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Andrew McCarthy’s letter to the Attorney General declining an invitation has been around the internet and heavily discussed by Rush Limbaugh.
This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.
The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear—most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany—that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop. …
For an illustration of the foolishness of BO’s terrorism policies read about the possible revival of the military tribunals. Ed Morrissey has the story.
Barack Obama promised to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and end the military tribunal process that he opposed as a Senator for its detainees if elected President. After taking the oath of office, Obama fulfilled that promise by ordering the shutdown of Gitmo and halting the tribunals. Now, three months later, the Obama administration can’t find nations willing to accept murderous, lunatic terrorists as guests, and suddenly those military tribunals look pretty good: …
Mark Steyn on BO.
… He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama’s “first-class temperament” – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas’ hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, …
… underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative unhurried moderate routine on prime time news conferences. On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective, but mainly because he’s not so engaged by the issues: He’s got big plans for health care, and federalized education, and an eco-friendly government-run automobile industry – and Iran’s nuclear program just gets in the way. He’d rather not think about it, and his multicontinental apology tours are his way of kicking the can down the road until that blessed day when America is just another sclerotic Euro-style social democracy …
Corner post by Jay Nordlinger introduces us to Krauthammer’s torture column.
Back in the early 1990s, I said this about Charles Krauthammer as columnist: “The thing is, you can hold up a Krauthammer column and say, ‘Here it is. This is it. This is what I believe, in a nutshell. This is the case I would make, had I the ability.’” A Krauthammer column gave you something to wave. A document to nail to a door, so to speak. A friend or acquaintance would say to you, “What do you believe about this issue, and why?” And you could hand him a Krauthammer column, saying, “Here.”
In fact, that is the highest value of any columnist, don’t you think? He crystallizes your own thought. (Then again, he could make you reexamine.)
All of this came to mind when I read Krauthammer’s column published today, on torture: …
Here’s the Krauthammer column.
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, “You do what you have to do.” And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen. …
Krauthammer’s take on Fox.
… And in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the guy who they knew was the mastermind behind 9/11, the man who boasted of personally beheading Daniel Pearl with a butcher knife, he was asked politely about the plans that he knew about, and his answer was “Soon you will know,” meaning you will be looking in the morgues, counting the American dead, looking in hospitals at those who were destroyed, bodies destroyed in a future attack of which he will tell you nothing right now.
That’s why they used enhanced interrogation, which worked. …
As the president pushes the country to spend like there is no tomorrow, California shows the disaster waiting for us. George Will has the story.
… Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states contiguous to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating to those states. For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California’s business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state’s. In the past decade, net out-migration of Americans has been 1.4 million. California is exporting talent while importing Mexico’s poverty. The latter is not California’s fault; the former is.
If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit, which is larger than the budgets of all but 10 states. Since 1990, the number of state employees has increased by more than a third. In Schwarzenegger’s less than six years as governor, per capita government spending, adjusted for inflation, has increased nearly 20 percent. …
Michael Fumento in Forbes says we can cool it with the flu.
There’s panic in the streets over a flu outbreak. “Projections are that this virus will kill 1 million Americans,” the nation’s top health official has warned.
The virus is swine flu. But the date is 1976. And the projection, it turns out, is off by 999,999 deaths. Direct ones, that is. The hastily developed vaccine killed or crippled hundreds. Sadly, the current hysteria outbreak threatens devastation on a worldwide scale.
A calm perspective of the current outbreak of the virus now known as influenza A (H1N1) would compare it to seasonal flu. According to the CDC, the seasonal flu infects between 15 to 60 million Americans each year (5% to 20%), hospitalizes about 200,000 and kills about 36,000. That comes out to over 800 hospitalizations and over 250 deaths each day during flu season. …
Pete Seeger turns 90. Corner post by Andrew Stuttaford.
… As just one example of the some of the more questionable ”choices” that this “teacher to the nation” has made over the years, here’s Reason’s Nick Gillespie with Seeger’s reaction to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 treaty that divided up much of Eastern Europe between the Third Reich and the USSR and, in effect, gave Hitler the green light to start World War II:
As part of the Stalinist singing group, the Almanac Singers, Seeger recorded an album lobbying against U.S. involvement in the war while the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had a peace treaty. Once Hitler invaded Russia, the band pulled their album from the market and issued a pro-war one.
So that was okay then.
Dorothy Rabinowitz reviews NBC’s Parks and Recreation.
There’s more than a hint of self-confidence in an ostentatiously lifeless title like “Parks and Recreation,” the name of NBC’s new comedy series (Thursdays, 8:30-9 p.m. EDT). There was in fact reason for optimism about this enterprise built around “Saturday Night Live” star Amy Poehler. It was modeled on “The Office,” created by its executive producers and given the lead-in time slot to that adored series. Four weeks into its run — the show had its premiere April 9 — this comedy about Leslie Knope (Ms. Poehler), a minor official of the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Ind., looks as though it may justify that confidence.
Ms. Poehler’s Leslie, oozing with deluded ambitions, is a version of Michael Scott, paper king of Dunder Mifflin and a creature of enchanting depths. Not that there’s much of a resemblance between these two. Leslie, the Parks and Recreation employee with dreams of bettering society and, along the way, winning a place for herself in government — possibly the nation’s highest office, who knows? — is, essentially, a one-note flake. …
Borowitz reports BO has ordered quarantine of Joe Biden.
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