we may lose a vital lead that could prevent an attack on America.

In addition, Congress has put intelligence activities at risk even when the terrorists don't change tactics. By failing to act, Congress has created a question about whether private sector companies who assist in our efforts to defend you from the terrorists could be sued for doing the right thing. Now, these companies will be increasingly reluctant to provide this vital cooperation, because of their uncertainty about the law and fear of being sued by class-action trial lawyers.

For six months, I urged Congress to take action to ensure this dangerous situation did not come to pass. I even signed a two-week extension of the existing law, because members of Congress said they would use that time to work out their differences. The Senate used this time productively -- and passed a good bill with a strong, bipartisan super-majority of 68 votes. Republicans and Democrats came together on legislation to ensure that we could effectively monitor those seeking to harm our people. And they voted to provide fair and just liability protection for companies that assisted in efforts to protect America after the attacks of 9/11.

The Senate sent this bill to the House for its approval. It was clear that if given a vote, the bill would have passed the House with a bipartisan majority. I made every effort to work with the House to secure passage of this law. I even offered to delay my trip to Africa if we could come together and enact a good bill. But House leaders refused to let the bill come to a vote. Instead, the House held partisan votes that do nothing to keep our country safer. House leaders chose politics over protecting the country -- and our country is at greater risk as a result.

House leaders have no excuse for this failure. . . .

Read the entire address here.

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The Protect America Act & Obama

A major piece of anti-terror legislation was passed by the Senate with large bi-partisan support. One of the people voting against it was Barack Obama.









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There is legislation before Congress to correct provisions in FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA, a law originally passed in 1978 in the era before modern communications, today produces the anomaly of requiring warrants for our intelligence personnel to spy on communications between two foreign parties, both on foreign soil. This anamoly was corrected with passage of the Protect America Act, but that had a sunset provision which ran out some time ago. The legislation before Congress would make permanent this correction to FISA and it includes a grant of immunity to those private companies that assissted in intelligence collection in the wake of 9-11 and at the request of the government.

On this latter issue, our nation's spy Chief, Mike McConnell, wrote in December:

The intelligence community cannot go it alone. Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits. I share the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, after a year of study, concluded that “without retroactive immunity, the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,” . . .

There is bi-partisan support in the Senate for the Protect America Act, including in it the grant of retroactive immunity. The bill, which has been under consideration for months, passed the Senate yesterday, with 17 Democrats joining with Republicans in a 68-29 vote. The Senate also voted down an amendment submitted by Senator Dodd and supported by Obama that would have stripped the immunity provision.

The WSJ comments in an Op-Ed today:

Now and then sanity prevails, even in Washington. So it did yesterday as the Senate passed a warrantless wiretap bill for overseas terrorists while killing most of the Lilliputian attempts to tie down our war fighters.

"We lost every single battle we had on this bill," conceded Chris Dodd, which ought to tell the Connecticut Senator something about the logic of what he was proposing. His own amendment -- to deny immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 -- didn't even get a third of the Senate. It lost 67-31, though notably among the 31 was possible Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. (Hillary Clinton was absent, while John McCain voted in favor.)

It says something about his national security world view, or his callowness, that Mr. Obama would vote to punish private companies that even the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said had "acted in good faith." Had Senator Obama prevailed, a President Obama might well have been told "no way" when he asked private Americans to help his Administration fight terrorists. Mr. Obama also voted against the overall bill, putting him in MoveOn.org territory.

. . . This is a fight Senator McCain should want to have right up through Election Day, with Democrats having to explain why they want to hamstring the best weapon -- real-time surveillance -- we have against al Qaeda.

Read the entire article. The only possible motivations I can see to contest this legislation are to satisfy the hard left ACLU wing who seem to believe the war on terror is a figment of the imagination and the ABA who see a gold mine in suing the telecommunications companies for a vioation of privacy. Obama will probably not admit to those motivations, but he stands firmly in that camp. And once again, the actions of the man who would "reach across the divide" and "unite all Americans" speak far louder than his words.

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A Lame Duck Quacks (Updated)

I just watched President Bush’s State of the Union Speech. All in all, I thought it was one of the strongest speeches I have ever heard him give. Bush spoke with a rare gravitas and clarity on all of the major issues. You can find the text of his speech here, as well as video and audio.

There is clearly a lot that Bush mentioned that just is not going to happen with the Democrats in control of Congress. That said, the best line of the night came when Bush tweaked the Democrats about making his tax cuts permanent:

Others have said they would personally be happy to pay higher taxes. I welcome their enthusiasm, and I am pleased to report that the IRS accepts both checks and money orders.

Even Nancy Pelosi cracked a smile on camera for that one.

And Bush was singing sweet music to the conservative base, calling for balanced budgets, limitations on spending, and most importantly, a real cut back on earmarks. Admittedly, Bush's new found fiscal conservatism could qualify as the topic of an example sentence in Webster's Dictionary for the definition of "hypocrisy." Conservatives will not care.

Republicans spending the tax dollars of America like drunken Democrats and the scent of corruption associated with earmarks like the "bridge to nowhere" cost Republicans the election in 2006. Now Bush, if not all Republican lawmakers, has found religion on this issue. Bush just reclaimed the mantle of fiscal conservativism and helped out his party in the coming elections immensely.

As to the earmarks, Bush promised to veto spending bills that did not cut by half the number and cost of earmarks, and he promised to "issue an Executive Order that directs Federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by the Congress." What he is referring to is the habit of slipping earmarks into committee reports that then are treated as law despite the fact they have never been subject to a vote.

I was highly unimpressed with Bush's discussion of energy. You will recall that he signed into law last month a "bipartisan" energy bill that emphasized, in part, biofuels. What we are seeing around the world now, in large measure because of the biofuel program, is a steep rise in food prices that only portends to get only worse. This is bad for the economy and particularly hard on the poor. Moreover, biofuels are significantly less environmentally friendly than oil and gas. See here and here. Yet, in his speech, Bush seemed to be indicating his continued support for biofuels. I think that a huge mistake.

Another major theme in Bush's speech concerned the Protect America Act (PAA) which will sunset on Friday if the Congress does not act. The PAA closes the loopholes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so that we can monitor communications between people on foreign soil without the necessity of a warrant. But it also contains a grant of immunity to private companies that assisted the government post 9-11 with intelligence gathering. The Democrats postponed a vote on that bill today because they did not want Bush to be able to say in his speech that the Democratic Congress voted down the bill.

The real problem for Democrats is that one of their constituencies, the tort lawyers, are eyeing a huge payday by suing the communications companies that voluntarily cooperated with the Justice Department post 9-11 in domestic intelligence gathering. Once again, for Democrats, partisan politics trumps our national security.

The majority of Bush's speech was given over to discussing Iraq. Bush covered the surge, noting the tremendous success it has had in quelling the violence in Iraq that was, in large measure, driven by al Qaeda terrorists and Iran. Bush also spelled out the successes of the government of Iraq, noting the progress towards provincial elections, the equal sharing of oil revenue, and the recent passage of both a de-Baathification law and pension law. Those last two mark substantial progress towards reconciliation. Most important of all was Bush spelling out the potential fruits of victory and the consequences of failure in Iraq.

Any further drawdown of U.S. troops will be based on conditions in Iraq and the recommendations of our commanders. General Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in the "disintegration of the Iraqi Security Forces, Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground, [and] a marked increase in violence." Members of Congress: Having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen. . . .

The mission in Iraq has been difficult and trying for our Nation. But it is in the vital interest of the United States that we succeed. A free Iraq will deny Al Qaeda a safe haven. A free Iraq will show millions across the Middle East that a future of liberty is possible. And a free Iraq will be a friend of America, a partner in fighting terror, and a source of stability in a dangerous part of the world.

By contrast, a failed Iraq would embolden extremists, strengthen Iran, and give terrorists a base from which to launch new attacks on our friends, our allies, and our homeland. The enemy has made its intentions clear. At a time when the momentum seemed to favor them, Al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq declared that they will not rest until they have attacked us here in Washington. My fellow Americans: We will not rest either. We will not rest until this enemy has been defeated. We must do the difficult work today, so that years from now people will look back and say that this generation rose to the moment, prevailed in a tough fight, and left behind a more hopeful region and a safer America.

Bush also touched on Iran, but only in relative passing. The NIE on Iran neutered our ability to hold out the threat of force to coerce the mad mullahs into ending ever quickening march towards a nuclear weapon, and it showed in the speech. Bush all but announced our capitulation on that issue tonight. Further – and maddeningly – he took note that Iran is responsible for the death of our soldiers in Iraq, and then just let the topic drop there. Although Bush tried to sound bellicose, the words "act of war" were left unsaid. It was all very hollow - and in the end, I think may only encourage further acts of deadly meddling by Iran's theocrats.

Bush's speech was wide ranging, but those were the highs and lows as I saw them. You can find the WaPo spin here, and an ironic bit of "fact checking" here. What an incredibly disingenuous bit that WaPo fact checking is. And you will find some stomach churning spin from the NYT here. You can also find Fred Barnes take on the speech here.

And unless I am really reading the signals wrong, open season was just declared in Demland for Hillary hunting. First there was the Kennedy clan endorsing Obama today. Then there was what occurred tonight.

Hillary Clinton's name did not come up in the State of the Union Speech by the President. Nor did it explicitly come up when Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democratic Respone. But read this portion of Sebelius's speech:

And so I want to take a slight detour from tradition on this State of the Union night. In this time, normally reserved for a partisan response, I hope to offer something more: An American response. A national call to action on behalf of the struggling families in the heartland and across this great country. A wake-up call to Washington, on behalf of a new American majority, . . .

You can find the full speech here. Wow. What does it say when the official response of the Democratic Party adopts the themes of Obama and reads like one of his stump speechs? Obama just got a huge DNC embrace . . . and it would appear that Hillary has fallen from grace in a very big way.

As an aside, Sebelius was even more wooden reading from a teleprompter than Gore at his worst. And as to the substance of the speech, it was a typical call for the President to put aside partisanship and just, by golly, show your true support for America -- by agreeing to every socialist program the Democrats can dream up. In other words, it really was an Obama stump speech.

Final Score:

President Bush – 7

Obama – 3

Fox News - 0 and need to give Major Garrat a crash course on professional journalism.

Hillary Clinton - 0 and feeling hunted.

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Interesting News - 26 January 2008

According to PM Maliki, "We defeated al Qaeda, now there is just Nineveh province where they escaped to, and Kirkuk," And as a new offensive is aimed at al Qaeda, it looks as if it may be an all-Iraqi operation.

In the world of hypocritical politicians, Charles Krauthammer thinks that John Edwards makes other hypocrites looks like pikers.

The Democrats are still refusing to reauthorize the Protect America Act. This is the law that corrects FISA to allow for eavesdropping on foreign communications without the necessity of a warrant. Even Time’s resident leftie Joe Klein thinks this is nuts.

There is a real possibility that Denmark will become the first Muslim country in Europe. This is a particularly troubling post.

Crusader Rabbit ponders why males are the happier gender.

Seraphic Secret discusses the ramifications of the Hamas foray into Egypt.

Bookworm Room seems to be taking a bit of sadistic delight in Andrew McCarthy’s shredding of the NYT.

Soccer Dad has an exceptional post that hits the nail on the head. "Islamist hatred of the West is not a grievance we can address. Attempting to accommodate the demands of Islamists only encourages them. For there to be peace between Islam and the West, there needs to be a change of heart in Islam. Anything else is useless." I couldn’t agree more, and have said so previously.

Do read CAIR’s action letter urging an end to the "illegal blockade of Gaza" by Israel. Not a word about rockets or attacks on Israel. And let’s not forget the Muslim Brotherhood’s chapter here in the US, the MAS, or the radical Deobandi organization, the MCB in Britain. Personally, I would support a blockade and far more – aimed at Gaza, CAIR, MAS and the MCB. I am just not feeling a whole lot of compassion for terrorists and their enablers these days.

Nor do I support "victory over those who disbelieve," or feel the need to ask God for "protection from the great Satan." I suspect most Iowans would agree, but that is a bit unclear at the moment.

The American Islamic Congress has launched a new Anti-Suicide Bombing Campaign. They have my support.

The FBI has given its Community Leadership Award for 2007 to M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD. "Dr. Jasser is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander. He is the founder and Chairman of the Board of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), based in Phoenix, Arizona. AIFD seeks to address the central ideological conflict in the war on terror." It is an award well deserved.

The Center for Islamic Pluralism has a fascinating textually based analysis of the appropriate punishment for those who chose to leave Islam or commit other acts of apostasy. It is a stinging criticism of the "oil jurists" of Salfi Islam.

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Reauthorization of the Protect America Act

Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, appeals from the pages of the NYT for support to reauthorize the Protect America Act that corrects provisions in FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA, a law originally passed in 1978 in the era before modern communications, today produces the anomaly of requiring warrants for our intelligence personnel to spy on communications between two foreign parties, both on foreign soil. This should be a no-brainer, but for the list of the usual suspects:

THE Protect America Act, enacted in August, has lived up to its name and objective: making the country safer while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. Under this new law, we now have the speed and agility necessary to detect terrorist and other evolving national security threats. Information obtained under this law has helped us develop a greater understanding of international Qaeda networks, and the law has allowed us to obtain significant insight into terrorist planning.

Congress needs to act again. The Protect America Act expires in less than two months, on Feb. 1. We must be able to continue effectively obtaining the information gained through this law if we are to stay ahead of terrorists who are determined to attack the United States.

Before the Protect America Act was enacted, to monitor the communications of foreign intelligence targets outside the United States, in some cases we had to operate under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, a law that had not kept pace with changes in technology. In a significant number of these cases, FISA required us to obtain a court order. This requirement slowed — and sometimes prevented — our ability to collect timely foreign intelligence.

Our experts were diverted from tracking foreign threats to writing lengthy justifications to collect information from a person in a foreign country, simply to satisfy an outdated statute that did not reflect the ways our adversaries communicate. The judicial process intended to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans was applied instead to foreign intelligence targets in foreign countries. This made little sense, and the Protect America Act eliminated this problem. . .

Second, the intelligence community needs an efficient means to obtain a FISA court order to conduct surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes.
Finally, it is critical for the intelligence community to have liability protection for private parties that are sued only because they are believed to have assisted us after Sept. 11, 2001. Although the Protect America Act provided such necessary protection for those complying with requests made after its enactment, it did not include protection for those that reportedly complied earlier.

The intelligence community cannot go it alone. Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits. I share the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, after a year of study, concluded that “without retroactive immunity, the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,” and warned that “the possible reduction in intelligence that might result from this delay is simply unacceptable for the safety of our nation.” . .

I served for almost 30 years as an intelligence officer before spending some time in the private sector. When I returned to government last winter, it became clear to me that our foreign intelligence collection capacity was being degraded. I was very troubled to discover that FISA had not been updated to reflect new technology and was preventing us from collecting foreign intelligence needed to uncover threats to Americans.

The Protect America Act fixed this problem, and we are safer for it. I would be gravely concerned if we took a step backward into this world of uncertainty; America would be a less safe place.

Read the entire article.

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