Posts Tagged ‘Terrorism’
|
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
It’s all supposed to be voluntary, those “home visits” that are tucked into the mammoth ObamaCare bill. If you have a strong stomach, and stronger bottom, you can find home visitation on pages 568-595. That’s Section 2951 of H.R. 3590, the Senate bill that Harry Reid brought down the chimney on Christmas Eve.
All voluntary, they say, but once you “volunteer” to have the oh-so-helpful folks from Social Services come in to help with your newborns, or with a number of other specified issues, will you ever be able to get rid of them?
The bill provides for federal funding and supervision for this vast expansion of government intrusion into family life. This is the Nanny State on steroids.
Is your family being “targeted” for such home visitations? Let’s see if you fit into one of these very broad categories:
• Families where Mom is not yet 21. (No mention here whether she is married or not.)
• Families where someone is a tobacco user. (Does this include the White House? Watch out, Sasha and Malia!) Does Grandpa, whom you love and have taken in, enjoy his after-dinner pipe?
• Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.
As if that list was not wide-ranging enough, here’s the net that can encompass tens of millions:
• Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States. [Emphasis added.]
So, while Johnny gets his gun, the government steps in to “help” his family at home. Ronald Reagan used to say the most frightening words in the English language were these: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Who will sit atop the federal pyramid that runs this vast new invasion of family privacy? Why, it will be Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, of course. She was the most pro-abortion governor in American history when President Obama tapped her for his Cabinet.
Do you spank your children? You should know that HHS bureaucrats think you are an abuser.
Do you support the Second Amendment? How would you like HHS bureaucrats asking your children if you maintain firearms in the home for family protection?
Do you home school your kids? Take care. Members of Congress who have tried to abolish home schooling are big backers of this health care bill. Do you wonder why? Continued…
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, government control, Houston Voters, socialism, Terrorism
Posted in National Issues, The U.S. Government | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Monday, March 08, 2010
NationalReviewOnline
[Bill Burck and Dana Perino]
Sunday brought the welcome news that another Taliban leader was captured by Pakistani authorities in Karachi. Initial reports were that it was the infamous Adam Gadahn, who was born and raised in California but then joined the Taliban, for whom he has acted as a taunting mouthpiece from somewhere in Pakistan, urging terrorist attacks on Americans. Subsequent reports said that it was not Gadahn but another U.S.-born Taliban leader who goes by the name Abu Yahya.
Whoever it is the Pakistanis have captured, the Obama administration will soon likely face an important decision, because the captive appears to be an American citizen. If the Pakistanis hand him over to the U.S., or even just give the U.S. access to him while he remains in their custody, the administration will need to decide whether to treat him as a criminal suspect or an enemy combatant (or “enemy belligerent,” as the administration refers to them). Gadahn was indicted during the Bush administration on charges of treason, which is a criminal offense, but he can nonetheless be treated as an enemy combatant. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for instance, was indicted on criminal charges in the 1990s but has been held for years at Guantanamo as an enemy combatant.
The Obama administration will face the same choice they did with the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — Mirandize him and treat him like a criminal suspect, or don’t Mirandize him and begin interrogating him and without the right to an attorney during questioning.
The legal authority to take the latter course is beyond doubt. The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that a U.S. citizen captured on an overseas battlefield may lawfully be treated as an enemy combatant. Attorney General Eric Holder and White House adviser John Brennan cannot claim here, as they did with Abdulmutallab (who is not a U.S. citizen but was captured on U.S. soil), that the authority to do this is unclear so the better course is the civilian process. The administration is perfectly within its power to hold and interrogate an American Taliban leader captured in Pakistan as an enemy combatant, and they know it.
So there are no excuses this time (though there were no good ones for Abdulmutallab either). The captive should be designated as an enemy combatant and interrogated without Miranda warnings. A Taliban commander could be a treasure trove of valuable intelligence on the enemy’s plans in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the U.S. This intelligence could save the lives of our troops, our citizens, and our allies. It would be absolute folly to tell him he has a right to remain silent, get him a lawyer, and ask him and his lawyer if he might be willing to talk to us at some point in exchange for leniency. It would be nuts to wait five weeks to find out whether his family might persuade him to talk.
Nothing prevents the administration from treating the captive as a criminal defendant — and trying him in civilian court — later on, after he has been interrogated as an enemy combatant. But if the administration goes the Miranda route from the start, they will be needlessly hamstringing themselves. It’s time to put intelligence gathering ahead of the “rights” of those who wage war on us.
— Bill Burck is a former federal prosecutor and deputy counsel to Pres. George W. Bush. Dana M. Perino is former press secretary to President Bush.
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, Houston Voters, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in National Issues, The U.S. Government | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
[Dana Perino and Bill Burck]
There’s nothing quite so satisfying as being proved right. We hate to say we told you so, but…
The Washington Post reports this morning that the president’s advisers will recommend that Khalid Sheik Muhammed be tried by military commission, not civilian trial. This leak from the White House means it’s all over for Attorney General Eric Holder’s dream, fueled by ideological fervor, of trying KSM in civilian court in downtown Manhattan. Weeks ago, we gave nine reasons why this turnaround would happen, here and here. One particularly important reason was the likelihood a federal judge would throw out the charges against KSM because the attorney general’s and White House’s extraordinarily prejudicial comments guaranteeing KSM’s conviction and execution deprived him of a fair trial. Once the White House fully appreciated just how disastrous the attorney general’s decision was, they shoved him aside and took over.
Anthony Romero of the ACLU tells the Washington Post that the White House’s decision will be “a death blow to [President Obama’s] own Justice Department.” Romero is half right — it is a death blow to the current Justice leadership and President Obama is partly to blame for allowing Holder to be in charge of the decision for a time. But let’s not forget the attorney general himself. With stunning arrogance, Holder imposed his will on New York without consulting the mayor or the police chief. After all, Holder doesn’t feel it’s necessary to consult with the intelligence services when a terrorist is captured trying to blow up an airplane, so why would he consult with mere local officials? Well, those local officials were more than Holder bargained for, and once they realized how expensive, disruptive, and totally unnecessary a civilian trial in New York would be, they told Holder to take his trial somewhere else.
The Post is also reporting that the White House is looking to cut a deal with Sen. Lindsey Graham to close Guantanamo in exchange for trying detainees in military commissions. As we have said before, we haven’t heard a justification for closing Guantanamo that would outweigh the huge downsides. Guantanamo remains the best place to hold these terrorists. Once they set foot on U.S. soil, they will acquire a whole set of rights to which they are not currently entitled — not to mention the security risks of turning the military base in the U.S. which would hold them into a prime target for al-Qaeda.
Once again, some will howl that the White House has a communications problem — but its real problem is one of policy. No amount of spin could make this story look good, but the White House will try to claim victory if they get a deal to close Guantanamo. But that would be “victory” achieved by PR stunt because that’s all closing Guantanamo would amount to — an appeal to the hearts and minds of jihadists and the far Left overseas, at the expense of common sense and our national security. And we’ve got a bridge to sell anyone who believes this crowd will fall in love with America once Guantanamo is closed.
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, Guantanamo, Houston Voters, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in National Issues | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
The Obama Democrats have outdone themselves.
While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today. It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” (See here, scoll to p. 32.)
The provision is impossibly vague — who knows what “degrading” means? Proponents will say that they have itemized conduct that would trigger the statute (I’ll get to that in a second), but it is not true. The proposal says the conduct reached by the statute “includes but is not limited to” the itemized conduct. (My italics.) That means any interrogation tactic that a prosecutor subjectively believes is “degrading” (e.g., subjecting a Muslim detainee to interrogation by a female CIA officer) could be the basis for indicting a CIA interrogator.
The act goes on to make it a crime to use tactics that have been shown to be effective in obtaining life saving information and that are far removed from torture.
“Waterboarding” is specified. In one sense, I’m glad they’ve done this because it proves a point I’ve been making all along. Waterboarding, as it was practiced by the CIA, is not torture and was never illegal under U.S. law. The reason the Democrats are reduced to doing this is: what they’ve been saying is not true — waterboarding was not a crime and it was fully supported by congressional leaders of both parties, who were told about it while it was being done. On that score, it is interesting to note that while Democrats secretly tucked this provision into an important bill, hoping no one would notice until it was too late, they failed to include in the bill a proposed Republican amendment that would have required full and complete disclosure of records describing the briefings members of Congress received about the Bush CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. Those briefings, of course, would establish that Speaker Pelosi and others knew all about the program and lodged no objections. Naturally, members of Congress are not targeted by this criminal statute — only the CIA.
More to the point, this shows how politicized law-enforcement has become under the Obama Democrats. They could have criminalized waterboarding at any time since Jan. 20, 2009. But they waited until now. Why? Because if they had tried to do it before now, it would have been a tacit admission that waterboarding was not illegal when the Bush CIA was using it. That would have harmed the politicized witch-hunt against John Yoo and Jay Bybee, a key component of which was the assumption that waterboarding and the other tactics they authorizied were illegal. Only now, when that witch-hunt has collapsed, have the Democrats moved to criminalize these tactics. It is transparently partisan.
In any event, waterboarding is not defined in the bill. As Marc Thiessen has repeatedly demonstrated, there is a world of difference between the tactic as administered by the CIA and the types of water-torture methods that have been used throughout history. The waterboarding method used by the CIA involved neither severe pain nor prolonged mental harm. But it was highly unpleasant and led especially hard cases like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (i.e., well-trained, committed, America-hating terrorists) to give us information that saved American lives. The method was used sparingly — on only three individuals, and not in the last seven years. The American people broadly support the availability of this non-torture tactic in a dire emergency. Yet Democrats not only want to make it unavailable; they want to subject to 15 years’ imprisonment any interrogator who uses it.
What’s more, the proposed bill is directed at “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” conducting a “covered interrogation.” The definition of “covered interrogation” is sweeping — including any interrogation done outside the U.S., in the course of a person’s official duties on behalf of the government. Thus, if the CIA used waterboarding in training its officers or military officers outside the U.S., this would theoretically be indictable conduct under the statute.
Full article here
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, Houston Voters, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in National Issues, The U.S. Government | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Source: Bill O’Reilly.com
Bureaucratic Shenanigans
As we’ve previously noted, there is a powerful element within the State Department that is averse to security and does its best to thwart security programs. DSS special agents refer to these people as Black Dragons. Even when Congress provides clear guidance to the State Department regarding issues of security (e.g., the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986), the Black Dragons do their best to strangle the programs, and this constant struggle produces discernable boom-and-bust cycles, as Congress provides money for new security programs and the Black Dragons, who consider security counterproductive for diplomacy and armed State Department special agents undiplomatic, use their bureaucratic power to cut off those programs.
Compounding this perennial battle over security funding has been the incredible increase in protective responsibilities that the DSS has had to shoulder since 9/11. The bureau has had to provide a large number of agents to protect U.S. diplomats in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan and even staffed and supervised the protective detail for Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a few years. Two DSS special agents were also killed while protecting the huge number of U.S diplomats assigned to reconstruction efforts in Iraq. One agent was killed in a rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the other by a suicide car-bomb attack in Mosul.
The demands of protection and bureaucratic strangulation by the Black Dragons, who have not embraced the concept of the ARSO-I program, has resulted in the OCI program being deployed very slowly. This means that of the 200 positions envisioned and internally programmed by Bureau of Consular Affairs and DSS in 2004, only 50 ARSO-I agents have been assigned to posts abroad as of this writing, and a total of 123 ARSO-I agents are supposed to be deployed by the end of 2011. The other 77 ARSO-I positions were taken away from the OCI program by the department and used to provide more secretarial positions.
In the wake of State Department heel-dragging, other agencies are now seeking to fill the void.
Read the full article
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, Foreign Policy, Houston, Houston Voters, Illegal Immigration, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in National Issues | No Comments »
Friday, February 12th, 2010
February 12, 2010
“Attorney General Eric Holder is leaving open the possibility of trying professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission instead of the civilian trial originally planned for New York City,” the Associated Press reports:
“At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it’s done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules,” Holder told The Washington Post in an interview published in Friday’s editions. “If we do that, I’m not sure the location or even the forum is as important as what the world sees in that proceeding.”
Oh, well never mind then! The Washington Post adds more detail on the administration’s turnabout:
President Obama is planning to insert himself into the debate about where to try the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, three administration officials said Thursday, signaling a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash.
Obama initially had asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to choose the site of the trial in an effort to maintain an independent Justice Department. But the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York.
Administration officials acknowledge that Holder and Obama advisers were unable to build political support for the trial. And Holder, in an interview Thursday, left open the possibility that Mohammed’s trial could be switched to a military commission, although he said that is not his personal and legal preference.
So, in case you’re keeping score at home: According to Holder, the location and forum for the trial are not very important. According to the Post, they are so important that the president of the United States is actually getting involved with policy decisions (although come to think of it, isn’t that supposed to be part of his job?).
This circle is easily enough squared. The administration’s actions suggest that it not view the matter as substantively important. It is now clear that Obama and Holder didn’t even take it seriously enough to bother thinking through such obvious questions as whether a New York trial was logistically feasible or what to do in the event of an acquittal or an overturned conviction.
But of course it has turned out to be a political briar patch, from which the administration is anxious to disentangle itself. Which in turn raises the question: How did Obama get the politics so wrong?
The situation reminds us a bit of Bill Clinton’s initiatory fiasco, over homosexuals in the military. He had promised gay-rights groups during the campaign that he would issue an executive order repealing the policy against openly gay servicemen. The subject was not uppermost in anyone else’s mind, and Clinton knew little of military culture–so he was caught unawares by the backlash against the plan, leaked during his first week in office.
Similarly, it is obvious that Obama grossly underestimated the political risks of holding civilian trials (or of delegating the decision to Holder, who is far more an ideologue than a politician).
But just in terms of what it says about each administration’s competence, Obama’s error seems far worse than Clinton’s. Clinton’s was very much a rookie mistake, whereas Obama has been in office for a year. Gays in the military has become a perennial subject for debate, but at the time it was quite obscure. By contrast, Americans have been arguing for eight years about what to do with terrorists, and one would have expected Obama and Holder to come to office with more deeply considered views on the subject than they evidently have. And as a practical matter, antiterror policy is far more consequential than the question of gays in the military.
The administration’s KSM climbdown is a reckoning with reality, and as such it is far better than a refusal to reckon. That the climbdown was necessary, however, speaks very poorly of a president who sold himself as a thoughtful realist.
Taranto’s full article here
Tags: Barack Obama, Election 2010, Houston, Houston Voters, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
The Christmas underwear bomber was trained and equipped by al Qaeda in Yemen. We fought them in Afghanistan and still are. They are in Indonesian, Iraq and the Phillipines. Now this:
Al-Qaeda’s strength in Africa is expanding. Cells in northern Africa are spreading southwards to Nigeria, eager to recruit impressionable Muslims to join their international terror network. In the wake of January’s violent clash between Christians and Muslims in the diverse city of Jos, al-Qaeda’s immediate reaction was to
equip and train young Muslims for jihad. According to the
Washington Post, Abdelmalek Droukdel, leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) announced that al-Qaeda is prepared to provide training, manpower, munitions, and various other resources to push Nigeria’s young men into jihad.
Considering the high levels of poverty and limited governance throughout the country, many Nigerians are left susceptible to extremist activity. While roughly 40 percent of Nigeria’s 149 million citizens are Christian and 50 percent are Muslim, the two religions are geographically divided with the Muslims residing in the northern part of the country and the Christians in the south. The violence last January killing 326 people has left the Muslim population vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. Nigeria’s government has done very little to curb this threat. Its own president Umaru Yar’adua has been out of the country, seeking medical care in Saudi Arabia and unable to run the country. In a town hall meeting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, decried the Nigerian government as failing to respond to the legitimate needs of its youth. She acknowledged that young people are finding other options and are often recruited by terrorist organizations as the Christmas Day bomber was.
Terrorist organizations in Africa, such as Al-Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, aspire foremost to local or national influence rather than international terrorism. While they generally harbor extremist sentiments towards the Western world, they lack the resources and the network needed to conduct operations against Europe or the United States. Al-Qaeda, on the other hand has waged attacks on American soil and possesses the capabilities to attack again. Therefore, when al-Qaeda provides smaller terrorist groups with sophisticated support to young men who would otherwise yield machetes and small arms, these terrorist groups immediately become a direct threat to national security. In dealing with Nigeria, the U.S. needs to tackle the al-Qaeda challenge intelligently. It must be careful not to radicalize a comparatively moderate Muslim population with heavy-handed treatment and public shaming, yet it needs keep steady pressure on a confused and distracted regime to cooperate in isolating and neutralizing the penetration of al-Qaeda into Nigeria and Western Africa.
Tags: Election 2010, Foreign Policy, Houston, Houston Voters, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
PRINCETON, NJ — Americans’ views of Barack Obama’s handling of terrorism remain closely divided, but mark a slight improvement from before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, with more Americans now approving than disapproving of how he is handling the issue.
“While Obama’s approval rating on terrorism has inched up, his approval ratings for handling the economy and healthcare have declined slightly since they were last measured in late November.”
Prior to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s alleged attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight headed for Detroit on Christmas Day, 45% of Americans approved and 47% disapproved of Obama’s handling of terrorism. Now those who approve outnumber those who disapprove by 49% to 46%, according to the Jan. 8-10 USA Today/Gallup poll.
Both recent ratings are down from Gallup’s initial reading of Obama’s handling of terrorism from May, when 55% of Americans approved. The May reading came at a time when Obama’s overall job approval rating was in the low 60% range, compared to his current ratings near 50%.
See full article-
Tags: Barack Obama, economy, Healthcare, Polls, Terrorism
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
Source-
There are links between terrorist attacks, job losses, and the health care legislation that is being completed behind closed doors: 1) A massive failed bureaucracy didn’t protect Flight 253 from a would-be bomber, so why expect that an even-larger bureaucracy can protect our health? 2)With 10% unemployment and 85,000 more jobs lost during the Christmas buying season, why pass a health care bill that promises to be a huge job-killer?
The common factor is that big government cannot efficiently guarantee homeland security or job security, much less health security. Big government is killing the economy by making it too risky for companies to create jobs.
While terrorist attacks and the suffering job market push health care out of the headlines, the threat of government-run health care moves ahead stealthily behind closed doors. Its hallmarks are exorbitant costs, extreme bureaucracy, and no help for the 85% of Americans who have coverage they find satisfactory (but just wish didn’t cost so much). But the legislation is no longer about them.
As one writer observed, “What started as a plan to find ways to cover people who don’t have insurance transformed into thousands of pages of new regulations, mandates, prohibitions, oversight and general central control.”
Both House and Senate bills would retain an army of existing health bureaucrats, and add a new bureaucracy under the “health czar”—formally known as the “Health Choices Commissioner”–with far more intrusive regimentation of your life than any airport screening system.
Adding more taxpayer-funded bureaucracy was President Obama’s announced response to a failed security system, and he’s applying that same approach to health care, just as he does to jobs.
When the Labor Department announced the loss of 85,000 more jobs, President Obama’s “solution” was to subsidize the creation of a claimed 17,000 “green” jobs by giving $2.3-billion in subsidies to wind and solar energy. That works out to $135,295 in taxpayer per money per job, but will also kill more jobs than it creates, by displacing current energy sector jobs.
Reality doesn’t work the way Obama claims. We already have 7.7-million fewer jobs than Obama promised we’d have if we passed if we passed his $787-billion “stimulus” package. And most jobs “saved or created” were government jobs.
Voters are not fooled. According to Rasmussen Reports, “Half of voters nationwide (50%) say increases in government spending hurts the overall economy. Just 28% says increased government spending helps the economy.”
So why make the job market worse by passing President Obama’s health care plan? As The Heritage Foundation has assessed, the pending health care legislation—with its taxes, regulations and mandates—will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Big government is what is holding back the economy. More big government is the disease, not the cure.
As one business analyst tells the media “Unemployment is at 10 percent and all these businesses see are higher costs in the future from health care and other policies — so they are hoarding cash. They’re making money, but why logically would any businessman use this money to expand if he doesn’t know what all his costs will be because of the expansion of these government programs?”
Our biggest job-creators, small businesses, are especially skittish. As NFIB (National Federation of Independent Businesses) reports, after its latest national survey of small business, the problem is the uncertainty caused by big government:
“The horizon is filled with cost unknowns, from healthcare to cap and trade to yawning deficits and the need to come to grips with them, from paid family and medical leave to card check, from expiration of the Bush tax cuts to state decisions about their finances. Washington cannot expect small business owners, facing difficult economic circumstances anyway, to commit themselves to investing in new employees or equipment and vehicles without acknowledging and revealing the policy-inspired costs that will be imposed on them. It is all about uncertainty and confidence.
A similar and detailed description was also offered in the Wall Street Journal by economic scholars from Stanford and the University of Chicago (including Nobel Prize winner Gary S. Becker), who summarized the stifling threat as “changes that could radically transform the American economy.”
As President Ronald Reagan so often reminded us, government is not the solution . . . it’s the problem.
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, government control, national healthcare, National Security, Terrorism, unemployment
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
From video Cafe
/
I don’t agree with Ron Paul on a lot of issues, but one of them I do agree with him with is our military presence in the Middle East being one of the causes of terrorism. Ben Stein acts like he’s never heard such a thing and the conversation gets pretty heated with Sheila Jackson Lee stuck in the middle. I have a very hard time believing that Ben Stein has never heard that argument made before. Saying you disagree with it is one thing. Pretending you’ve never heard the argument made is ridiculous.
I agree with something Rep. Lee managed to get in the end there as well. President Obama should do a recess appointment for the head of TSA to combat the Republicans obstructionism.
Transcript via CNN.
KING: Ron Paul, you want to respond first to the congresswoman and then Ben.
PAUL: Yes, I do.
KING: Go ahead.
PAUL: One thing that is missing here is never asking the question what is the motive? He said why he was — he did it. He said it was because we bombed Yemen two weeks ago. That was his motive. Osama bin Laden said that he has a plan for America. First, he wants to bog us down in the Middle East in a no-win war. He wants to bankrupt this country, demoralize us, as well as have us do things that motivate people to join his radical movement.
It seems like we’ve fallen into his trap. Why is it off base? Today, when the gentleman indicated that he did it because of the bombing, you know what the administration said? They dismissed it. It can’t possibly be so. If you dismiss motivations for why they hate us, we can never resolve this. There’s hate on both sides. You have to ask the question, why do they hate? And they usually come up with a reason. And we’re foolish not to take that into consideration.
KING: Ben?
STEIN: Well, that’s — I have never heard anything quite like that in my whole life. What he’s saying, basically, is we are doing something wrong by defending ourselves. Look, if these terrorists are trying to kill the government of Yemen, we’ve got to help defend them. They’re our friends. We can’t just let al Qaeda run wild. If we try to stop them –
[Ron Paul's mother didn't raise him right! She forgot to teach him manners.]
Tags: Election 2010, Foreign Policy, Houston, Houston Voters, Larry King Live, National Security, Sheila Jackson Lee, Terrorism, Texas 18th Congressional District
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
/- By BRIAN ROGERS and PAIGE HEWITT
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Update: Al-Qaida in Arabian Peninsula claims responsibility for attempted bombing of US airliner.
Update: Airline officials say in-flight security rules have been eased after a two-day clampdown, the Associated Press reports. At the captain’s discretion, passengers can once again have blankets and other items on their laps or move about the cabin during the tail end of flight, two industry officials briefed on the situation said Monday. Restrictions were put into place following a bombing attempt on an international flight that landed Friday in Detroit. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because federal safety officials had not publicly announced the changes.
• • •
As some Houston leaders called Sunday for measures to help guard against future terrorist attacks, others questioned why the Nigerian man charged with trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit spent time last year in Houston.
Sources tell the Chronicle that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is believed to have traveled to Houston in 2008 and stayed here for about two weeks. FBI agents have visited the Sheraton Houston Brookhollow Hotel at 3000 North Loop West where it is believed he stayed.
A spokesperson for the hotel said they have no comment except to say they are cooperating with federal authorities.
Federal agents are making these kinds of checks in many cities around the country where they are relatives, associates and others and some cities may have a major role in the investigation. It’s unclear yet whether Houston will be one of those major role cities, sources said.
A U.S. government official confirms that Abdulmutallab was issued a two-year visa in June 2008 from the U.S. Embassy in London. The official said it was mostly likely either a student or visitor visa.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, declined to discuss any connection Abdulmutallab might have to the city, saying details of the investigation remain classified.
U.S. government officials did confirm that they are looking into his travel itinerary, but the FBI and other agencies refused to comment.
As chair of the Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection, Jackson Lee said government resources must be marshalled for technology and “behavior analysis” to focus on possible terrorism suspects who act alone.
“We must note that the face of the alleged terrorist has changed. They are, in many instances, Westernized. They use blogging and Internet systems.” Jackson Lee said. “The red flag is that new terrorists of the 21st century having looked back on 9/11 now know the best mode is to fit in.”
Despite calling for ramped-up security, she said she did not want to see profiling or any stigma attached to Nigerians, a demographic about 100,000 strong in the Houston region.
Local Nigerians have reacted to the news with sadness and disappointment, receiving it as another blow, said Houston resident Chido Nwangwu, founder and publisher of USAfrica, the largest online publication covering African-American news.
Nigeria has already become synonymous with corruption, and now a Nigerian stands accused of a terrorist, said Nwangwu, a U.S. citizen who came to Houston in 1992.
“This is unlike Nigerians,” Nwangwu said. “It is not in the nature of Nigerians to do what has been alleged. … This is an extremely unusual event.”
Tags: Election 2010, Foreign Policy, Houston, Houston Voters, National Security, Sheila Jackson Lee, Terrorism, Texas 18th Congressional District
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, December 27th, 2009
Posted: December 26, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009 Star Parker
Christmas 2009 – our nation is still at war.
Afghanistan? Iraq?
Yes, of course, brave young Americans are in those far off lands defending our country. God bless them.
But the war’s front is here at home – the war we are having with ourselves.
After the horrendous attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a few Christian pastors stepped up to say that the unprecedented violation of America’s homeland was a sign of weakness within our nation.
They weren’t talking about how we gather intelligence or how we check travelers at the airport.
The management best-seller from the 1960s, “The Peter Principle,” points out that one sign of an organization or an individual at their “level of incompetence” is thinking that re-organizing alone solves problems. Drawing new organization charts or moving around furniture is a lot easier than getting to the heart of understanding what is causing failure.
The weakness that led to our vulnerability on that infamous September day, said those pastors, was moral, not technical. For this, they were widely denounced.
President Bush rallied the nation and talked about good and evil. But the evil he talked about was overseas. We deployed our troops and tried to understand what was wrong with “them” and how we could fix it. But little soul searching or introspection was done at home. What might be wrong with us?
As we talked about advancing freedom in other societies, we bloated our own government and violated and abused the principles of freedom – private property and personal responsibility – on which our own society was founded and built.
As we advanced into the first decade of the 21st century, we chalked up military victories abroad and collapsed at home.
We may speak with thanks and a sense of accomplishment that there has been no repeat of 9/11. But we might also wonder why those who seek our destruction need to bother when we do their work for them ourselves.
Now we have turned leadership over to those for whom the issue is not inadequate attention to our moral pillars, but to those for whom they don’t exist.
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2010, National Security, Terrorism
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
|
