Monthly Archives: March 2009

March 15, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Chas Freeman: His wit and wisdom

Last weekend Martin Kramer compiled the statements of Saudi/Manchurian candidate Chas Freeman on al Qaeda and 9/11. Freeman is of course the former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia whom Obama administration DNI Dennis Blair appointed to chair the National Intelligence Council. In the spirit of Kramer’s compilation, I thought it might be useful to collect in one place a few of the highlights of Freeman’s keen analytical insight expressed over »
March 15, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Is the stimulus bill unconstitutional?

Professor Ronald Rotunda is the prominent constitutional law expert now at Chapman Law School. In the column “Some strings attached” for today’s Chicago Tribune, Professor Rotunda looks under the hood of the so-called stimulus bill. In part the stimulus bill is calculated to expand welfare and unemployment programs. These provisions have prompted a few governors to reject the related funds. Professor Rotunda points out that Congress anticipated these governors. Seeking »
March 14, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Rush? Rush Who?

Perhaps embarrassed by their absurd billboard contest–I’m guessing the billboard never gets built–the Democrats have decided to stop talking about Rush Limbaugh: A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said. The Democrats’ new strategy is to portray Republicans as “reflexively political,” which, »
March 14, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Tea Time

We haven’t written much about the “tea party” movement, and I think the jury is still out on whether conservatives will be able to produce compelling mass demonstrations. But I certainly support the movement; we’ll be having a tea party here in the Twin Cities some time in the next few weeks, and I’m looking forward to participating. In the meantime, I liked this photo (via InstaPundit) from today’s tea »
March 14, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Barack and Beijing

There’s an adage that if you owe a bank a little money and can’t pay it, you’re in trouble. If you owe a bank a lot of money and can’t pay it, the bank is in trouble. But what happens if you owe the bank a lot of money and can’t pay it, but still need to borrow more? That’s the basic dynamic, I think, in our relationship with China. »
March 14, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Picasso Interprets Barack

As channeled by Michael Ramirez; click to enlarge: Whereas some of us less artistic types thought he just has a hard time keeping his story straight! »
March 14, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Erasing an important distinction

The Obama administration’s renunciation of the term “enemy combatants” fills the news today. The top story on Google News this morning is the Miami Herald’s “Obama administration dropping ‘enemy combatant’ term.” The subhead explains: “Seeking to distance itself from the Bush administration, the Justice Department is omitting ‘enemy combatant’ from its filing that defines detention of prisoners at Guantánamo.” The concept of enemy or unlawful combatants of course derives from »
March 14, 2009 — Scott Johnson

What killed the Saudi/Manchurian candidate?

Like others lamenting the withdrawal of Chas Freeman from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, veteran CIA officer Paul Pillar assumes a point that is not at all clear. According to Pillar, Freeman’s withdrawal “demonstrates anew the strength of the taboo against open and candid discussion in the United States of policy involving Israel.” Pillar’s lament is consistent with the view of Freeman et al. that a »
March 13, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Bubbling up

The University of Maryland’s men’s basketball team upset ninth-ranked Wake Forest 75-64 tonight ina ACC tournament quarter-final game. By doing so, the Terps are said, by those who claim to know, to have all but won a place in the NCAA tournament (since I’m not a “bracketologist” — i.e., a geek posing as a sports fan — I can’t really assess this claim). I can say that, for Maryland even »
March 13, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

An unlikely object lesson

My college roommate Paul Pillar argues that the aborted appointment of Chas Freeman will inflict “damage to objectivity and professionalism in the U.S. intelligence community.” He bases his argument in large part on the notion that the Freeman affair will deter intelligence officers from “muster[ing] [the] courage” to “buck[] political orthodoxy” when they perform their work. The timid intelligence officer who bends to the political winds seems to be a »
March 13, 2009 — John Hinderaker

A Terrorist By Any Other Name…

The Obama administration announced in a court filing today that it will no longer assert that the U.S. is entitled to detain captured terrorists as “enemy combatants:” The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant. The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners »
March 13, 2009 — Scott Johnson

“A forest of straw men”

Charles Krauthammer explicates Barack Obama’s signing statement on the executive order overturning President Bush’s treatment of government-funded stem cell research. Krauthammer writes: Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later »
March 13, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Report from Malmo

Swedish journalist Paula Neuding provides a sobering report on events surrounding the riots that greeted Israel’s Davis Cup team in Malmo last week. Neuding reports: On their end, left-wing Swedish politicians worked to grant legitimacy to the protests. After war broke out in Gaza, a majority in the local Malmö council decided that no audience would be allowed at the Davis Cup games between Sweden and Israel. The representative of »
March 13, 2009 — Scott Johnson

“Chris, how disingenuous are you?”

Even though Chris Matthews is a loudmouth and a fool, former Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer accepted his invitation to join him on on his MSNBC Hardball show. Matthews asks him why he’s appearing on the show. Is he like Napoloeon returning from Elba? Because you invited me, Fleischer responds. In the course of the sixteen-minute interview segment, Fleischer adroitly responds and prevails against the low blows with which Matthews »
March 12, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Carefully Calibrated Crisis

The administration is committed to the proposition that one should never let a crisis go to waste, but this nakedly partisan and opportunistic approach has drawn a lot of criticism. Also, President Obama has so consistently emphasized (some say exaggerated) the perils of the current economy that many blame him for the stock market’s catastrophic decline–before yesterday, anyway–and other problems plausibly associated with such official pessimism. So it seems that »
March 12, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

A phony twice over

We’ve commented before on President Obama’s penchant for “exaggerating what divides us” — that is, pretending to break from a particular policy of President Bush even as he adopts that policy in large measure. This particularly offensive form of grandstanding runs counter, of course, to candidate Obama’s promise to be a post-partisan who would seek common ground with the political opposition. It thus marks Obama as a phony twice over; »
March 12, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Saudi/Manchurian candidate unexpurgated

Yesterday I noted Walter Pincus’s Washington Post article on the withdrawal of Chas Freeman from his appointment as National Intelligence Council chairman. Pincus provided an incredibly expurgated account of Freeman’s parting shot. According to Pincus, the rap on Freeman derived from “questions about his impartiality.” Here was Pincus’s account of Freeman’s parting shot: In an e-mail sent to friends yesterday evening, Freeman said he had concluded the attacks on him »