Two years ago Harry Reid declared the war in Iraq lost. Today he is still the Senate majority leader, but some of the natives are getting restless. Kyle-Anne Shiver:
This mounting anger, aimed at the tyranny of a federal government -- completely off-the-rails of its Constitutionally-framed limited scope and power -- may be surfacing now due to a tipping in the fragile balance that was upheld during the G.W. Bush presidency. What was that fragile balance between our quietly continuing our personal business and our taking to the streets?
One thing and one thing only, in my opinion. As long as the federal government is doing the one job of protecting our national security and standing up for us in the face of the world's sleights, we will take a great deal of folderol from our elected officials. We will suffer the profligate spending and invasions on our personal freedoms when we - at the very least - believe our leaders are stridently bent on protecting our interests and our children from harm.
When a president cuts both those legs off at the knees, as President Obama has shamelessly done for 100 days, then frustration boils over into national protest….
Bush did protect us. Iraq, as it’s currently unfolding, is a strategic success, while Afghanistan/Pakistan remains a very difficult operational problem. And despite what Reid, Pelosi, Obama and their MSM enablers told us, Bush was mindful of our laws all along. David Rivkin and Lee Casey:
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation….
Obama, on the other hand, seems more mindful of his campaign rhetoric:
The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001….
Plus this:
White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S., according to Pentagon sources familiar with the action.
This action -- coupled with the release of previously top secret legal opinions on harsh interrogation methods -- demonstrates the Obama administration’s willingness to ignore reality….
White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee! What if this were Bush and the committee had recommended the release of the Uighurs? Can you imagine the outrage from Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the MSM? At least Obama hasn’t given up in Afghanistan/Pakistan yet.
Well, if nothing else, the Tea Party Movement has shown us how partisan our MSM really is. Kyle-Ann Shiver, again:
In all my years of watching news coverage in America, I don't believe I have ever witnessed more condescending, amateurish, purely politicized reporting than what just transpired among the liberal MSM covering America's Tax Day Tea Parties. The Tea Parties represented a very significant news event.
Whenever close to 300,000 middle-class Americans put their productive lives on hold on a midweek workday, make original signs with their own hands, and travel miles and miles to stand with other private citizens just to demonstrate their anger with government, in more than 300 cities from coast to coast and everywhere in between, that's NEWS….
Apparently a lot of us agree. As the MSM (the dead tree part at least) gears up to recoup payments from online readers to help offset their plunging revenues, we conservatives can be forgiven for hoping that their liberal bias and this Internet seppuku will ultimately prove terminal. Former N&O reporter G.D. Gearino:
The underlying assumptions of this movement [charge for Internet access]are (1) that news is a proprietary product, and (2) that giving readers free access to news stories online is a radical departure from the past. Both assumptions are wrong.
The first problem is that news is a free-range commodity, belonging to no one and everyone — especially these days. We’re bombarded with news. As a result, any newspaper which hides its online content behind a pay wall will end up being like a bottled water manufacturer: It will have to convince consumers that its product is vastly better than the free stuff that’s widely available. (Slate’s Jack Shafer has a smart analysis of that reality here.)
The second problem — call it the problem that dares not whisper its name — is that newspapers having been giving away their content for years….
Gearino’s posting (and comments) are well worth a read if you have some time.
Mike
1 comments:
I haven't commented on the Obama fiscal policies because I really don't have much expertise in that area. On the other hand, I have a great deal of experience in the intelligence field: twelve years in clandestine collection activities in Asia, nine of those years in an undercover capacity; twenty years as a counterintelligence officer; and 13 years as a senior counterintelligence and antiterrorist analyst. I am happy to join with all the former and the current directors of the CIA in condemning Obama's release of the documents pertaining to interrogation of terrorists. The only people so far who have supported this fiasco are politicians who are in Obama's pocket.
He has not only unnecessarily revealed sensitive classified information, but has also made perfectly clear to our enemies just how far we can go in dealing with captured terrorists. This colossal blunder has another result: it will make our field operatives gun-shy and could well result in the deaths of our troops.
In short, there was absolutely nothing to be gained by this foolish act except to make a few leftist political hacks feel good about themselves.
Tarheel Hawkeye
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