Charles Krauthammer Interview (Updated)

Several days ago, Bill Kristol interviewed today's preeminent conservative pundit, Charles Krauthammer. It is a fascinating look at both Krauthammer's personal journey from left to right as well his opinions on American politics of this day:



0:00 - Discussing his political journey to the right over the issues of national defense and foreign policy. He mentions his time as a writer at TNR and as a speech writer for Walter Mondale.

2:52 - Krauthammer found that he agreed with Reagan "from the start."

4:42 - Democrats lost all touch with of reality after they lost power in 1980. They agitated against taking any actions to counter the Soviets. "On every strategic issue," the left completely lost the plot. Krauthammer has some nice things to say about Pres. Carter.

10:00 - Krauthammer did not foresee the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a complete surprise. He describes it as "biblical." Their system was illogical, inhuman and overstretched. In hindsight, it's fall was inevitable. Pat Moynihan and Reagan are the only two who foresaw it.

13:55 - Describing Reagan. Krauthammer coined the phrase "the Reagan doctrine" in one of his columns as a way to clarify it for the Reagan administration itself, so that they could pursue it with coherence.

18:00 - Meets with Reagan for lunch. It took him years to realize that Reagan was a brilliant man who preferred to present himself as a simple man.

22:30 - George Bush was a man of tremendous courage. He was a man of convictions who was always willing to listen. In the end, he achieved his objectives in Iraq.

24:45 - A unipolar world emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We were the sole power left in the world, a situation not seen since the days of ancient Rome. The issue now is how to deal with challenges that are asymmetric. We tried to do it with the nuclear non-proliferation treaties, but that is now shredded.

31:00 - Nuclear proliferation among states is the great threat of our time. And we do not have an adequate answer yet. The Obama administration is hastening our step down from the top position in a unipolar world, inviting foreign adventurism and aggression.

32:50 - 9-11 marked the end of our "holiday from history" that began after the fall of the Soviet Union. For a time, during that period, we imagined that peace and prosperity are part of the air we breath, but every period of peace is in reality the result of a great nation imposing its will on the world.

36:58 - Bush responded effectively to jihadism, creating our response from scratch. Then we elected in Obama a President who believes that America is not exceptional and has no moral authority to act as the world's arbiter - a very dangerous proposition in a unipolar world. Iraq was won by Bush. It fell apart under Obama and the absence of any American influence.

40:20 - Decline as a nation is a choice. Clinton was wobbly about American power. Obama is ideologically opposed to American power. We are, in his eyes, a nation intrinsically flawed. Obama wanted an America diminished. We are not diminished in Krauthammer's eyes, though we are on that trajectory. We can come back. It is why the 2016 election is so important.

45:56 - Krauthammer doesn't know whether Hillary will continue the Obama "path of decline" should she become President. He doesn't know where she stands on any of the issues. Americans, other than the hard left, do not like America on this path. America has liberated more people, on more continents, than any other nation in the history of the world. We are seeing now, in 2015, the effects of the Obama's decision to retreat and withdrawal from our position of power beginning in 2008.

51:00 - Our nation can survive Obama domestically. We are stronger than our domestic problems make us seem. It only takes a strong leader to reverse the narrative. We get the leaders we deserve. Americans are rejecting Obama's European social model for our economy. 2016 election may well be a pivotal one in American history.

55:00 - Discussing his life growing up in Quebec. It was a European political culture. He was cleansed of political romanticism in a radicalized university and learned to love John Stuart Mills at Oxford. He discovered the history and politics of America through self study. There a reason America is still with its original Founding documents while France is on its Fifth Republic. Our Founders were practical and pragmatic men.

1:12:50 - Discussing his time in medical school and his practice of medicine. Seven years practicing in medicine gave him real world experience with humanity and human suffering. Marxism and Freudianism are the two great intellectual derangements of the 20th century. Both are completely discredited. The only place Marx is regularly taught today is in college English departments.

1:21:45 - Discussing Judaism, the Talmud and American law. The Talmud, commentaries on the Torah, shows majority rule and respect for dissenting opinions.

1:30:03 - Discussing Israel and Zionism. Jews have always been in Israel. The creation of Israel was not an act of colonization. It is a return. Jews are the only people who did not disappear from history after their exile. Hebrew is the only dead language restored. Zionism predated WWII by a hundred years. Krauthammer "doesn't believe in God but fears Him greatly." He rejects atheism as a religion, and a false one.

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Iran & Watching History Repeat Itself (Updated)

The last time the "Peace In Our Time" bit of history played out in 1938, over 50 million people were killed in the aftermath and entire economies destroyed for decades. The only acceptable deal with Iran leaves them without a nuclear program. Period. Anything less is suicidal. And if such a deal is not possible, than we strangle their economy and hope that does the trick before military force is required. Yet it seems the Obama administration is dead set on a deal with the mad mad mullahs at any cost.

Iran has been at war with the U.S. and U.S. interests since 1979. They are the single most destabilizing influence in the world, and particularly in the Middle East, where they are the world's foremost proponent and supporter of terrorism. The mad mullahs are every bit as bloody and expansionist as Hitler and Nazi Germany. Given that WMD's are at stake and not conventional weapons, to make a deal with the mad mullahs that would allow them to continue their nuclear weapons program is far more dangerous and irrational than the deal Chamberlain hammered out with Hitler in 1938 to, famously, insure "peace in our time."

Obama is leading the world to Armageddon. Why, I cannot begin to fathom, but there is no doubting at this point that the more a nation is opposed to U.S., the greater the danger a nation poses to the U.S. and its allies, the more Obama is willing to deal with it irrespective of the cost to our national security. And it is truly the world turned upside down when the only adults in the room protecting the interests of the free world are the French.

This from Thomas Sowell's recent article, Etiquette Versus Annihilation:

Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn’t matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat.

It is amazing — indeed, staggering — that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world’s biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond the Middle East.

Back during the years of the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States, contemplating what a nuclear war would be like was called “thinking the unthinkable.” But surely the Nazi Holocaust during World War II should tell us that what is beyond the imagination of decent people is by no means impossible for people who, as Churchill warned of Hitler before the war, had “currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.”

Have we not already seen that kind of hatred in the Middle East? Have we not seen it in suicide bombings there and in suicide attacks against America by people willing to sacrifice their own lives by flying planes into massive buildings, to vent their unbridled hatred?

The Soviet Union was never suicidal, so the fact that we could annihilate their cities if they attacked ours was a sufficient deterrent to a nuclear attack from them. But will that deter fanatics with an apocalyptic vision? Should we bet the lives of millions of Americans on our ability to deter nuclear war with Iran?

It is now nearly 70 years since nuclear bombs were used in war. Long periods of safety in that respect have apparently led many to feel as if the danger is not real. But the dangers are even greater now and the nuclear bombs more devastating.

Clearing the way for Iran to get nuclear bombs may — probably will — be the most catastrophic decision in human history. And it can certainly change human history, irrevocably, for the worse.

Against that grim background, it is almost incomprehensible how some people can be preoccupied with the question whether having Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress, warning against the proposed agreement, without the prior approval of President Obama, was a breach of protocol.

Against the background of the Obama administration’s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation’s history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.

Why is Barack Obama so anxious to have an international agreement that will have no legal standing under the Constitution just two years from now, since it will be just a presidential agreement, rather than a treaty requiring the “advice and consent” of the Senate? . . .

From the Washington Policy Institute, a fact sheet on Iran's time to a nuclear breakout.

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The Middle East & Unrealpolitik

'Realpolitik' is a 19th century term meaning to conduct a pragmatic foreign policy based on a cold calculation of reality. Criticized for its lack of lack of paramount concern for morality, democracy and other considerations, it long marked America's foreign policy and perhaps reached its zenith under President Nixon, with his trip to China and his negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War begun by the Democrats. So how would one describe Obama's foreign policy, which seems to be unconnected from reality and wholly lacking in pragmatism?

When Obama took office in 2009, Libya was neutral. Egypt and Yemen were both under the control of pro-Western dictators. Iraq had been won and was under U.S. influence. Syria was stable, if then an ally of Iran. Al-Qaeda had been defeated on the battlefield of their choice and was on its heels. Turkey was still a nominal ally. Iran was beginning to feel real pain from economic sanctions designed to punish that country for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Afghanistan needed attention. And the role of Islam in promoting terrorism was very much at issue.

Today, Libya has been destabilized by a U.S. "led-from-behind" coup and is now a home base for ISIS radicals. Obama supported a coup against pro-Western Egyptian dictator Mubarak, only to see the nation fall under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological parent of al Qaeda and virtually all other Sunni terrorist groups. Since then a second coup led to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime and Obama has maintained very cool relations with the new, pro-Western government of al-Sisi, going so far as to suspend military aid at a time when that nation is increasingly coming under fire from radical Islamists. Obama squandered our hard won victory in Iraq, leaving that nation to fall under the ever greater influence of neighboring Iran. Syria, which fell into a revolt led by pro-Western rebels, was ignored by the Obama administration until, now, it is nothing more than a war for spoils between the ISIS and Iran. Turkey has become ever more a home to Islamists and less an ally.

If that were all, one would be forced to conclude that the Obama foreign policy has been one misstep after another based on mistaken but perhaps reasonable assessments of reality. But that is not all. When one adds in considerations of Yemen and Iran, it's apparent that the Obama administration is not merely mistaken in its assessments, it is completely disconnected from reality.

As to Iran, it is still the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism, still dedicated to the export of its Khomeinist Revolution, and still a mortal enemy of this nation and it has the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands. And yet, Obama has suspended sanctions, removed Iran from a list of terrorists, and now appears ready to make a deal with Iran that would allow them to keep their nuclear program active. Before 2009, I warned that Obama would be the second coming of Chamberlain, likely to try and appease Iran. I was wrong. As Bookworm Room points out, Obama has been infinitely worse, for he appears not merely reasonably mistaken in his assessments, but fully and knowingly willing to make a deal with the devil. The belief that giving a bloody, rogue regime carte blanche to continue developing a nuclear weapons capability will somehow be, in the words of Tom Friedman, transformational in any sort of positive sense for this nation, is pure insanity. It is a recipe for further destabilizing the Middle East.

And then there is Yemen. Within the past week, Iranian backed rebels have driven not merely the government of that country out of the capital, but U.S. diplomatic and military forces as well. It is a disaster. Six months ago, Obama was claiming that Yemen was not merely a counterterrorism success, but a blueprint for future operations. And today . . . his administration is still making that claim, calling Yemen a "template that has succeeded."

It that is success, then the word failure has no meaning. This is actually frightening in its lack of any grounding in reality.

The Obama administration is the anti-Nixon in the foreign policy arena. This is a foreign policy based on fantasy for which there is no word in our historic or political science lexicon. A new word must be created, and the most apt would seem to be "unrealpolitik." And the scariest part of it all is that Obama still has near two more years to do untold damage to our nation's national security.

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The National Security Disaster That Is The Obama Administration

According to an article in the WSJ (available around the paywall here), the 2012 raid on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan netted the single greatest collection of intelligence materials since 9/11. At the time -- and since -- the Obama message was that al Qaeda was all but destroyed and that it was time to wind down the war on terror. As Obama said, when two years ago he asked Congress to repeal the Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9/11, this war on terror "must end."

However, the wealth of materials captured in the bin Laden raid told a different story. They told of a vastly expanding threat from al Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISIS, as well as complicity by Iran. Those facts contradicted the Obama administration's narrative, so not only were they kept from the public eye, but in what can only be seen as treasonous insanity, they were walled off from analysis by our intelligence community for at least a year, and have had only limited availability since. Yes, read that last line twice and let it sink in.

After a pitched bureaucratic battle [that lasted about a year], a small team of analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Centcom was given time-limited, read-only access to the documents. The DIA team began producing analyses reflecting what they were seeing in the documents.

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.”

This wasn’t what the Obama White House wanted to hear. So the administration cut off DIA access to the documents and instructed DIA officials to stop producing analyses based on them.

Even this limited glimpse into the broader set of documents revealed the problems with the administration’s claims about al Qaeda. Bin Laden had clear control of al Qaeda and was intimately involved in day-to-day management. More important, given the dramatic growth of the terror threat in the years since, the documents showed that bin Laden had expansion plans. . . .

The WSJ article goes on to argue for making all of the documents from the bin Laden raid publicly available. I'd be satisfied if they'd just make them available to our intel analysts. This incident highlights both how and why Obama's foreign policy has been a complete disaster for our national security. Obama's policies are completely out of touch with reality. Obama values ideology and political power more than he does our national security. And while our nation can recover from the economic disaster that the Obama regime has been, it is far less certain that we can recover from the damage Obama has done to our national security,

In 2008, I wrote a post supporting John McCain's presidential bid on the issue of national security. I argued that McCain could be expected to make national security decisions respecting "Iran, Iraq and terrorism" based on the long term interests of our country while Obama would make such decisions based on ideology and polls. I think history has proven my point with a terrible vengeance, but it is a hollow 'I told you so.' Even I never expected this degree of disaster. As Victor Davis Hanson recently stated, "Obama’s morally confused foreign policy is making the world more dangerous by the day."

To list --

- Obama squandered our victory in Iraq because he, and indeed, the entire left wanted history to consider our war there illegitimate. Iran now increasingly holds sway in Iraq and our true allies in Iraq, the Kurds, are in desperate straits.

- Obama's decision to unilateraly end our military engagement in Afghanistan threatens that country with the same fate as Iraq.

- Obama refused to intercede in Syria at the start of their civil war. While Obama fiddled, pro-Western forces in Syria were overcome by the Sunni radical groups. Syria is now a war for spoils between the Wahabbi radicals of ISIS and the mad mullahs of Iran.

- Obama's war in Libya against Qaddafi, who at least maintained the neutrality of that country, has opened up Libya for exploitation by ISIS and al Qaeda.

- Obama fully supported the Muslim Brotherhood administration of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt as they used authoritarian tactics to reshape that nation into a permanent theocracy. The Obama administration still maintains ties with the Muslim Brotherhood while having a very cool relationship with Egypt's secular leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who, it should be noted, is the only national leader, Islamic or otherwise, to call for a reform of Islam.

- Obama refuses to even acknowledge Islam's role in the Islamic terrorism that is reshaping our world. That refusal to engage in the war of ideas guarantees that Islamic terrorism, perhaps apocalyptic given the ever increasing likelihood of a WMD attack, will never be defeated.

- Obama's entire foreign policy, based on fantasy and, we now know, a simple refusal to acknowlede uncomfortable facts, has allowed for the rise of ISIS, an utterly animalistic group that has now have proclaimed a caliphate in the areas of Syria and Iraq where they hold sway. In addition, the ISIS now hold parts of Libya. The ISIS threatens to destabilize other Sunni countries in the already unstable Middle East.

- Obama, who named as one of his many insane, utopian goals, a world without nuclear weapons, has significantly reduced our nuclear arms capacity That nuclear capacity is what has kept the peace in Europe, the Pax Americana, of the past near seventy years.

- Obama unilaterally changed our national defense posture from being able to fight in two theaters of war simultaneously -- our defense posture since WWII -- to being able to fight in one. This was certainly not based on any threat assessment. It was based on his desire to use more of our nations wealth to fund his domestic programs.

- Obama has made "climate change" one of the top priorities of our nation's defense establishment, diverting significant resources from our nation's defense.

- Under Obama, defense spending has become our nation's lowest priority, and, according to a 2015 Heritage Foundation analysis, our military capabilities are significantly declining. Add to that is Obama's decision to use our military to advance the social policies of radical feminists by allowing women into the combat arms without even the pretense of a study to determine how this would effect, let alone enhance, our war fighting capability.

- Obama, who promised in his 2008 campaign and again in his 2012 campaign that he would stop Iran's nuclear program, has broken a sanctions regime that had finally brought the Iranian theocracy to its knees. Iran is the quintessential bad actor in the world. The mad mullahs of Iran have been at war with U.S. interests, and often times the U.S. itself, since almost the first day Iran's theocracy was proclaimed in 1979. The mad mullahs pose the single greatest threat to our and the world's long term security. Yet Obama appears on the cusp of cutting a deal with Iran to allow them to continue their nuclear enrichment - and thus their march towards a nuclear arsenal.

- Obama, by allowing Iran to continue its nuclear program, is igniting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East as Saudi Arabia and other nations start their own nuclear programs for self defense. The only thing more frightening than Iran with nuclear weapons is Iran and the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons.

- Obama, when presented with a rare strategic opportunity during Iran's Green Revolution to perhaps topple or at least alter the trajectory of Iran's bloody and lawless theocracy, wholly ignored the opportunity until the mad mullahs had almost completely regained control.

- Russia has already invaded the Ukraine, and several NATO nations are concerned, probably not unreasonably, that Russia might invade and that NATO, led by the U.S., will not respond.

- North Korea is continuing to build and refine its nuclear arsenal. And its Dear Leader is beating the war drums, telling Army commanders this week to prepare for a Great War of Reunification against the U.S. and South Korea.

- China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its military capabilities far beyond that needed for regional defense. China is also becoming more bellicose and aggressive in its dealings with its neighbors.

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The world today is a far more dangerous place for America than it was in 2008, when Obama took office. We can't stop Obama's continued degradation of our national security between now and 2017, but let us hope we can slow it, at least in regards to Iran's march to a nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, our nation will not recover from the damage Obama has done and may yet do.

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Republicans, Immigration, The Constitution, & Is It Time For A Third Party Yet?

President Obama, with his Immigration plans, has brought us to the point of a Constitutional crisis. He is unilaterally making new law with his plan to give millions of illegal aliens social security numbers, and work permits, and apparently, retroactively available Earned Income Tax credits. (It's hard to buy loyalty without taxpayer cash, of course). Regardless of the policy, whether one thinks it right or wrong, it is the President's unilateral act that must be the focus.

The Presidents immigration plan is not "executive discretion," its legislation that, per Art. 1 Sec. of our Constitution, only Congress has the authority to authorize. It is a textbook act of tyranny of the kind over which we fought a Revolution. If this is allowed to stand, it will be the single most corrosive act taken in oppression of our "liberties" since our founding. And as a practical matter, it is an act that threatens long term repercussions for our economy and politics.

Fortunately for this nation, we just elected the largest Republican House majority in a century and gave Republicans a comfortable majority in the Senate. Surely, they will act decisively to check this act of tyranny. They have full control of the public purse. And yet . . . within the past few days, the House and Senate have passed bills fully funding Obama's immigration orders. The roll call for the House vote is here. It was House Speaker Boehner's choice to bring a clean bill to a vote, and the vote succeeded 257 to 167, with 75 Republicans voting for approval.

This has been a supreme act of treachery and cowardice by the Republican leadership and by all who supported these votes.

The Republican Party can no longer be relied upon to protect the Constitution or the interests of this nation. We must now rely on the Courts to correct this obscenity, but given the partisan and compliant nature of our Courts, that is a forlorn hope indeed.

It is time to support a third party. It is the last remaining peaceful alternative.

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The Genius Of Obama In Uniting Israel & The Sunni Arab States

Try for a moment to imagine any scenario where a U.S. President has united Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in mutual accord? Try to imagine a scenario where Saudi Arabian newspaper columnists are penning their full throated support and hope for the success of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu? That is the stuff of which Nobel Peace Prize's are made. And Obama has accomplished it.

This is the concluding paragraph of an article penned by Dr. Ahmad Al-Faraj yesterday, appearing in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah:

Since Obama is the godfather of the prefabricated revolutions in the Arab world, and since he is the ally of political Islam, [which is] the caring mother of [all] the terrorist organizations, and since he is working to sign an agreement with Iran that will come at the expense of the U.S.'s longtime allies in the Gulf, I am very glad of Netanyahu's firm stance and [his decision] to speak against the nuclear agreement at the American Congress despite the Obama administration's anger and fury. I believe that Netanyahu's conduct will serve our interests, the people of the Gulf, much more than the foolish behavior of one of the worst American presidents. Do you agree with me?

Obama, with his insane policy of trying to deal with the mad mullahs and bless off on their nuclear program has managed to do the impossible. If they give out Nobel Peace Prize's for wholly unintended consequences, Obama should be a shoe-in. And extra points to the Saudi columnist for recognizing Obama's place in the pantheon of U.S. Presidents.

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Obama's Suicidal Complicity In Iranian Nukes

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

Sec of Defense Robert Gates, 2007

As bad as the news is today in the domestic arena (FCC, Illegal Immigration, IRS, HHS), the actions of the Obama regime in the international arena are orders of magnitude worse. For while all the destruction Obama has wrought in the domestic arena can, theoretically, be fixed, the same is not true of his duplicitous and suicidal dealings with Iran, where the stakes are so high and so time sensitive that to get it wrong is to court apocalyptic disaster.

Iran is the penultimate rogue state. I won't recount all the facts, you can read them here. Suffice it to say that Iran, a theocracy being run as a violent, crony capitalist police state, is as dangerous to the world as a rabid dog is to everyone within range of its fangs. Its leaders are every bit as irrational, triumphalist, expansionist and evil as was Hitler. To allow the mad mullahs to obtain a nuclear arsenal is beyond unthinkable. A nuclear armed Iran presents an immediate existential threat to Israel as well as to all of Western civilization. Moreover, Iran's drive for a nuclear aresenal is already setting off nuclear proliferation in other Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the nation whose toxic brand of Islam, Wahhabism, is the core ideology at the heart of ISIS, al Qaeda and virtually all Sunni Islamic inspired terrorism of our era. Imagine if you will, nuclear weapons diffuse throughout the deeply unstable Middle East. The hands of the doomsday clock will soom be spinning at the speed of a fan, and death on a massive scale virtually inevitable.

None of this is new. It is why, for years, our nation has tried to end Iran's nuclear program, and do it short of war. It is why there have been six U.N. Security Council Resolutions demanding an end to Iran's nuclear enrichment program. One would think that Obama and the left, who worship at the altar of international law, would demand that Iran do just that, end the program. That is the only viable option.

But Obama has, with the surety of Neville Chamberlain vis a vis Hitler in 1937, believed from the start that Iran's theorcracy are rational actors, people with whom he can negotiate. He sees the mad mullahs as potential partners in Middle East peace. And to that end, he has dismantled the crushing regime of economic sanctions the Bush regime built, block by block, in an effort to stop Iran's enrichment program short of war. And now, Obama is negotiating a deal with Iran that will allow their enrichment program not merely to continue, but "will put Iran on a glide path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons over a period of years."

Charles Krauthammer sounds the warning bells today:

The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Bad enough. Then it got worse:

News leaked Monday of the “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want. Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would re-enter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview last December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around ten — of good behavior and Iran would be home free. The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping, and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.

Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental-ballistic-missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations. Why is Iran building them? You don’t build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.

Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation. When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment, and then gets the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.

Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free world? . . .

The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist, purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. . . .

Do read the entire article. Krauthammer goes on to prudently recommend we reimpose sanctions on the mad mullahs and demand they stop enrichment. If we do not, if we allow Obama to complete this madness, we sign the death warrant of Western Civilization.

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Immigration, Liberty, & An Existential Constitutional Crisis

"This meeting can do nothing more to save the country."

Samuel Adams, Dec. 16, 1773

When Samuel Adams said the quote above, he was in a meeting with several thousand other colonists. He had just been informed that the colony's Royal Governor would not allow the East India Company's tea to be returned to Britain. That tea had been shipped on consignment to America and subject to a tax not approved by the colonists. It was the final straw in a Constitutional crisis started by the British themselves in 1761 when they attempted to limit the rights of British citizens living in the American colonies. With Adams's pronouncement, the Revolution was inevitable.

The American Revolution was fought over British liberty. When Americans cried out, "No Taxation Without Representation," they were not innovating new rights. They were demanding the King honor a right of British citizens that dated back to 1215 A.D. and the Magna Carta. After the war, what America produced was a Constitution and Bill of Rights that, but with few changes, memorialized British liberties. Those liberties were neither conservative nor liberal. Rather, they were a series of systems very carefully designed to insure that the will of the people was paramount, that the will of the majority did not become itself a lawless tyranny, and that the powers of government be limited lest it too become a tyranny. To that end, the system the Founders designed very carefully diffused power over the three branches of government.

And for much of the last two and a quarter centuries, the system has worked brilliantly, albeit imperfectly. Policy disputes come and go. So long as they are resolved within the framework of our systems, than all is well. But the system has broken down now, in three very critical ways, two of which pose a long term threat to our liberties and one of which presents an immediate, catastrophic threat. All ultimately revolve around the most fundamental aspect of our system, Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution -- that the sole right to pass laws resides in our elected members of Congress.

One break is in the regulatory bureaucracy, addressed here and, most recently, here as regards the FCC plan to take control of the Internet. The second break is our Court system, addressed here. Both of those breaks can be corrected by Congress if and when they find the will to do so.

The most immediate, dangerous and quite likely existential threat to our system of government comes now from our President. For the first time in our Republic's history, we have a President legislating unilaterally. That is the very definition of tyranny.

The President is charged with the duty of executing the laws of our nation. As regards illegal aliens, the laws require that they be deported. How to effect that is legitimately within Presidential discretion. It is Constitutionally problematic that our President should choose to ignore those laws, claiming the right to do as being within his "discretion." But then Obama goes beyond that. He is in the process of affirmatively granting these illegals "the ability to obtain Social Security numbers, work authorization permits, and the ability to travel.” That's not discretion, that's legislation that can only be lawfully passed by the elected representatives of the people. Obama's actions are a direct threat to our system of liberties.

There is no question why the President is doing what he is -- for immediate political gain. The thought is that these five million plus new immigrants will be left wing voters who will, for a generation or more, alter the political balance of power in this country. I oppose that policy on political grounds, but that is for reasoned debate.

But the President's actions take this orders of magnitude outside the realm of a policy argument. This is a fundamental challenge to our system of government that needs to be fought on every level and by every means. If the President's action is allowed to stand, it marks the date of the end our nation as one based on the Constitution and rule of law. Any politician who does not oppose this action is quite simply a traitor to this nation. And if the legislature cannot stop this action, then we must hope that the Courts finally do their job of protecting the sanctity of the system. For if not, than, truly, we "can do nothing more to save the country."

Update: John Hinderaker at Powerline has some very tongue in cheek proposals for amendments to the Constitution in order to clarify, for the Obama administration, the scope and limits of their powers. The irony is that his proposals are quotes from the Constitution.

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1938: President F.D. Obama Address Violent Extremism

Victor Davis Hanson imagines the speech Obama would give addressing the Nazi threat circa 1938. It is pitch perfect.

. . .“So make no mistake about it: National Socialism has nothing to do with Germany or the German people but is rather a violent extremist organization that has perverted the culture of Germany. It is an extremist ideology that thrives on the joblessness of Germany and can be best opposed by the international community going to the root of German unemployment and economic hard times. Let us not confuse Nazism with legitimate expressions of German nationalism. Stiff-arm saluting and jack boots are legitimate tenets of Germanism, and the German Brotherhood, for example, is a largely peaceful organization.

“So we Americans must not get on our own high horse. We, too, have bullied our neighbors and invaded them. We, too, have struggled with racism and anti-Semitism, slavery and Jim Crow. And our own culture has at times treated American citizens in the same callous way as the National Socialist do Germans. Before we castigate the Nazis, let us remember the Inquisition and the Crusades.

“In the face of Nazi challenge, we must stand united internationally and here at home — opposing workplace violence and man-caused disasters. We know that overseas contingency operations alone cannot solve the problem of Nazi aggression. Nor can we simply take out SS troopers who kill innocent civilians. We also have to confront the violent extremists — the propagandists working for Dr. Goebbels and Herr Himmler, recruiters and enablers — who may not directly engage in man-caused disasters themselves, but who radicalize, recruit and incite others to do so. One of the chief missions of our new aeronautics board will be to reach out to Germans to make them feel proud of German achievement. I want to remind Americans that Germans fostered the Renaissance, and helped create sophisticated navigation, mathematics, and medicine. This week, we will take an important step forward, as governments, civil society groups and community leaders from more than 60 nations will gather in Washington for a global summit on countering violent extremism. We hope that the efforts of those like Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Daladier and others will focus on empowering local communities, especially in Britain and France.

“Groups like the SS offer a twisted interpretation of German culture that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world’s German-speaking communities. The world must continue to lift up the voices of moderate German pastors and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of German culture. We can echo the testimonies of former SS operatives and storm troopers who know how these terrorists betray Germany. We can help German entrepreneurs and youths work with the private sector to develop media tools to counter extremist Nazi narratives on radio and in newspapers. . . .

Do read the entire post. It truly puts, not just Obama's actions, but the entire West's actions in horrid perspective.
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Islam & The Battlefield Of Ideas

"[Obama] is insulting, I think, to many millions of reform-minded Muslims who are trying to reject and push back theocracy," he told Fox News on Wednesday. "And the leader of the free world in the meantime is saying, 'Well, these terror groups are sort of coming out of thin air and it's just sort of a crime, education and a job problem' -- which is absurd and oversimplifying."

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, quoted in Obama accused of skirting Islamic extremist threat, at ‘summit without substance’, Fox News, 19 Feb. 2015

In what has to qualify as the understatement of the year, George Condon at the National Journal writes that Obama and his administration are "struggl[ing] with the language of terrorism." Actually, they're not struggling. They are, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, in "pathalogical denial" of the fact that mainstream Islam is motivating terrorism.



To put this in perspective, the U.S. had decimated al Qaeda by 2008. But in the aftermath, ISIS popped up. And assuming we deal with ISIS, you can rest assured that another alphabet Wahhabi or Twelver Islam organization will rise to take their place. (And do note, while ISIS is a threat, it pales in comparison with the threat posed by a nuclear armed Iran.) We will forever face an increasingly existential threat from Muslims unless and until the Islamic religion is torn out of its 7th century roots. That requires engaging in a war of ideas. But, as the WSJ Editorial Board points out, the "war of ideas" is one "the West refuses to fight."

Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram and other jihadist groups are waging more than a military conflict. They are also waging an increasingly successful ideological war for the soul of Islam and its 1.6 billion followers.

Their version of jihad is gaining adherents precisely because it is motivated by an idea that challenges the values and beliefs of moderate Islam, the West and modernity. The free and non-fanatic world won’t win this deeper struggle if the Obama Administration refuses even to acknowledge its nature.

The 9/11 Commission Report put this front and center. Its second chapter, “The Foundation of the New Terrorism,” traces what it calls “ Bin Ladin ’s Appeal in the Islamic World.” It discusses the late al Qaeda leader’s faith in “a return to observance of the literal teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadith.” It underscores bin Laden’s reliance on Muslim theologians, from Ibn Taimiyyah in the 14th century to Sayyid Qutb in the 20th. And it explains how bin Laden turned Islam into a licence for murder. . . .

None of this is denied in the Muslim world, which is well aware of the increasingly radical bent of mainstream Islamist theology. Not for nothing did Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi recently visit Cairo’s al-Azhar university, Sunni Islam’s premier center of religious learning, to warn leading clerics of where Islam is heading: “Let me say it again, we need to revolutionize our religion.”

That’s exactly right, but it’s hard to see how such a revolution might take place—much less who might carry it out—if Islam can barely be mentioned in the context of a conference on “violent extremism.” In his speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that “al Qaeda and ISIL do draw selectively from the Islamic texts,” and he called on Muslim leaders to reject grievance narratives against the West.

But the President also insisted that the West must never grant al Qaeda and Islamic State “the religious legitimacy they seek” by suggesting they are Muslim religious leaders rather than mere terrorists. That’s a fine sentiment, but it elides the fact that the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive. The Islamic State may speak for only a minority of Muslims, but it is nothing if not Islamic in its beliefs, methods and aims. Ignoring that reality for the sake of avoiding injured feelings helps nobody, least of all Islamic State’s many Muslim victims or Islam’s would-be reformers. . . .

To this, add the sentiments of UAE's Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba:

[W]hile ISIL may be the most visible menace, it is not the only threat. Across the region, violent extremists of all stripes have demonstrated their intent to roll back modernity and impose a reign of terror. . . . While military force is necessary, the key to success over the long term will be what happens off the battlefield. . . . . . [M]ilitary might and obstructing funders and fighters will not be enough. ISIL, al Qaeda and other groups are sophisticated modern organizations that use media and social networks to disseminate their ideology of hate and fear. More than provocative propaganda, these messages are nothing other than assassin recruitment ads and digital death threats that must be disrupted. In one of the most effective approaches in this battle of ideas, Muslim leaders are directly confronting and discrediting the extremists who cloak their radical ideas and violent actions in the language of Islam. While often drowned out in US and European media, influential clerics are forcefully speaking out in the region for moderation and tolerance, developing new religious texts and helping to train a new generation of imams. . . ."

And on a final note, there is Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who would define the threat we face not as terrorism, but as "theocrats," getting far closer to reality than the Obama administration:

Terrorism is not an ideology; we are not merely fighting terrorists, we are fighting theocrats.

…If we start to define ourselves as in a war with theocrats, however, then I believe we can begin the process of delivering the military, political, economic – and maybe even the social – policies to counter this threat together, as we have in the past. In the last century, the world faced a series of overwhelming threats: fascism, totalitarianism, cold-war communism. They were studied, however, as concepts, understood and clearly defined. We addressed them, clinically, as ideologies.

So what do we call this new form of ideology, how do we identify it and how do we define it? We must agree the specific terminology and identified characteristics to take us to the very root of the problem we face. For one group alone, we already struggle with an absurdity of titles including Isis, Isil, IS and Da’ish. We see the likes of al-Qaeda and its various offshoots. We have al-Shabab and Boko Haram and that’s before contemplating yet unformed groups of their type that may develop in the future. In each case, however, we continue to hop blindly and haphazardly from one tactical threat to the other, without strategically understanding or categorising our foe. . . .

The Prince's choice of "theorcrats" as the identifying characteristic of the evil we face is subtle indeed. While the various organizations the Prince identifies above are aspirational theocrats, there is only one theocracy extant today, and it happens to be one that has spent the better part of the last thirty years attempting to destabilize Bahrain. That would of course be Iran.

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The "Perversion of Islam" Versus Historical Reality

Obama, in his remarks at the closing of the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, had this to say:

[W]e are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.

True, we are not at war with Islam. But a good portion of Muslim world is at war with us or otherwise supports those who are, and the basis for that is not a "perverted" interpratation of their faith. Their actions are found on the fundamental tentents of their religion. To claim otherwise is a complete denial of the last 1,400 years of history.

Muslims have been spreading Islam by the sword near ever since their religion was conceived in the 7th century. Islam has been the greatest imperial force the world has ever seen. Between the 7th century and the 18th century, Muslims conquered the Middle East, all of North Africa, Byzantium, a goodly portion of central Asia and India, Sicily, parts of Greece, and much of Spain. They threatened to overrun France until stopped by Charles Martel in the 8th century. By 1683, Muslims had conquered southern portions of Central Europe and were laying siege to Vienna, Austria. After 1683, Muslim nations stopped their wars of conquest.

The near three century hiatus the West has had from Islam's wars of conquest has not occurred because Islam has moderated. Islam has never had a Renaissance or Reformation. It was untouched by the Enlightenment. The Islam of today is the same militant, expansionist Islam of the 7th century. The hiatus in the wars of conquest came about simply because the West went through the Industrial Revolution and was too powerful for the Muslim nations to challenge. The only moderating influence on Islam has been the imposition of Western governmental forms in some of the Muslim countries. As Sultan Knish explains:

Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a second-hand enlightenment that never went under the skin.

ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim world was like before it was forced to have presidents and constitutions, before it was forced to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of equal rights for all.

The media reported the burning of the Jordanian pilot as if it were some horrifying and unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy, were burned alive for their crimes against Islam. Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the seventh century, but from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned, might be beheaded.

These were not the practices of some apocalyptic death cult. They were the Islamic law in the “cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only reason they aren’t the law now is that the French left behind some of their own laws.

Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never truly colonized still behead men and women for “witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.

The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is.

What progressives mistake for modern Islam, whether while touring Algeria or on the campus of their university, is really an Islam whose practice has been repressed by the West while its ideology remains untouched. Modern Islam is in a state of contradiction. It’s a schizophrenic religion whose doctrine calls for supremacism but whose capabilities prevent it from exercising the full measure of its doctrines.

Islam is the 90 lb. weakling that wants to be the school bully. It can’t punch you in the face, so it stabs you in the back and then blames someone else. When you punch it back, it plays the victim.

Terrorism and the march of ISIS accross the Middle East are not some anomaly of history, they are a resumption of it. That matters because:

“You cannot fight what you refuse to name… and you cannot win against something that you will not fight.”

We have no chance of avoiding continuous war, perhaps apocolyptic, with Islam so long as our governing class refuses to take the first step of acknowledging reality.

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The Other Obama Administration Scandal

Bob: "Did you hear about the Obama administration scandal?

Jim: "You mean the Mexican gun running?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean SEAL Team 6?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean the State Dept. lying about Benghazi?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean voter fraud?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean the military not getting their votes counted?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean that 3 or 4 of Obama's GAY friends were mysteriously MURDERED when they came forward with claims he was gay too?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The NSA monitoring our phone calls, emails and everything else?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean the drones in our own country without the benefit of the law?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "Giving 123 Technologies $300 Million and right after it declared bankruptcy and was sold to the Chinese?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "You mean the president arming the Muslim Brotherhood?"

Bob: "No the other one:.

Jim: "The IRS targeting conservatives?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The DOJ spying on the press?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "Sebelius shaking down health insurance executives?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "Giving SOLYNDRA $500 MILLION DOLLARS and 3 months later they declared bankruptcy and then the Chinese bought it?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The president's ordering the release of nearly 10,000 illegal immigrants  from jails and prisons, and falsely blaming the sequester?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The president's threat to impose gun control by Executive Order in order to bypass Congress?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The president's repeated violation of the law requiring him to submit a budget no later than the first Monday in February?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The 2012 vote where 115% of all registered voters in some counties voted 100% for Obama?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The president's unconstitutional recess appointments in an attempt to circumvent the Senate's advise-and-consent role?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "The State Department interfering with an Inspector General investigation on departmental sexual misconduct?"

Bob: "No, the other one."

Jim: "Clinton, the IRS, Clapper and Holder all lying to Congress?"

Bob: "No, the other  one."

Jim: "I give up! ... Oh wait, I think I got it! You mean that 65 million low-information voters who don't pay taxes and get free stuff from taxpayers and stuck us again with the most pandering, corrupt administration in American history?

Bob: "THAT'S THE ONE!"

(H/T American Digest)

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Obamacare: The Mother Of All Market Distortions (Updated)

Market distortion occurs when government imposes artificiality on markets through regulation. Such distortions always - always - always - cost the economy and individuals. I am not talking about laws of contract and fraud which set the parameters of the playing field for the operation of the free market, but rather regulations limiting free market decisions. Some are simply corrupt - i.e., the protection of vested interests. Others are more insidious and derive from the penultimate deceit of the left - that they are more intelligent than millions of individuals making their own decisions on how and what to purchase and sell.

Its hard to top the left's subprime housing crisis that brought our economy to its knees for market distortion. But that was a distortion that took fifteen years to bear its poisonous fruit. The biggest market distortion we are likely to see in our lifetimes and this side of the Soviet Union - one that is already bearing immediate fruit - is Obamacare. Healthcare is one sixth of our entire economy, and Obamacare is just starting to explode it.

The left has taken over our healthcare industry, mandating vastly expanded mandatory areas of coverage, from pregnancy, mental health, pre-existing conditions, "free" wellness checks, and "free" contraception, including the "morning after" abortion pill. They have mandated universal coverage - for supposedly an additional 30 million people - as well as subsidized coverage for lower and lower middle economic class. For this to work without adding to government debt, the middle and upper class are going to have to pay much more for their coverage, the young need to buy into the plans so as to subsidize the old and sick, and there is going to have to be a lot of new tax revenue to take up the slack for subsidies.

There is zero chance that this plan will work as advertised by Obama and the left. It will not save people money. It will not bend down the cost of health care. It will not provide universal coverage. It will not reduce the deficit. And of course, people who like their coverage will not be able to keep it at their choosing.

Some of these claims were knowing falsehoods.



Others seem to be attributable to the supreme conceit of the left, that they are smarter than the free market.

Because Obama has unilaterally put off the employer mandate to 2015, we are going to have to wait one more year to be able to take full stock of the near term impact of Obamacare in all of its 'glory.' But my full expectation is that it will add steeply to the deficit, that it will send the economy into even greater stagnation, if not outright recession, and jobs will further contract. It will be a far left trifecta.

The only good thing about this is that the far left owns this monstrosity. Whatever the right does, it should not agree to anything as a fix. Any attempt to put a band aid on this cancer will only extend out the pain. There is one answer only - repeal.

There will likely never be a greater experiment in socialist and Keynsian economic theory than the Obama administration policies in virtually all areas of government. The only question is whether the American people will ever take realistic stock of the outcomes.

Additional Updates: From Powerline on the higher costs of insurance under Obamacare:

For a succinct explanation of why Obamacare is making health insurance more expensive for millions of Americans, check out this short interview with Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. Bertolini identifies three main factors: 1) Obamacare imposes a requirement that, on an actuarial basis, insurance cover at least 60% of health care costs. Currently, more than half of Americans who buy individual coverage are below 50%. 2) Obamacare imposes 4% to 5% additional cost in the form of new taxes and fees. Aetna alone will pass on $1 billion in Obamacare taxes and fees to its policyholders. 3) Obamacare mandates many coverages, whether customers want them or not, and requires insurers to provide subsidized coverage to those who are already sick.

And via Hot Air, there is Charles Krauthammer:

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Sixty Minutes On Behghazi

Sixty Minutes has done an expose on Benghazi - interviewing one of the participants on the ground that night. It might lead one to think that there might be something more to the Benghazi "scandal" than simple partisanship:



There are three legs to the Benghazi scandal - the Sixty Minutes episode dwells on the first and only alludes to the other two. Just as a reminder, those three legs are:

1) The refusal over months to provide increased security in the face of an open and obvious threat, was criminally reckless. There is some evidence that this was part of a deliberate policy to go forward with a light footprint in Libya for political reasons - though the author of that policy has never been identified. Moreover, this failure to provide adequate security shows an administration that completely misunderstands the threat we face from radical Wahhabi Islamists, and indeed, whitewashes Wahabbi Islam to the point of portraying it as benign.

2) The Obama administration refused to send any military assets to rescue our people once the attack started. Our people were left to die - my suspicion, because of domestic political considerations. No assets were scrambled, irrespective of whether they would have been there in time.

3) The complete whitewash and cover-up in the wake of Benghazi. One element of this was Obama and Clinton blaming the attack on a rogue movie review. A second element was an "official investigation" that did not include any interviews of high ranking State Dept. officials, including Clinton herself. The third element is that no one has been held accountable for any of this. Even the four mid-level staffers at the State Dept. who were identified anonymously as the people who had made the security decisions that led to the Benghazi slaughter still have their jobs at the State Dept.

Bastards.

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Blacks Worse Off Under Obama

I've been pointing this out for two years, but I suppose it matters more when Tavis Smiley says it.



Obama's skin color is, well, skin deep. Those who voted on his skin color still don't want to admit that they've been naive on a grand scale. Beneath the skin - and this the alpha and omega of what all on the right object to - is a far left ideologue. He is a sort of American version of Clement Attlee.

At any rate, for Smiley and the left to at least speak honestly of the economic plight of black America is a big step forward. The biggest step awaits. That would be for them to figure out that they are being manipulated on a historic scale. The left values blacks individually very little. It is only the black vote that counts to the left - and at the top of the left wing steaming pile of dung sits Obama.

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Obama & The Anti-Science Of EPA's War On Coal

. . . The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. . . .

President Barack Obama, Memorandum, Subject: Scientific Integrity, 9 March 2009

Ah, remember those idealistic days of 2009, when our Moralizer In Chief Barack Obama promised to "restore" scientific integrity to our government. Well, those days are long gone.

Obama is using the EPA to conduct a war on coal, promoting new guidelines under the Clean Air Act that will stop the creation of any new coal fired power plants and force the shut down of many existing plants as they reach a point of needing to upgrade. Since coal is the primary source for our nation's electricity needs, this will end up costing our nation dearly - with the poor and middle class being the hardest hit.

The justification for these new guidelines is that they will save lives. The EPA is basing this assertion on two longitudinal, observational scientific studies, the Harvard Six Cities Study (HSCS) and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS II):

Both studies showed that exposure to fine particle air pollution (that is, particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, or PM2.5) was linked with increased mortality. Their results provide the basis for most EPA regulations targeting air quality because, the EPA claims, such regulations will save a large numbers of lives.

There are some real questions about the reliability of the conclusions reached by the researchers. For Instance:

The association of PM2.5 with mortality shows geographic heterogeneity – no such association is seen in the western US, where the climate is dry and PM2.5 make-up differs from that in the eastern US.

Second, the results of the studies have been presented in a way that focuses narrowly on PM2.5 and precludes putting the association in perspective relative to other predictors of mortality, including cigarette smoking, income, and other factors.

Third, reports from these two studies tend to cite only supporting studies and to ignore studies that have not found an association of PM2.5 with mortality."

But here is the kicker. Those two studies are . . . wait for it . . . secret.

What what what?

Yes, the EPA is claiming that the data, meta-data, computations - in short, everything about the "scientific studies" that would allow the studies to be subject to vetting and reproduction (i.e., the scientific method) - are secret and cannot be released.

This is the polar opposite of scientific integrity.

And, believe it or not, it gets worse, the same people who "carried out the studies used by the EPA as the basis for regulation and are also involved in the implementation of EPA policy."

The ostensible reason given for not releasing the information regarding these studies is the claim that to do so would violate third party confidentiality rules:

[I]f third parties are given access to the data, the identity of study participants could become public, in violation of the researchers’ guarantee of confidentiality. The lead researcher on the CPS II study has made this argument. Supporters of the subpoena argue that the dataset could be stripped of personal identifiers.

In fact, the issue of confidentiality appears to be a dodge since large datasets of this type are routinely stripped of personal identifiers to protect subject confidentiality and enable use by researchers.

The EPA should be shut down over this. Republicans have been trying to have the EPA provide this data for over two years. The EPA has steadfastly refused. Republicans have now filed a subpoena to which Democrats have objected - their grounds:

The ranking Democratic member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D – TX) characterized Chairman Smith’s action as an attempt to make the data available to “industry hacks” in order to discredit the research and weaken clean air regulation.

The scientific method - the ability to pour over another's experiment line by line and either prove it or disprove it - is the sina que non of scientific integrity. Rep. Johnson either doesn't seem to know that or otherwise puts it in a back seat to politics. This, from Obama's EPA, is just politicized science at its very worst.

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Crazy Nancy Strikes Again

Nancy Pelosi has what can only be described as a tenuous relationship with reality:



All of her talk here shows it, but the nadir starts at 3:03 into her interview. Republicans hate Obama because he is "brilliant," "respectful" of other views, "strategic," "eloquent" and . . . "non-partisan." Each of those is pretty ridiculous, but "non-partisan?" No sane person would ever even make that claim.

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