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George Will clarifies how government is encroaching in so many areas of our lives: totalitarianism one step at a time.
Only two things are infinite — the expanding universe and Democrats’ hostility to the District of Columbia’s school choice program. Killing this small program, which benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large — the Democrats’ dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government.
Democrats, in their canine devotion to teachers unions, oppose empowering poor children to escape dependency on even terrible government schools. Unions and their poodles say school choice siphons money from public schools. But federal money funds the D.C. program, so killing it denies education money to the District while increasing the number of pupils the District must support. …
Jennifer Rubin comments on an article by Atlantic’s Don Peck about the unemployment crisis.
Pundits are just beginning to realize the magnitude of the unemployment issue. Don Peck has an important story that explains:
“The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little. Late last year, the average duration of unemployment surpassed six months, the first time that has happened since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number. As of this writing, for every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work. All of these figures understate the magnitude of the jobs crisis.
That’s because the underemployment rate is really 17.4 percent. …”
…The longish piece is worth reading in full to get an inkling of the far-reaching economic and social fallout from long-term unemployment. But for that one need only look at Europe, which has seen the erosion of the work ethic, decreased level of growth and wealth creation, and a lack of optimism and social connection for young adults.
On a political level, the situation calls for a dynamic change of course and a jump-start for wealth creation and job growth. In the late 1970s, we faced a similar crisis of economic and political confidence. It took a new president and a new economic outlook — based on a rebirth of faith in the ability of market capitalism to generate prosperity. Lower taxes, reduced regulation, and free trade were the keys. Unfortunately, our current governing class seems to doubt the efficacy of free markets and persists in schemes to suck wealth out of the private sector. It is a recipe for prolonged pain. Voters may sense we need something new. Hope and change, I think.
Starting an extended section on Holder and the problems he has created, Stuart Taylor has a brilliant article on Mirandizing terrorists.
…Now imagine a more realistic scenario, along the lines of Al Qaeda’s aborted 1995 “Bojinka” plot: After learning that Qaeda terrorists with virtually undetectable bombs are planning to blow up 12 airliners carrying almost 4,000 passengers very soon, the FBI captures one of them. Would you want him Mirandized? …
…I return to this subject because the rationalizations by Attorney General Eric Holder and other administration apologists have been so breathtakingly bereft of seriousness about the need for aggressive interrogation to protect our country.
Abdulmutallab might have been the first of a dozen Christmas Day bombers seeking to perfect the Bojinka plot, for all Holder and his colleagues knew at the time. It was sheer luck that this was not the case. …
…The fundamental principle underlying Miranda is the Fifth Amendment right of every person not to be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” And “all the Fifth Amendment forbids is the introduction of coerced statements at trial,” as the late, liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in a 1984 opinion, joined by Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens.
In other words, neither the Fifth Amendment nor Miranda forbids aggressive interrogation to protect public safety without Miranda warnings. …
In the Corner, Bill Burck and Dana Perino blog about more of the Obami’s misguided policies regarding terrorists.
…We predicted last month that KSM would get a trial — by military commission. The administration is sending out every signal it can that this is where the situation is heading, with or without Attorney General Holder’s agreement. This is a smart decision. It is also smart for the White House to negotiate a path forward with Sen. Lindsey Graham, as is being reported. Senator Graham is strongly opposed to civilian trials for KSM and other foreign enemy combatants, but he is willing to work with President Obama on his goal to close Guantanamo. The devil will be in the details of any deal they reach — and we are skeptical that closing Guantanamo is wise or even politically viable. But it’s a good sign that the pragmatists — and not the administration’s ideologues — are now talking about a solution.
The White House took our advice to take over the process. Some more unsolicited advice: Rip the Band-Aid off, and set aside completely the idea of civilian show trials for foreign enemy combatants such as KSM. That will make it much easier to work on a bipartisan solution to the Guantanamo question.
Also, consider the notion that the solution to the Guantanamo problem is to start telling the truth about conditions there. It is a much better facility than most prisons in the U.S., and the military gives the detainees far more freedom than the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons, which runs federal prisons, would. Their greater freedom at Guantanamo is possible largely because the prison is in a secure location away from civilian populations, and the detainees are separate from run-of- the-mill criminals — who might harm them, whom they might harm, or whom they might recruit into al-Qaeda. Instead of closing Guantanamo, maybe we should be honest about it.
Jennifer Rubin comments on the talk that Holder has been identified as a liability.
…Along comes a report from the New York Times that confirms the degree to which Holder has become a liability. (”Mr. Emanuel and others also worried that political fights over national security issues could hamper progress on the administration’s fundamental goals, like overhauling health care, and seemed to lack confidence in Mr. Holder as an administration spokesman on the volatile issue of terrorism detainees.”) It is so bad, and his performance so tone-deaf, that the White House now insists that they “proposed installing a minder alongside Mr. Holder to prevent further gaffes — someone with better ‘political antennae,’ as one administration official put it.” The report explains …
…The political attacks over terrorism cases were “starting to constrain my ability to function as attorney general,” he said in an interview last week. “I have to do a better job in explaining the decisions that I have made,” Mr. Holder also said, adding, “I have to be more forceful in advocating for why I believe these are trials that should be held on the civilian side.”
All of this is a bit disingenuous, if not downright silly. Holder is painted as such a by-the-book and “on the merits” lawyer that, by gosh, he just didn’t get the politics right. But in fact, his legal defense of Obama policies has been slipshod and the underlying decisions have been deeply flawed and ill-conceived. But I suppose it sounds better to say he’s just a political neophyte than to say he’s a sloppy lawyer or that his decision-making is in thrall to a far-Left agenda (which neatly coincides with the views of lawyers with whom he’s surrounded himself who used to be on the other side, representing terrorists). …
Dana Perino and Bill Burck are back with more in the Corner. Holder may escape getting canned because John Brennan, White House counterterrorism adviser, is succeeding in being a bigger liability. Here is one of the incidents that Perino and Burck discuss:
…After his disastrous television appearances, Brennan was relegated this weekend to giving a speech at the Islamic Center at New York University. Even there, however, he again said something profoundly misguided. Discussing the rate of recidivism of detainees released from Guantanamo, which some have put as high as 20 percent, Brennan said: “People sometimes use that figure, 20 percent, [and] say, ‘Oh my goodness, one out of five detainees returned to some type of extremist activity.’ You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to something about 50 percent or so, as far as return to crime. Twenty percent isn’t that bad.”
We’re not making this quote up. The president’s top counterterrorism adviser actually said that a 20 percent terrorist recidivism rate was good enough for government work. About 800 people have been detained at Guantanamo and about 600 have been released or turned over to the custody of other governments. Twenty percent means Brennan thinks it’s not a bad day’s work if 120 or so returned to terrorism. If that’s his definition of success, we would hate to see what failure looks like. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for one, doesn’t care to know and has joined in calls for Brennan’s resignation. Senator Graham’s views matter to the White House because he’s their best hope for a bipartisan solution to Guantanamo.
The problem here is not so much the substance of what Brennan said — there is no definitive study on the percentage of released detainees who return to terrorism, though it is abundantly clear that some have (a fact the Bush administration emphasized in explaining the dangers of closing Guantanamo). What is disturbing is what these comments reveal about Brennan’s mindset. These are not stock swindlers, or identity thieves, or even drug smugglers. This is not Bernie Madoff or even John Gotti. These are people bent on slaughtering Americans, at home and abroad, in the name of jihad and as an act of war. Twenty percent should not be an acceptable recidivism rate by anyone’s standards. …
Jennifer Rubin remarks on Joe Biden taking one more for team Obami.
You sometimes wonder whether the Obami are trying to commit political suicide. They come up with the idea of trying KSM in a civilian court in New York. New Yorkers, along with the rest of the country, think the idea stinks. They retreat, at least as to the venue. And now they pick a fight with New York:
“It’s a sign of just how angry the White House is at having its plans to hold terror trials in New York City thwarted. Vice President Joe Biden took a swing at Mayor Michael Bloomberg, accusing him of inflating estimates of the trial’s security costs. Both Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly put the estimate at $200 million a year for five years, saying it would be an expensive proposition for the City. Biden, however, disputes the numbers. “The mayor came along and said the cost for providing security to hold this trial is x-hundreds of millions of dollars which I think is much more than would be needed,” Biden said. Biden’s surprising outburst is an indication of just how upset President Barack Obama is at having one of his foreign policy goals – showing a kinder face to the Muslim world – meet a solid wall of opposition in New York.”
Ever since his stalwart defense of the administration’s funny stimulus numbers (funny in both senses of the word), Biden has apparently become the designated spokesman to spin unsubstantiated, losing arguments with a paucity of evidence. …
Investor’s Business Daily editors comment on Arizona’s withdrawal from a regional initiative to decrease greenhouse gases.
The Grand Canyon State avoids a big economic hole by suspending its participation in a multistate initiative to fight climate change. As climate fraud is exposed, economic reality sets in. Will California follow?
…Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, seeing which way the snow is blowing, has issued an executive order saying her state will suspend its participation in the emission-control plan or any program that could raise costs for businesses and consumers.
…Brewer also ordered Arizona’s Environmental Quality Department to take another look at stricter vehicle emission rules, based on California’s standards, set to take effect in 2012, fearing they would significantly raise new car costs. Slowly but surely, economic reality is trumping climate fantasy. …
In Chicago Boyz, David Foster blogs about the end of a maritime navigation system. Perhaps we could fund LORAN-C and instead pull the plug on Pelosi’s exorbitant and unreasonable travel expenses for her family.
On Monday at 2000 GMT, the U.S. Coast Guard terminated the transmission of the LORAN-C radionavigation signal, marking the end of a system which has been an important factor in maritime navigation (and, to a lesser extent, air navigation) for more than half a century. The termination of LORAN was based on budget considerations and on the conclusion that LORAN’s functions have been supplanted by GPS. I’m not totally sure that this was a good decision.
LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) was developed for military purposes during WWII, with first operational use in 1942. The system was retained after the war because of its usefulness to shipping, commercial fishing, and long-distance air transportation. …