The Left's Assault on The Declaration of Independence

How fitting... an interesting piece from The Heritage Foundation, just before our Nation's birthday to define what the liberal left is trying to do to our country.

I thought you might enjoy reading it...

Morning Bell: The Left’s Assault on the Declaration of Independence
By Matt Spalding

There has been a lot of change in recent months – a $787 billion spending bill, a budget exceeding $3 trillion, government ownership of auto manufacturers, government-imposed caps on earnings, legislation imposing limits on economic activity in America under the name of environmental justice.

It is increasingly difficult for conservatives to sustain any audacity of hope for moderate policies coming from the current administration.

What unites these policies and their sweeping designs is the progressive aim of “remaking America”—as President Obama said in his Inaugural Address—into a country much more like the highly regulated, secular, and pacifist nations of Europe.

The view of America that dominates the academy, journalism, major foundations, and most segments of the American intellectual community was marked out at the start of the last century by progressive thinkers (learn more about them here) when they launched their grand project for America.

They repudiated the Founders’ principles, holding that there are no self-evident truths—in the Declaration of Independence or elsewhere—only change in the constant search for progress without final goals.

There are no permanent rights with which man is endowed, but endlessly evolving rights that develop and grow based on new demands.

Our fidelity must be to a “living” Constitution that adapts to fit the demands of the times. The way forward is to control social conditions and engineer a better society, redistributing wealth through a distant and patronizing welfare state that regulates more and more of the American economy, politics and society.

Over the course of the twentieth century—as America’s principles were assaulted, undermined, and redefined in our culture, in our universities, and in our politics—we have taken significant steps down this path.

The Progressive Movement laid the intellectual groundwork, but the basic infrastructure of the modern welfare state established under the New Deal has expanded in regulatory scope and social purpose under the Great Society and its progeny in both political parties. We are in the beginning of a new and perhaps decisive move in this direction.

Now, more than ever, is the time to relearn the meaning and contemporary significance of the Declaration of Independence and recognize that modern liberalism has explicitly rejected the truths it proclaims.

Woodrow Wilson, one of the most famous early progressives, argued during the 1912 presidential campaign that “all that Progressives ask or desire is permission…to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle,” meaning that it should promote an ever-expanding set of powers for an ever-expanding government.

The problem, he declared, was that pesky Declaration of Independence: “some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence,” he remarked with astonishment; “The Declaration of Independence did not mention the questions of our day.”

The progressive view rejects outright the very idea, at the heart of the Founders’ way of thinking, of being guided by permanent or fixed principles.

As the prominent progressive historian Carl Becker put it in 1922, “to ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.” Such relativism renders meaningless the whole American experiment in self-government.

But denying the truth of America’s principles for the sake of “change” can make no claim to progress at all—a point made with unsurpassed clarity by Calvin Coolidge (learn more here) on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1926: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

We don’t need to remake America, or discover new and untested principles.

The change we need is not the rejection of America’s principles but a great renewal of these permanent truths about man, politics, and liberty—the foundational principles and constitutional wisdom that are the true roots of our country’s greatness.

As we celebrate the blessings of liberty that America’s Founders made possible and the sacrifices of succeeding generations have enabled us to enjoy, let us also rededicate ourselves, and strive to rededicate our nation, to the Declaration of Independence.

Follows, is The Declaration of Independence:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

— Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Signatures follow

Happy Birthday America!
And may GOD BLESS AMERICA Until the End of Time!

Pipeline, Not Pipe Dream: Credit Palin

Governor Sarah Palin sure took a beating during the last election. It was a shocking display of media bias and misinformation.

Even though most of us knew she was well qualified and certainly deserved the post as the VP slot on the Republican ticket, she and her family have been reviled with vigorus hatred and slanderous portrayal.

This news is somewhat gratifying, in that thru her efforts, America is taking a huge step toward energy independence.

From Investor's Business Daily
Energy: Exxon Mobil's surprise decision to join Trans-Canada on a vast Alaska gas pipeline project is a big step toward making the U.S. self-sufficient in domestic energy.
By defying naysayers, Sarah Palin is now vindicated.

It must be sweet vindication for Alaska's governor.
Against critics who said her 1,712-mile natural gas pipeline project would never get off the ground, who should the project bag but the "big gorilla" of American energy — Exxon Mobil.

In a major surprise, Exxon announced Thursday that it had forged a partnership with TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline company that holds the state license for Palin's $126 billion Alaska Gasoline Inducement Act project.

It's a big vote of confidence in Palin's top project from a by-the-books company known for its rigid investment standards.

"We evaluated all the options and it came down to our belief that this approach with TransCanada and Exxon Mobil was going to be the most successful project," said Marty Massey, U.S. joint interest manager of Exxon Mobil Production Co. He said Exxon might look at expanding its participation.

Rival oil firms had whispered to IBD that it would never happen.

"It's gonna happen and we're very excited about this development," Palin told "Good Morning America" on Friday.

Doubters of Palin's pipeline plan were numerous.

Some said the pipeline would be too big to work, and that a rival BP/ConocoPhillips project, called Denali, would doom Palin's plan because Alaska didn't have enough natural gas for both.

Exxon's tilt toward TransCanada suggests the oil giant believes that's not true. Exxon is America's largest company, with extraction rights to a third of all Alaska's gas reserves.

It can use them to fill either pipeline. "We will make a decision based on commercial reality," Massey said. "But . . . why would we put our money and not our gas in the pipeline?"

Obama administration officials who had nothing to do with this, like Energy Secretary Ken Salazar, rushed to claim credit too.
What better vote of confidence could there be?

Other doubters had suggested the pipeline could never happen because of a global gas glut, making the pipeline uneconomical.

But with the project slated for completion in 2018, and the need for natural gas expected to rise between 20% and 40% by 2030, it's precisely now that such a project should be built.

"I think it's very shortsighted" to assume that "market conditions are going to stay as they are today," Palin told CNN.

In an interview with IBD last July when gasoline hit $4 at the pump, she noted that if drilling had started in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just five years ago, when policymakers were dismissing the idea of $100-a-barrel oil, "we wouldn't be in our predicament today."

This is another in a series of successful steps to build the world's largest commercial construction project.

For this, credit Palin.

Despite the too-hip ridicule of comedians like David Letterman, she was the one who got the pipeline past Alaska's legislature, something governors had tried — and failed — to do for 30 years.

Other partners are sure to join, and the near-impossible task of bringing Alaskan energy to the continental U.S. is that much closer.

If there are any doubts left, note that it's Alaska's officials giving Palin the most credit.

As Deputy Natural Resources Commissioner Marty Rutherford told IBD, Palin relentlessly drove this project, walking the process through the bureaucracy, asking questions, even going to Texas on Thursday to hear from Exxon itself.

"We're sitting here and in a short two-and-a-half years we have two premier companies in the world moving this process forward," said Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin.

"Thank you Gov. Palin, thank you participants and thank you Alaskans."

With praise like this, maybe it's time Palin started getting some attention for helping to secure America's energy future — and less for having to defend herself from the dirty jibes of over-the-hill comics.

For Americans tired of high energy prices and dependence on foreign energy, Palin's hitting some very big home runs indeed.

Way to go Gov!

Ed Freeman

Try to imagine this...

You’re an 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley, 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam.

Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8–1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half way around the world—12,000 miles away—and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that familiar sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because it has no Medi-Vac markings on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you.

He’s not Medi-Vac, so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He’s coming anyway.

And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the doctors and nurses.

And, he kept coming back…13 more times… and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at the age of 80, in Boise, ID….



Ed Freeman
Medal of Honor Recipient

Since the Media didn't give him the coverage he deserves, I thought I'd post this here on my blog with the hope that every red blooded American I know would see it.

May God have mercy on your soul, Ed Freeman, and grant you eternal rest.



From http://www.history.army.mil/moh.html
FREEMAN, ED W.
By direction of the President, under the Joint Resolution of Congress approved 12 July 1862 (amended by act of 3 March 1863, act of 9 July 1918, and act of 25 July 1963), the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, is awarded by the Department of the Army in the name of Congress to:
CAPTAIN ED W. FREEMAN
UNITED STATES ARMY

Captain Ed W. Freeman, United States Army, of Boise, Idaho, who distinguished himself by numerous acts of conspicuous gallantry and extraordinary intrepidity on 14 November 1965 while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

As a flight leader and second in command of a 16-helicopter lift unit, he supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, Republic of Vietnam. The unit was almost out of ammunition after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force.

When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone because of intense direct enemy fire, Captain Freeman risked his life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water, and medical supplies to the besieged battalion.

His flights, by providing the engaged units with supplies of ammunition critical to their survival, directly affected the battle's outcome. Without them the units would almost surely have gone down, with much greater loss of life.

After medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area because of intense enemy fire, Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing lifesaving evacuation of an estimated 30 seriously wounded soldiers-some of whom would not have survived had he not acted.

All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100 to 200 meters of the defensive perimeter, where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements. Captain Freeman's selfless acts of great valor and extraordinary perseverance were far above and beyond the call of duty or mission and set a superb example of leadership and courage for all of his peers.

Captain Freeman's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.


THANKS AGAIN ED, FOR WHAT YOU DID FOR OUR COUNTRY.
RIP and Godspeed

Sen. Kyl on HealthCare & Gitmo

"Americans don't want government-run insurance companies any more than they want government-run car companies." - Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl points out the danger of the Democrats' plan...




When are Americans going to wake up from this nightmare of 'Obamanomics' and the rush to Marxism?!
WHEN?

President Pantywaist

The foreign media seem to have a better understanding of American events that we Americans do at times. Take this article as a case in point:

Barack Obama and the CIA:
Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
Gerald Warner, UK Telegraph
If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself.

Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is.

To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution.

Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques.

He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding?

Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb.

Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.

Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock.

Talk about playing party politics with national security.

Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.

President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners.

His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

There's one Brit that has it right!
But the answer is really very simple... Obama did not grow up in America, he is not an American and he does not have the sense of American pride that most Americans possess.

Simply put, Obama is a fraud, a charlatan, a fake.

Savage!

From Radio Online:

UK's Smith Resigns After Receiving Savage Suit

Talk Radio Network's syndicated offering Michael Savage says Jacqui Smith has resigned as the United Kingdom's Home Secretary, one day after receiving notification from Savage's law firm regarding a defamation lawsuit.

Savage filed the suit against Smith for placing him on a list of those barred from entering the United Kingdom.

On May 5, Smith, published a list of 16 individuals that would be banned from entering the UK. Michael Savage was included on that list, which contained names of radical Muslim clerics, convicted criminals and Russian skinheads.

Savage hired the Olswang Law Firm to initiate libel proceeding, and is seeking 100,000 pounds in damages. Savage also wants an apology, and a retraction of his name from the list published by Smith.

Savage said, "This is an orchestrated campaign by this socialist, fascist government of hers, trying to turn me into something I am not," he added, "I spent my entire life building my reputation, and I will not have this government drag my name through the mud.

I want my name cleared."

Sick 'em Michael!

Uncle Sam's Heist

From our friend Jonathan Hoenig at Capitalist Pig:

Uncle Sam's Heist: Deficit Spending and Inflation
Uncle Sam’s Secret Heist
By Jonathan Hoenig
Sometimes you can see an accident waiting to happen and there’s nothing you can do but stand there, shield your eyes and cringe.

That’s the maddening position American citizens are now in as they prepare for the inevitable inflation that will result from deficit spending, socialist political patronage and the centrally planned economy now taking hold in America.

One need not be an economist to understand inflation. If you started writing checks with no money in your account, they'd throw you in jail. Yet when the government does it,at least for the time being, it's called "stimulus" and rewarded with high approval ratings, that is, until the bills come due. And they always do.

As we pointed out years back there's no fundamental difference between a $1 and $50 bill. Both are simply pieces of paper, backed by the future production of Americans. Printing money doesn't create wealth; it only debases the currency that already exists.
Shortly put, there is no free lunch.

When Bernie Maddoff stole $50 billion, he harmed thousands of private citizens. But the government's thievery through inflation is even more brazen and destructive. Middle and lower income individuals are hurt most of all.

The law of supply and demand cannot be conned. And as the supply of money increases, prices rise, and the dollars you and other productive members of society have worked so hard to save decrease in value.

This is why $100 billion Zimbabwe dollars, which used to be the equivalent of $100 billion U.S. dollars, now buys only three eggs.

Private citizens and corporations don't cause inflation; only government has the power to destroy the purchasing power of millions of its citizens without as much as laying a finger on their checking accounts.

Make no mistake: The billions lost on bailouts for GM (GM), Chrysler and AIG (AIG) will be paid for by you...whether you want to or not.

Meanwhile, as Washington systematically slits our throats, they add insult to injury by stabbing the productive class in the back, busily "clamping down" on hedge funds, speculators, any profit-seeking investor on whom they can lay the blame for their own fiscal misdeeds.

And while the government is quick to highlight how our money is being spent on feel-good social programs though web sites like Recovery.gov, what we don't see is the production, productivity and progress not achieved because of the disastrous effects of government theft.

Our government outright ownership of General Motors doesn't give me much hope that trend is poised to reverse anytime soon.

Jonathan Hoenig is managing member at Capitalistpig Hedge Fund LLC

'The One' Picks An Activist Judge!

Before the election I had a bumper sticker on my truck that read...
NOBAMA! NO Activist Judges!

Unfortunately, my fears have come true... Here's a little history on Sotomayor.

From The Hill.Com
Critics focus on Sotomayor speech in La Raza journal
By Alexander Bolton
Senate Republicans investigating Sonia Sotomayor’s record are zeroing in on a speech she delivered in 2001 in which she stated her hope that a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences,” including appreciation for Latin-American cuisine, “would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

They are also taking a close look at the Supreme Court nominee's skepticism, expressed in the same speech, about whether it is possible for judges to “transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

Sotomayor delivered the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

Conservative critics have latched onto the speech as evidence that Sotomayor is an “activist judge,” who will rule on the basis of her personal beliefs instead of facts and law.

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” Sotomayor said.

“My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with chickpeas — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” said Levey. “It’s one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality.

"But it’s almost like she’s proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality.”

Conservative critics say that a willingness to rule on the basis of personal values instead of the law and legal precedent is at the core of judicial activism.

And some Senate Republicans have said a nominee with a clear propensity toward activism would deserve a filibuster.

Levey, who has been in contact with other conservative activists and Republicans on Capitol Hill, predicted that the speech would be raised at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.

“I cannot imagine that Sen. Sessions and some of the other Republicans will not bring that up,” he said in reference to Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“It’s fine to identify with Latina heritage all she wants, just not in the courtroom,” he said. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal did not respond to a request for comment.

In her 2001 speech, after citing legal thinkers who called on jurists to transcend personal biases, Sotomayor questioned whether judges could in fact escape such prejudices.

“While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law,” Sotomayor said.

“Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

Some Republican critics say these statements raise concerns about whether Sotomayor, who was raised under modest circumstances in the Bronx, would serve as a neutral arbiter in a case pitting a wealthy white male against a less wealthy man or woman of color.

In her most controversial decision, Sotomayor ruled against 18 white firefighters, including one Hispanic, in their lawsuit against New Haven, Conn., after city officials scrapped a promotional test that showed the plaintiffs more eligible for advancement within the fire department.

The white firefighters scored much better than their African-American peers on the test. Concerns about Sotomayor’s activist view of the law prompted 29 Republicans to vote against her nomination to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

“I think 29 senators voted against her last time,” Sessions said in a CNN interview Wednesday. “I think there was an unease maybe about her background and her tendency to activism. We'll just have to go back and look at the record and see what most people felt.”
Sessions voted against Sotomayor’s nomination.

From Human Events:
In Sotomayor's Own Words(Partial)
“America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence.

Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud…
Many of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with differences.”

“I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

“I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”

“All of the Legal Defense Funds out there -- they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is -- Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't ‘make law.’ ”

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

So... If she gets confirmed, we'll all be in for a bumpy ride.
I too enjoy Central American food...
but, I don't want to live in
Central America!

V.P. Dick Cheney Speaks His Mind

A Tribute To Gen. David Petraeus

Rush Resigns As Titular Head of Republican Party!

I had a conversation about Rush today with a neighbor.
The neighbor said he, "Hated Rush! Rush thinks so highly of himself! He's an arrogant, pompous ass!"

As I calmly tried to persuade the neighbor that much of Rush's bravado is done with tongue firmly planted in cheek, he refused to come down from his lofty position of rebuke. I suspect that many simply do not understand the complexity of Rush Limbaugh's intelligence.

Sad.

But this should cheer up the neighbor!

OK... Is WaterBoarding Torture? And, Did Pelosi Know About It In 2002?

After the events of September 11, 2001, we all know that our government took the position that we would do 'whatever was necessary' to prevent another attack on American soil from the Radical Islamists.

Like most citizens I wanted our government to find out who was behind this horrific act, bring them to justice, and find out if there were MORE attacks being planned.

I really don't believe that ANY American, in the months following the attack, cared one way or the other how the government got the answers... as long as the answers were obtained.

After the Left began to torment President Bush about Iraq and other nonsensical issues, they began to look at HOW the CIA and others obtained 'the answers', knowing that if torture was used, the Left could make 'political hay' out of the event.

"Never let a crisis go to waste"...

I don't believe for one second that members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi, were kept out of the loop about what was going on with captured enemy combatants, and how 'the answers' were obtained.

But, now Pelose denies having ever been told about 'waterboarding' and wants to continue to deflect all blame back to the Bush Administration, without getting her hands dirty.
Sorry, Nancy... But you knew EXACTLY what was going on!

Here's an article from Karl Rove:
Congress and Waterboarding
Nancy Pelosi was an accomplice to 'torture.'
Ny Karl Rove
Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs).

That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here's what we know.
On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee's ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn't comment for the record about precisely what she was told.

At the time the Washington Post spoke with a "congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter" and summarized that person's comments this way: "The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA "did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true." She had earlier said on TV, "I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used."

The Obama administration's CIA director, Leon Panetta, and Mr. Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi's account.

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA's 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as "Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed."
Note the past tense -- "had been employed."

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission."

He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi "questioned whether we were doing enough" to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi's top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded.

Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn't she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA's use of them?

If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture.

Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

It is clear that after the 9/11 attacks Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques and the valuable information they produced.

She not only agreed with what was being done, she apparently pressed the CIA to do more.

But when political winds shifted, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans.

It is disgraceful that Democrats who discovered their outrage years after the fact are now braying for disbarment of the government lawyers who justified EITs and the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized them. Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

So, obviously Nancy knew all about it.
But is waterboarding torture?

A CNN poll from 11/6/07 said it was.
A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it's OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

Sources with knowledge of the CIA-run interrogation program have said waterboarding is not currently being used in its interrogations. But those sources have said waterboarding was used in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now facing trial before a military tribunal for planning al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Waterboarding was used during the Spanish Inquisition and by Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the World War II Japanese military, according to advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. telephone poll of 1,024 American adults was carried out over the weekend and had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

So in 2007, nearly 60% of those polled by telephone, said our government SHOULD NOT use waterboarding to obtain 'the answers'. Interesting...

Also back in November of 2007, during the conformation hearings for US Attorney-General Michael Mukasey, this was reported...

Even though Congress banned waterboarding in the US military in 2005, it did not do so for the CIA.

As a result, Mr Mukasey told senators, it was uncertain whether this technique or other harsh methods constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. His answers did not satisfy the Democrats, however, and his approval now hinges on whether he is willing to say the torture method is against US law.

In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice.

He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises.

Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".

The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.

Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject."

A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

OK, it's very scary and 'horrifying' to watch.
You mean like watching the World Trade Center buildings collapse and terrified victims jump to their death from a hundred stories up?
That kind of 'horrifying'?

Then we have the current AG, Eric Holder say this back in January of 2009...

Waterboarding Is Torture, Holder Tells Senators
Justice Dept. Nominee Rejects Policies Of Bush Era but Stresses Bipartisanship
Attorney General-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. brushed aside Republican concerns about his record yesterday as he charted a new, less divisive course for the Justice Department on issues of national security, civil rights and financial crime.

In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder declared that the interrogation practice known as waterboarding amounts to torture, departing from the interpretation of his Bush administration predecessors.

He promised to perform a "damage assessment" to evaluate how politically motivated hiring during the Bush era continues to affect the department.

And he pledged to work closely with Congress and serve as "the people's lawyer," rather than devote his loyalty solely to the incoming president, Barack Obama.

So now, we're going to act all high and mighty about how 'the answers' were obtained?

Ok, waterboarding is torture.
But frankly I don't care what technique the CIA or anybody else uses to keep America safe!

These radical muslim extremists mean to kill us all!

If they could get at Holder, they'd slit his throat! If they could get at Pelosi, they'd saw off her head!

For Democrats to politicize this affair and to ridicule the Bush Administration for their efforts to keep America safe is dispicable!

Their 'holier than thou', 'nose stuck up in the air', arrogant attitude will do nothing but embolden the enemy and cause America more harm.

Democrats continue to live in a September 10, 2001 world. They continue to fail to realize that, America IS AT WAR!

There is a world wide war going on between American interests, our way of life, Western Civilsation and the 10th Century world of Radical Islam!

I'm convinced that liberalism, difinitely IS a mental disorder!
Wake Up AMERICA!

MUSLIMS MEAN TO KILL US ALL!

Chrysler and the Rule of Law

Interesting article from The Wall Street Journal...

Chrysler and the Rule of Law
The Founders put the contracts clause in the Constitution for a reason.
By Todd J. Zywicki

The rule of law, not of men -- an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers -- is the animating principle of the American experiment.

While the rest of the world in 1787 was governed by the whims of kings and dukes, the U.S. Constitution was established to circumscribe arbitrary government power. It would do so by establishing clear rules, equally applied to the powerful and the weak.

Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chávez.
But it would never happen here, right?
Until Chrysler.

The close relationship between the rule of law and the enforceability of contracts, especially credit contracts, was well understood by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution.

A primary reason they wanted it was the desire to escape the economic chaos spawned by debtor-friendly state laws during the period of the Articles of Confederation.

Hence the Contracts Clause of Article V of the Constitution, which prohibited states from interfering with the obligation to pay debts.
Hence also the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I, Section 8, which delegated to the federal government the sole authority to enact "uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies."

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law.

Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims.

Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

The absolute priority rule is a linchpin of bankruptcy law. By preserving the substantive property and contract rights of creditors, it ensures that bankruptcy is used primarily as a procedural mechanism for the efficient resolution of financial distress.

Chapter 11 promotes economic efficiency by reorganizing viable but financially distressed firms, i.e., firms that are worth more alive than dead.

Violating absolute priority undermines this commitment by introducing questions of redistribution into the process. It enables the rights of senior creditors to be plundered in order to benefit the rights of junior creditors.

The U.S. government also wants to rush through what amounts to a sham sale of all of Chrysler's assets to Fiat. While speedy bankruptcy sales are not unheard of, they are usually reserved for situations involving a wasting or perishable asset (think of a truck of oranges) where delay might be fatal to the asset's, or in this case the company's, value.
That's hardly the case with Chrysler.

But in a Chapter 11 reorganization, creditors have the right to vote to approve or reject the plan.

The Obama administration's asset-sale plan implements a de facto reorganization but denies to creditors the opportunity to vote on it.

By stepping over the bright line between the rule of law and the arbitrary behavior of men, President Obama may have created a thousand new failing businesses.

That is, businesses that might have received financing before but that now will not, since lenders face the potential of future government confiscation.

In other words, Mr. Obama may have helped save the jobs of thousands of union workers whose dues, in part, engineered his election. But what about the untold number of job losses in the future caused by trampling the sanctity of contracts today?

The value of the rule of law is not merely a matter of economic efficiency. It also provides a bulwark against arbitrary governmental action taken at the behest of politically influential interests at the expense of the politically unpopular.

The government's threats and bare-knuckle tactics set an ominous precedent for the treatment of those considered insufficiently responsive to its desires. Certainly, holdout Chrysler creditors report that they felt little confidence that the White House would stop at informal strong-arming.

Chrysler -- or more accurately, its unionized workers -- may be helped in the short run. But we need to ask how eager lenders will be to offer new credit to General Motors knowing that the value of their investment could be diminished or destroyed by government to enrich a politically favored union.

We also need to ask how eager hedge funds will be to participate in the government's Public-Private Investment Program to purchase banks' troubled assets.

And what if the next time it is a politically unpopular business -- such as a pharmaceutical company -- that's on the brink? Might the government force it to surrender a patent to get the White House's agreement to get financing for the bankruptcy plan?

Mr. Zywicki is a professor of law at George Mason University and the author of a book on consumer bankruptcy and consumer lending, forthcoming from Yale University Press.

Umm- humm... Change We Can Believe In!

The Post Turtle...

Of course this an old joke, but The Patriot Post had it up again today(along with a few other funnies...),
so I thought I'd share it with friends...
It IS very humorous and quite true!

The Post Turtle

A doctor struck up a conversation with a hard-working 75 year old rancher while suturing a mean cut on the old man's leathery hand.

Eventually the topic got around to Obama.

The old rancher said, "Well, you know, Obama is a 'post turtle.'"

Unfamiliar with the term, the doctor asked him what he meant.

The old rancher replied, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'."



The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued:

"You know, he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, and he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just wonder what kind of complete moron put him up there to begin with."

Post turtle... yep...

Yep... Shot and Strangled!!!

David Feherty gave me one hell of a laugh!
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

From FOX News:
Golf Analyst Feherty Sorry for Pelosi Joke in Dallas Magazine
CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.

Feherty, one of the most popular golf analysts for his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, was among five Dallas residents who wrote for "D Magazine" on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas.

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though," Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.

"Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

Feherty, a former Ryder Cup player who grew up in Northern Ireland, has gone to Iraq over Thanksgiving the past two years to visit with U.S. troops, and he created a foundation to help wounded soldiers.

"This passage was a metaphor meant to describe how American troops felt about our 43rd president," Feherty said in a statement. "In retrospect, it was inappropriate and unacceptable, and has clearly insulted Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, and for that, I apologize.

As for our troops, they know I will continue to do as much as I can for them both at home and abroad."

Feherty has lived in Dallas the past dozen years. Along with working for CBS Sports, he writes a monthly column for Golf magazine and has written four books, the last one titled, "An Idiot for All Season."

CBS Sports distanced itself from Feherty's writing, saying it was "an unacceptable attempt at humor and is not in any way condoned, endorsed or approved" by the network. The PGA Tour also criticized him for an attempt at humor that "went over the line."

CBS is not broadcasting The Players Championship this week. The network resumes its PGA Tour coverage next week in San Antonio with the Valero Texas Open.

Awwww...
Poor Nancy and Harry got their feelings hurt...
I didn't think that ANY of the 'networks' would approve of anybody joking about Pelosi or Reed in ANY way!
Liberals simply have NO sense of humor!

Their treatment of George Bush was far worse than anything David said...

Nice going David!

EDIT:

But it's perfectly OK for the libs to wish Rush Limbaugh was dead!
From The UK Telegraph
What was Wanda Sykes thinking?
Perhaps more to the point, what was President Barack Obama thinking when he laughed and smiled as the comedienne wished Rush Limbaugh dead?

Stupid liberals... They just don't get it do they?
Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder!

Panic Time for Pelosi...

This article warms the cockels of my heart...

Panic Time for Pelosi
by Jed Babbin
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had a bad week. Caught between her own involvement in the CIA interrogations now condemned as torture and her party’s inquisitions, Pelosi floundered.

Her fear and frustration have apparently given way to panic after word reached her of the CIA’s reaction to the damage she, President Obama and other Democrats have done to the spy agency in the last three months.

Pelosi -- as I wrote earlier in the week -- was one of the few members of Congress briefed in detail on the harsh interrogation methods and who could have stopped them but didn’t.
Pelosi first said that she wasn’t briefed about waterboarding.

Then she sort of admitted she had, inserting that the CIA only said that they might do it, not that they were going to do it. Which could have been plagiarized from John Kerry’s 2004 circular explanation of his vote for the war in Iraq.

As badly as that hurt Pelosi, what apparently pushed her into a panic was the feedback she and other Democrats are getting from the CIA. Pelosi learned that her actions, and those of President Obama and other Democrats over the past ninety days have so damaged CIA morale that the agency’s ability to function could be in danger.

As a result, two emergency closed-door meetings were called this week on Capitol Hill.

The first meeting, on Tuesday evening, was attended by Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx) and others.

The following night, Pelosi and some or all of the other attendees met with CIA Director Leon Panetta, also behind closed doors.

No Republicans were invited to either meeting which means the Democrats were assessing the damage and deciding how to maneuver their way out from under the responsibility for it. Spin and strategy.

Morale among in the spy agency is so low because of the relentless assault on the CIA in President Obama’s first 100 days.

The first blow to the CIA was his decision to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without any plan on what to do with the 240 dangerous detainees housed there.

Many CIA employees believe these people to be killers, responsible for the deaths of CIA operatives overseas.
Many in the CIA apparently see this as a betrayal.

The Obama administration plan to set some of these people loose in the US was despite CIA objections.

And then came the president’s decision to release the so-called “torture memos” and the disavowal of CIA interrogation methods.

The president’s on-again, off-again promise to not prosecute CIA operatives who had conducted the harsher interrogations has left many in the CIA uncertain of his real intentions. Leaving up to the Attorney General whether to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers who wrote the “torture memos” has added to the already great doubt about the safety and security of CIA interrogators’ jobs, and more.

By the end of the meeting Wednesday, Pelosi, Reyes and Panetta apparently determined that damage control had to begin immediately.

Later Wednesday evening, Reyes sent an unprecedented letter to CIA director Panetta making a sort of apology to the CIA.

Reyes’ cover letter asks Panetta to “…disseminate it to the CIA workforce as soon as possible.” (At this writing, the letter has not yet been distributed.) The letter to CIA employees is a very odd mixture of praise for the CIA and CYA for Reyes.
(Click here to read the letter)

Reyes begins, “In recent days, as the public debate regarding CIA’s interrogation practices has raged, you have been very much in my thoughts,” expressing his “…deep gratitude for the work you do each day.”

But then Reyes retreats into lawyer-isms: “First and foremost, I wholeheartedly support the President’s decision that no CIA officer or contractor will be prosecuted for authorized actions they took in the context of interrogations.”

In other words, if some young prosecutor or Capitol Hill staffer decides you did something unauthorized, you’re sunk.

And then comes the CYA for Reyes: “One important lesson to me from the CIA’s interrogation operations involves congressional oversight. I’m going to examine closely ways in which we can change the law to make our own oversight of the CIA more meaningful; I want to move from mere notification to real discussion.”

The fact that “mere notification” of the interrogation methods was comprised of a virtual tour of them matters not at all: Reyes’ letter says Congress should be held innocent of any wrongdoing.

If CIA morale was bad before the letter, it will be vastly worse after it.

Worst of all is the next sentence: “Good oversight can lead to partnership, and that’s what I am looking to bring about.”

If there’s anything that could possibly make the CIA even less effective than it was before 9-11, that’s it. The nation’s security requires that the CIA be strengthened and more effective, not bogged down with congressional tourism.

And, by the way, what Reyes proposes is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers doctrine. Not that Reyes would care. But the prospect of more Congressional involvement is just another morale killer.

Obama’s first 100 days did enormous damage to our entire intelligence community. It’s all too clear that Speaker Pelosi will do much more if she believes it will help her out of the corner she’s in.

Panicked people make mistakes.
Pelosi has made a big one in propelling the inquisition into the CIA interrogations She will make more, and the damage to our intelligence gathering ability may be fatal to many Americans.

Nice goin' Jed!
Lets set the dogs loose on these 'weasels'!

$540 Shoes At The Food Bank?!

I don't really talk about individuals, because mostly, I don't care much what anybody does with their lives, that is except for politicians and people that have chosen to place themselves in the public eye.

But this latest story about Michelle Obama deserves some attention.

Michelle Obama Wears $540 Designer Sneakers to Feed the Poor
It's a first lady faux pas -- wearing expensive, high-fashion French designer sneakers to a food bank...

"She paired the kicks with a much more reasonably priced cardigan from J. Crew similar to the one she's worn in the past," Watters said. "And quite honestly, the usually well-styled Michelle didn't match. While her over-priced designer sneaks were gray and pink, her sweater was a gold argyle style. A definite fashion faux pas."


According to the New York Daily News, the first lady of style likely got her sneakers through Ikram, the Chicago retailer that usually outfits her.

Obama's style helped catapult her into the 93rd spot of Maxim's "eyeball-searing, fantasy-fulfilling, brain-exploding" Hot 100 list, which was announced Friday.

The first lady's sense of fashion has received considerable media attention. During her trip to Europe last month to accompany President Obama to the G20 summit, her fashion choices and protocol-breaking touch of the Queen of England nearly received as much ink as the summit itself.

I couldn't believe what I had been hearing about her 'fashion sense' and 'how beautiful' she was, and what a stylish person she was!

I thought...
Is this the same Michelle Obama that I had been seeing on the TV?
At the Democratic Convention?
Talking about how much she hated America?

The same Michelle Obama that bragged during the campaign:
"We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do," she tells the women.
"Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse.
Those are the careers that we need, and we're encouraging our young people to do that.
But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond."

The same Michelle Obama, and her husband BHO, that sneered at the McCains and their 7 houses?

Didn't they say... "John McCain has seven homes. There's just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain's world and what people are going through every single day here in America."

"You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-laureate economist, you just have to have a little bit of a sense of what ordinary people are going through to understand that we can't afford eight more years or four more years or one more year of the failed economic policies that George Bush has put in place."

So now it's cool and fashionable to wear $500 sneakers to schlep down to the food bank and help feed the hungry, the starving, the poor, the destitute?

Excuse me?
Talk about a fundamental gap!
What the hell was she thinking?

Well of course we know what she was thinking, don't we...

She's made it! ... and YOU haven't!
So she's going to flaunt her new wealth and fame and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!
So there!

I never did understand why Soooo many people were fawning over this woman!
With her severe underbite, her near lantern jaw, that huge rear-end, those thunder-thighs and a sense of fashion that resembles my neighbor's prideful display when he makes his poodle wear those awful sweater vests in the winter... it's simply quite puzzeling!
And now they're showing off those huge, flat, feet!

This woman is a total disgrace! Fashion faux pas is an UNDERSTATEMENT!
She shouldn't be allowed to leave the house!

But, I suspect that the Obama's have a totally different view of the world than most Americans do.

They DESERVE ALL they have because of their color and their hard struggle...
Sure...

It's YOU that don't deserve the $540 shoes! You haven't earned the right to be a goofy looking first lady flaunting her wealth for the poor!

You should be ashamed of your self Mrs. BHO!
You are an embarrassment to America!

Someone needs to take out the 'trailer trash'!
Hopefully, America will only endure 4 years of this!

He Wouldn't Lie To Me... Would He?

I sure like the way Ollie thinks...
He certainly has a way with words!

Lie to Me
by Oliver North
WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday evening, all but one of America's television networks blew off their prime-time programs and dutifully trotted off to the White House to cover an hourlong self-congratulatory news conference celebrating the first 100 days of the Obama administration.

Only Fox kept regularly scheduled programming -- the network's new hit "Lie to Me." ABC, CBS and NBC should have used the same title for the O-Team's news conference.

The Fox "reality drama" drew a million more American viewers than any network airing Mr. Obama's version of "Lie to Me."

Those who tuned in to the White House coverage were treated to an astounding defense of profligate spending, a litany of broken promises and a deceitful denial of foreign policy failures.

The fawning network executives who decided to forgo an estimated $10 million in ad revenues to cover the hundredth-night carnival from the East Room have to hope their shareholders don't fire them all.

Ever mindful of what's "playing" in front of the American people, Mr. Obama led off, as he does consistently, with the crisis du jour. This time, it was the swine flu, which members of the O-Team and the media have labeled a "possible pandemic."
On Wednesday evening our physician in chief assured us that he is doing everything necessary "to closely monitor the emergency cases of the H1N1 flu virus throughout the United States" and that our "government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations."

After noting that he has "requested an immediate $1.5 billion in emergency funding from Congress to support our ability to monitor and track this virus and to build our supply of antiviral drugs and other equipment," the good doctor advised, "Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick; and keep your children home from school if they're sick."

His flu-prevention prescription is reminiscent of guidance during last year's campaign on saving fuel by keeping the tires on our cars properly inflated. Presumably, someone at the White House's press office is preparing a news release reminding us all to eat our green leafy vegetables.

The next item in the teleprompter was kudos to Congress for passing the 2010 O-Team budget.

Though it passed the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote, Mr. Obama gushed about "how gratified (he was) that the House and the Senate passed a budget resolution today that will serve as an economic blueprint for this nation's future."
If that "blueprint" statement is valid, our nation's economic future will be very bleak indeed.

Though he claimed that "this budget builds on the steps we've taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity" and asserted that he "has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs," there is scant evidence any of that is true.

Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, described the funding measure as "the most fiscally irresponsible budget in American history."

Congress should be doing what every American family is doing: cutting expenses, finding within themselves the faith and, yes, the courage to get through these times with sacrifice. Instead, here in Washington, it's more government, more spending, more debt and more taxes.

The "reporters" attending the news conference may be forgiven for not having had time to do the math, but the unprecedented spending in this budget is mind-boggling by any standard.

In the 100 days being feted, the national debt has soared from $10.6 trillion to $11.2 trillion, an increase of $558.4 billion. If this pace continues, Mr. Obama will succeed in adding more than $2 trillion to the debt in his first year in office alone, a staggering $36,569 for every living American.

Though Mr. Obama claims to be "creating jobs" and "helping Americans keep their homes," reality says otherwise.

Despite spending $235 billion of our tax dollars bailing out financial institutions, there have been 27 bank failures in the United States in the past 100 days.

According to his own Department of Labor, more than 2 million Americans have lost their jobs since he moved into the Oval Office. The Obama administration's own figures reveal that during its tenure, 908,666 American families have lost their homes to foreclosure.

The "Lie to Me" theme continued in Mr. Obama's description of his foreign policy "successes" in his first 100 days.

His assertion that "we have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception" can only be described as "Clintonesque."

The truth is Gitmo is still open, because no other country -- not even Saudi Arabia, to whose king he curtsied, or Venezuela, whose dictator's palm he stroked -- wants to take the terrorists detained there.

Right On, Ollie!
Likely, we'll continue to hear more 'lies' from this charlatan until he leaves town!

I wonder if Obama is taking credit for keeping jobs by making government bigger and not laying off government employees?

And, I'd like to know...
Just where are those NEW jobs he created ???

The Question That Didn't Get Asked...

From The Heritage Foundation:

Morning Bell: The Question That Didn’t Get Asked

Yesterday before President Barack Obama’s 100 days news conference, the Commerce Department released data showing that the U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.1% in the January-March quarter.

This comes on top of a report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released earlier this month showing that the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since President Barack Obama was sworn into office.

Yet despite all this bad economic news Obama claimed that his stimulus $787 billion deficit spending stimulus package “has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.”

While pressing Obama on a variety of national security questions, the White House press corps failed to ask:
“Mr. President, if your administration is already claiming credit for jobs created in this economy, when can the American people start holding you accountable for all the jobs lost?”

Obama’s desire to escape all accountability for his economic policies was also on display earlier in the day when he told a town hall in Missouri: “We inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. That wasn’t me.”
Oh really?
The Associated Press fact checked Obama’s claim and reports:

"Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama’s last two years as Illinois senator.

Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush’s final months — a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.… He’s persuaded Congress to expand children’s health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more.

He’s moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion."

The cost of Obama’s massive spending explosion is about to hit home. The Treasury Department announced yesterday that it is going to step up the issuing of 30-year bonds to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars the Obama administration is spending on bailouts and stimulus.

A special advisory committee to the Treasury then warned, “Treasuries will probably not receive the same favorable demand treatment from either source over the coming quarters.”

Translation: foreign and domestic investors are going to demand significantly higher interest rates in exchange for buying the avalanche of new bonds.
Higher interest rates will strangle our economic recovery.

Congress and the President should do the opposite of what they apparently intend: They should cut taxes on productive activities, not increase them. They should cut spending, not increase it.

And rather than increase government spending with new entitlements like a government-run health plan, they should reduce future entitlement benefits to give credit markets some confidence that U.S. policymakers have not entirely abandoned fiscal discipline.

More Here

Oh Annie! You Naughty Girl!

MUSLIMS: 'WE DO THAT ON FIRST DATES'
Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.

Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies.
What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?

The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:

"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."
The end.

There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.

And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."

People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.

As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)

If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.

The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions! ... Hmm!
She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang!
Fetch ... THE COMFY CHAIR!

So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...

Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.

Further up the torture ladder -- from Guantanamo, not Monty Python -- comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."

If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.) I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.

In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."

Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."

If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver -- the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" -- CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.

I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."

Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.

Thousands of our troops are waterboarded every year as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America -- were liberal consciences shocked.

I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.

As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.

Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care -- including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

Only three terrorists -- who could have been shot -- were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.

Normal human beings -- especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy -- can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.

At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.

But The New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE 1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

What a woman!
Thank you dear Ann!