Obama Picks Stealth Leftist Merrick Garland For Supreme Court

President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland today to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. It's his way of creating a political issue by challenging the Senate Republicans to deny him a SCOTUS justice appointment of someone who appears qualified.

So far, the Senate isn't buying it. As Fox news reported, both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary chair Mike Lee are standing firm on the principle that a lame duck president should not nominate a Supreme Court Justice in an election year:

Yet within minutes, Republicans doubled down on their opposition to confirming any nominee in an election year, insisting that the vacant seat not be filled until a new president is sworn in.

“It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Obama, anticipating the swift resistance, urged Republicans to reconsider, adding it would be unprecedented for Garland not to at least get a hearing.

“I hope they’re fair. That’s all,” Obama said. “To give him a fair hearing and up or down vote.” [...]

A Senate confirmation is required for any nominee to join the bench.

Before the announcement, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also told Fox News that neither he nor his GOP colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee would back down and declared once more he would stop the nomination from going forward.

“We’ve been clear,” Lee said of his plan to reject Garland’s nomination.

If the principle of allowing the American people to have a voice in something like a Supreme Court pick is to be adhered to, Garland's nomination shouldn't even be considered no matter how qualified or unqualified he might be. If he gets a hearing and is rejected, it will just be a soundbite to paint Republicans as 'obstructionist.'

Any nominee President Obama proposes in an election year should be rejected forthwith simply on principle. "Fair' is not something in this president's vocabulary when it comes to applying it to others.

And when you do a little digging you find that there are other reasons Merrick Garland doesn't belong on the Court unless you favor a partisan Leftist tilt. It was none other than Pravda-on-the-Hudson that wrote that "If Judge Garland is confirmed, he could tip the ideological balance to create the most liberal Supreme Court in 50 years."

The same article wrote that according to a measure of judicial ideology developed by four political scientists and considered a "reasonably good predictor of voting on the Supreme Court," Garland is close to Justice Elena Kagan in terms of how he would rule.

That's hardly surprising when you look at his background. He's a stanch Democrat from Chicago and Harvard Law who was appointed to his D.C. Circuit seat by none other than Bill Clinton. Before that, he clerked for none other than the very far Left Warren Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. often considered one of the most left leaning justices in the Court's history. In his confirmation hearing in December 1995 to consider Garland's nomination to the D.C. Circuit, Garland that Brennan was one of the justices he most admired.

His paper trail is fairly limited and he's done some decent work as a prosecutor, but using that ancient wisdom, the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree, and if it did, there's no way a hyper partisan president like Obama would have picked him. Garland can only be considered 'qualified' if you like the idea of a locked in Leftist majority in the Supreme Court.

We'll see if the GOP Senate has finally managed to grow a spine.

GOP Senate Informs Obama He Can Get Away With Whatever He Wants

All the bold talk last November about stopping Obama's agenda was revealed today as the sheer hot air (and I'm being polite) that it always was, at least from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the establishment GOP.

Today, he and some of his cronies crossed lines to confirm President Obama's choice for attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

Aside from her genuinely racialist and radical Leftist views, she lacks the one major qualification to be the top law enforcement officer in our government...respect for those laws themselves.

Aside from her vigorous antipathy to any kind of voter ID laws, she made it plain during her confirmation hearings in January that she sees no limit to presidential power when it comes to amnesty by executive order. In fact, she refused to refused to identify to any hypothetical limit to President Obama’s power to stop enforcing existing law via 'prosecutorial discretion' and executive orders.



Senator McConnell as majority leader could have reinstated the filibuster to stop her.

He could have refused to bring her nomination to the floor, just as former Democrat Majorty Leader Harry Reid did with so many things. He didn't.

Instead, he voted for Loretta Lynch's confirmation.

Yes, in the end, the vote was 56-43, with senators Ayotte, Cochran, Collins, Flake, Graham, Hatch, Johnson, Kirk, McConnell, and Portman as the GOP 'yes' votes.

In many ways, this was the ultimate surrender. With Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, there will be no real investigations of the many scandals surrounding the White House. There will never be any kind of special prosecutor named, since that's now all controlled through the Attorney General's office. There will continue to be divisive, racially biased interventions and prosecutions by the Justice Department at every opportunity.

There will be no challenge to this president's unlawful amnesty or to ObamaCare. In fact, the Republican Leadership just signaled to this president that he can literally get away with murder and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

I expect Loretta Lynch to be even more radical, partisan and oppressive then Eric Holder was.There is, after all, a reason why Obama wanted her in the job, and it wasn't her resume.

Obama Picks Carter Ash As His New Choice For SecDef

President Obama has chosen former deputy defense secretary Carter Ash as his pick to replace the ousted Chuck Hagel as his fourth Secretary of Defense.

Unlike his predecessors Hagel, Leon Panetta and Robert Gates, Ash has never served in the military. He's an academic and bureaucrat, a former Harvard professor who has worked in and out of Washington for almost forty years. His top job was serving as as deputy defense secretary under Leon Panetta from October 2011 to December 2013.

Ash was bypassed for the top job at defense by Obama twice before and only got picked for it this time because all of the other candidates the White House approached initially declined because, among other things, this president's dysfunctional relationship with the Pentagon and the U.S. military in general common knowledge, as is his serial micromanaging. Carter Ash was simply the last one standing.

One reason he might have been turned down before was a number of public statements, papers and reports that reflect a moderately hard line view on Iran and its rogue nuclear weapons program, as well as some favorable statements he made after a 2013 trip to Israel,his first.

Among other things, in a 2004 article for Foreign Affairs, he called for the complete and verifiable elimination of Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs and accused a “distracted” Bush administration of having “left the initiative for curbing Iran’s evident nuclear ambitions to two groups that failed to support the Iraq invasion: the Europeans and the UN.”

Well and good, but rest assured that whatever Carter Ash's previous position might be, if he becomes SecDef he will toe the Obama line of appeasement on Iran and disapproval of Israel and has undoubtedly given assurances of that to the president. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been nominated.

If anyone needs any further assurance of this, you need only know that his mentor and teacher in matters of defense policy was William Perry, Bill Clinton’s SecDef during the 1990s.

He will likely be confirmed. I don't expect much in the way of change in defense policy as long as Barack Obama is president.

Surprise! Loretta Lynch Belonged To An Anti-semitic Pro-Terrorist Group at Harvard

In my last article on Loretta Lynch, President Obama's pick for attorney general, I revealed quite a bit of information, including how she was vetted by none other than Al Sharpton.

We also saw how she is virulently against voter ID laws, has an exaggerated sense of racial grievance, and favors race-based standards and selective harassment and prosecutions, i.e towards 'white southern schools' as opposed to all others.

And finally, in a speech she made, we saw how she equated violent terrorism with. 'fighting for your rights' and a Soviet trained self-admitted terrorist like Nelson Mandela with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a true civil rights icon.

After that bit of information, my sarcastic comment was that she probably hearts Che and Arafat too.

It turns out I was entirely correct.

During her time at Harvard Law, Ms. Lynch was a proud member in good standing of the Harvard Black Law Students Association (BLSA) from 1981-1984 when she was a student.

Aside from endorsing a number of frankly racist positions, the group, led by one Mohammed Kenyatta had a major love affair with Yasser Arafat and the violently anti-Israel PLO - and remember, this was pre-Oslo, when they were still considered a terrorist group.The BLSA brought members of the PLO and their allies to campus every year Lynch was a member.

Not only that,but when confronted by Jewish groups on campus protesting this,(which included Allan Dershowitz) Kenyatta and his cohorts reacted with behavior and statement that were borderline anti-semitic.

This was too much even for the politically correct Harvard Crimson which condemned the group's behavior on one of these occasions in 1984:

"The Black Law Students Association (BALSA) committed an unjustifiable and discriminatory violation of student liberties last week when it denied Jewish students an opportunity to participate in a campus forum featuring a representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

More than 30 Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) members attended the panel discussion, outnumbering members of BALSA and the Third World Coalition, the event’s sponsors. But after opening the forum to questions from the floor, BALSA moderator Muhammad I. Kenyatta refused to recognize any of the white hands raised in the audience. BALSA and TWC members were to be given priority, he announced, proceeding to call on a Black student who hadn’t raised his hand.

We defend the PLO’s right to appear in an open forum at Harvard. All groups have a right to present their views; had Kenyatta permitted all students to challenge the speaker with critical questions, the ensuing discussion might have provided a constructive exchange of ideas and opinions.

By stifling debate, however, Kenyatta reduced the event to little more than a propaganda platform for a terrorist organization that has pledged to destroy the State of Israel. His refusal to open the floor to all students views showed a glaring disregard for the principles of free discussion that are vital to an enlightened academic community."

But wait, there's more.

The group made notorious efforts to blackmail white churches for 'reparations', and Kenyatta's specialty was to 'invade' churches and cause damage and chaos.

They spilled blood on the altar of one church, took over church offices, dumped out collection plates, damaged church property, and and on several occasions took over community centers and trashed and vandalized them. One can only presume that Loretta Lynch took part in these activities.

Ordinarily, I think you could make the argument that a lot of people do stupid things when they're young.

Except Lynch wasn't all that young when this occurred, being in her mid to late twenties.And the speech she made earlier this year that I linked to here tells us her ideology hasn't changed much since then.

Like Eric Holder, it looks like Loretta Lynch is an excellent example of what Emmet Tyrell Jr. famously called a 'coat and tie' radical, someone whom  dresses in costume and bores from within.

No wonder Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer raised no objection to delaying her confirmation hearings until after the new congress gets seated in January.

(h/t to Tom at Virginia Right for the head's up)

What We Know About Loretta Lynch So Far - And It's Not Pretty

President Barack Obama has nominated Loretta Lynch as his nominee to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General. She's the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, appointed by President Obama in January of 2010.

The announcement during the lame duck session is an obvious attempt to get her approved and in the saddle before the congress gets seated. That in itself is disturbing, since it indicated that her views are probably radical enough that she would be unable to be confirmed otherwise.

The indications of exactly how radical she might be are limited thus far but revealing. Among other things, she is close to Obama intimate Al Sharpton,who obviously vetted her.

Sharpton bragged publicly back in September that he and his National Action Network were 'working with the White House' on picking a new successor for the departing Eric Holder.

According to one of my sources, Sharpton met with Loretta Lynch twice, once on August 21, 2014 at her Brooklyn office and a second time during the third week of October at Sharpton's offices on 136th street in New York.

The final decision was likely made at a meeting with the president that occurred November 5th, the day after the midterms. The attendees included NAACP President Cornell Brooks, National Urban League President Marc Morial, Sharpton, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation President Melanie Campbell, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President Wade Henderson and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill.

The White House refused to comment when asked whether a successor to Holder was discussed, but the almost immediate announcement of Lynch's appointment and several stories extolling her virtues and qualifications that appear to have been written and ready for publication by some of the president's media allies tells us that it's almost a certainty Lynch was given the nod at the November 5th meeting.

Aside from her relationship with Sharpton, there are other indications thus far that she's pretty much in the same mold as Eric Holder. For instance, in a very revealing speech in Long Beach, New York earlier this year, she specifically named voter ID laws as racist and accused schools of being 'racist' and disproportionately using zero tolerance policies for drugs and violence to target minorities.

Actually, those zero tolerance policies are now starting to be changed in some schools thanks to the Obama Justice Department. Whites and Asians and in some cases Latinos are going to be suspended automatically under the zero tolerance rules just like before, but blacks will now have a preferred status, and will be subject to additional 'reviews'...in other words, they won't be suspended for the same offenses other students would be.

Her rant on 'voter ID laws and about those supposedly racist Southern schools starts at about 30:10. And note her remarks about Soviet-trained Nelson Mandela, her whitewash of ANC terrorism and her equating conditions here in America with South Africa's Apartheid :



“The dream is still continuing not only in the courts but in our schools,” Ms. Lynch explained. “And we all know, education is the key. And we understand that discipline is important. We understand that rules are important.”

She continued, “But we also know that when we sit and look at schools that have the zero tolerance programs, they are often used, and they take our babies, minority children, black children, Hispanic children, and they put them out of school before they have a chance to learn.

“And so the Department of Justice, this past year, has gone into the South, although we’re looking further, and brought the first prison, school-to-prison pipeline cases against school districts in Alabama.”

Let's see..exaggerated sense of racial grievance? Check.

Hates voter ID laws, because they might help cut down on voter fraud, a Democrat fave? Check.

Typical lefty, who conflates violent terrorism with 'fighting for their rights' and equates a self admitted Soviet-trained terrorist leader with Martin Luther King, a true civil rights icon? Check. Probably hearts Che and Arafat too.

Favors race-based standards and selective harassment and prosecutions, i.e towards 'white southern schools' as opposed to all others? Check.

Hangs with anti-semitic race hustlers like Al Sharpton? Check.

Yes, I'd say she's definitely 'down for the struggle,' wouldn't you? And I have a feeling we're just beginning to find out about Loretta Lynch.

Obama Picks A Political Hack With No Medical Experience as 'Ebola Czar'

 

President Barack Hussein Obama has finally made what he obviously considers a decisive move to combat a prospective domestic Ebola epidemic. Not surprisingly, it's the same move he makes on pretty much everything using an executive order. He's appointed yet another 'czar' to oversee things.

And what a czar!

 

It's none other than Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to both Vice President Biden and former vice president Gore.Klain was also general counsel of Al Gore’s election recount committee in 2000, so there's no doubt he was one of the detritus high fiving each other after disqualifying thousands of votes from active duty military overseas.

Klain has absolutely no experience whatsoever in health, medicine or disease control. Instead, he's a fiercely partisan lawyer and lobbyist who among his other accomplishments figured prominently in the Solyndra scandal, the ultimate green energy crony capitalism scam.

It's obvious what's going on here. Rather than put someone in charge with healthcare or medical experience, this president has opted for a political operative who can be relied on to toe the party line, repeat the talking points  and 'manage' the politics, rather than the disease.

No president has ever done anything like this before in a similar situation of this seriousness,  to my knowledge.

A lot of people out there claim to be Democrats because 'they care about people like me.'

This should pretty much expose that nonsense for what it is..at least as far as the Obama regime is concerned.

Ron Fournier in The National Journal has more on this.

Senate Blocks Obama's Appointment Of Radical Cop Killer Advocate To Justice Department

Today the senate blocked President Obama’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division, with 7 Democrats joining Republicans.

The nominee, Debo P. Adegbile, was a lawyer for the NAACP who filed a brief arguing that cop killer and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal’s murder trial was 'racist'.

Mumia Abu Jamal, AKA Wesley Cook murdered police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981 execution style during a routine traffic stop, according to three eyewitnesses. Two policemen and one hospital security guard testified to the court that while Mumia Abu Jamal was being brought into the hospital following the altercation with Faulkner, he shouted repeatedly, “I shot the mother f---er, and I hope the mother f---er dies.” He was unanimously convicted by a racially mixed jury. Faulkner left behind a wife and three young children.

Of course, Mumia Abu Jamal became a cause  for the Left, with celebrities like Ed Asner,  communists Ossie Davis and Pete Seeger and a host of the usual suspects. The NAACP was quick to move to  defend this killer, and  Adegbile led the charge, making the basis of his 'case' that the jury instructions were unclear and that the trial was 'racist'. Or in other words, he fished for technicalities to get a murderer  freed because of his race, even though there was no doubt that Jamal murdered Daniel Faulkner in the least. Adegbile went beyond mere competent  legal defense and into outright advocacy to try to get Jamal freed.

While Adegbile was unable to quite pull that off, he and the Leftist cheering section involved were able to create enough noise and race based heat  so that Jamal avoided the death penalty and is still incarcerated, a gross miscarriage of justice. It is disgraceful that the president even put his name forward. You can just imagine how he'd behave as one of Eric Holder's sturmbannführers.

Since Majority Leader Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option to essentially destroy the rights of the minority party to filibuster, all sorts of President Obama's radical nominees have been shoved through, including some remarkably unqualified ambassadors whose sole qualification was fundraising for the Obama campaign. So the president obviously expected Adegbile to sail right through.

This one was just a bridge too far, especially with midterms coming up. And it's notable that all of the Democrats who voted against Adegbile - Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania where the murder occurred, Chris Coons of Delaware, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and John Walsh of Montana - are all facing tough odds of getting re-elected in 2014, with the exception of Coons, who apparently decided to put right and wrong ahead of politics.

An angry Harry Reid accused the Republicans of racism, naming Robert Wilkins,who's now a judge on the DC Court of Appeals, and FHA Finance Agency Director Mel Watt as Obama nominees who were shoved through under the new Harry Reid diktats that the GOP was opposed to solely because of race.

Yes, when you take a look at their stellar backgrounds, it must have been ra-aa-cism.Right.

After his tantrum, Reid was forced to vote against the nominee in order to be able to ask for an eventual re-vote — which he did.

Oddly enough, there were several Democrat senators who voted to confirm Adegbile that might end up having to pay a politicalprice fo rit this year, including Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Udall of Colorado, Mark Warner of Virginia, Al Franken of Minnesota and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Apparently Reid was leaning pretty hard to try and get this particular radical nominee through for the president.

Obama Appoints Hamas Ally To Key National Security Post

The man pictured above is Robert Malley. Today, it was announced that President Obama has appointed him the senior director at the National Security Council (NSC).

The NSC is the key body that advises President Obama and helps make decisions on national security and foreign policy matters. Its members consist of,among others, the vice president, the Secretaries of State, Homeland Security and Defense, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, the president's National Security Advisor and the deputy Adviser, the Attorney General and the president's UN Adviser.Other special assistants to the president also attend as required.

In other words, this is President Obama's 'inner cabinet' on national security, so to speak. The members, the top level members of the Obama Administrations, are privy to all of America's intelligence, planning and confidential data.

So who is Robert Malley?

Of Syrian descent,he was a Clinton-era National Security Council staffer known for his tirades against Israel and his championing of Yasser Arafat. He made waves by blaming the Israelis for the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit, thereby contradicting the words of President Bill Clinton and every other U.S. official present, and rationalizing and defending Arafat’s terrorist war on Israel's civilians.

Malley was a close crony of then presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama and a foreign policy adviser to the campaign back in 2008. Way back then, Candidate Obama still saw the necessity of getting clueless American Jews to vote for him, so when it surfaced that Robert Malley was meeting actively with the genocidal terrorist group Hamas, Obama took the opportunity to remove him from the campaign in 2008 as a gesture to prove his pro-Israel bonifides.

According to 18 U.S. Code § 2339B, providing material assistance to a designated terrorist group (which includes advice) is supposedly a federal offense, But Robert Malley had powerful friends (including Clinton NSA adviser Sandy Berger and Senator Barack Obama, whom he was pals with at Harvard) so he simply drifted back into the world of think tanks, where he could be relied on to write articles and make speeches demonizing Israel.

And actually, according to he Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, Malley never really left Obama's circle. Al-Hayat reported that Hamas engaged in talks with Obama for months through Malley, which among other things resulted in their receiving almost a billion of your tax dollars from President Obama.

Robert Malley comes by this honestly. His father Simon was a very Marxist journalist who shilled for Algeria's terrorist FLN, Egyptian dictator Gamel Abdul Nasser, African Marxist dictators like Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré, Fidel Castro, and of course, Yasser Arafat, of whom he was especially fond. Needless to say, Simon Malley also had an outspoken hatred towards Israel, and the apple definitely did not fall far from the tree.

Once Barack Obama became president, as we now know, he spent a great deal of time during his first term concentrating on bashing and attacking the Israel, giving the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians more U.S. money than they'd ever seen in their lives and in general behaving like Mahmoud Abbas' own special community organizer.

That moderated a bit in 2012 when the president needed to fool people again for his re-election, but now that President Obama has no need to dissemble any longer, Malley will join the other members of the Obama Administration who have a long time record of hostility towards Israel.And he will be privy to America's most highly classified secrets.

Malley has some interesting ties with Islamists worth looking at. Among Malley's close associates is Wadah Khanfar, a Hamas activist based in the Middle East and South Africa (where he headed the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations) and now a key figure with al-Jazeera, AKA Jihad TV. According to one of my sources, Malley also has a relationship with our old friend Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a foul genocidal maniac who is too dirty even to be allowed into the U.S.

Another Malley associate is Anwar Ibrahim, who heads the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Malaysia and at one time was on the board of Malley's International Crisis Group. Ibrahim was also one of the founders of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in America, a Muslim Brotherhood front that should ring a few bells to people familiar with Islamist terrorism. The IIIT also has an important connection to President Obama's Brotherhood friendly ambassador to the anti-Semitic and Islamist Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), while  the co-founder and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Awani, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian terrorism case.

Malley is also on good terms with Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh, whom he worked with to get Hamas aid from President Obama and with Hamas Politbureau chief Khalid Mesha'al, and he has strong ties with the now outlawed Brotherhood in Egypt because of his father and his own assistance to the movement.

Needless to say, since this is a presidential appointee and not a cabinet post, there will be no confirmation hearing and no one is going to be questioning why someone like this is going to be in such a sensitive position.

So, what does all this mean?

Malley's official responsibility according to the White House is to oversee relations between the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies. Because of the the falling out between the Brotherhood and the GCC countries including Saudi Arabia, putting a Brotherhood proponent in charge of relations sends a message that the Obama Administration is choosing to distance itself from these countries. And not just the GCC countries,but Jordan, struggling against a Muslim Brotherhood takeover and Egypt, who just outlawed the Brotherhood and whom the Saudis are now supporting financially.

And Malley's appoint also signals that the U.S. will continue to back President Obama's favorite Islamist leader, Turkey's Tayyip Erdoğan as he continues to push Turkey into an Islamist autocracy.

It also sends Israel a message that the Obama Administration intends to double down on the pressure to force Israel into major strategic concessions and indefensible borders.

But most importantly,it signals that President Obama is going to double down on his support for Islamists and that they will continue to have major access to policy making and to the very core of our intelligence and security secrets.

This is exactly how the Soviets operated in penetrating the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

Obama's Ambassador Nominees Know Nothing About Their Proposed Posts, But Plenty about Fundraising

It's no secret that ambassador posts frequently go to heavyweight campaign donors. But those posts are usually limited to reasonably pleasant countries with limited strategic value, while the high profile posts in strategic countries go to experienced diplomats. Even the campaign donors almost always have at least some qualifications for the post or specific knowledge of the country they're being assigned to.

Welcome to the world of President Obama, where things are done differently.

Prolific Democratic campaign fundraiser Noah Mamet, who bundled over $1 million in campaign donations to President Obama's two presidential election campaigns had his confirmation hearings today for his new post as our Ambassador to Argentina, one of South America's most important countries. He admitted today that he's never been to Argentina, and knows very little about the country, its politics or its history.

In January, another Obama bundler, George Tsunis who's usual job is running a chain of hotels got the nod from the Obama Administration to be our ambassador to Norway. Under questioning, not only did he admit he had never been to Norway, but he revealed abysmal ignorance of the country itself, referring to Norway's 'president' (it's a constitutional monarchy with a king and a parliament, but no president) and referring to the Norwegian Progress Party, which wants curbs on immigration 'fringe elements' that 'spew their hatred.'

'Norway has been very quick to denounce them,' he said. It fell to Senator John McCain to correct him and clue him in that the Progress Party is an important part of Norway's new, more conservative coalition government with 7 cabinet ministers.



Hey, insulting the government you're going to be dealing with if you're confirmed as our ambassador as well as revealing you're a clueless buffoon..not bad for a day's work!

Oh, and Mr. Tunis' unique and special qualifications for an ambassadorship? He raised $1.3 million for Obama's re-election and that of a few other select Democrats. And yes, the Senate confirmed his appointment, which I'm sure will send an interesting message to Norway.

I've already written about retiring democrat Senator Max Baucus, who was nominated as our ambassador to China admitting he knew nothing about the country after a question on tensions between China and Japan:



He's already been confirmed too. Just a worthy Democrat member of the Senate club who knows where a few bodies are buried, now off to bungle an important diplomatic assignment.

Oh, and then there's Colleen Bell, a soap opera producer who was chosen to become our ambassador to Hungary based on the $800,000 she raised for the president. Asked a question about our strategic interests with one of the more important nations in Eastern Europe, she revealed she had absolutely no clue what they meant. She'll likely be confirmed too.

There's two things at work here that concern me.

First of all, if you think these countries aren't paying attention, you're mistaken. And so are some other countries, some of them not so friendly to America who now have additional evidence that we are no longer a serious world leader and can be discounted.The stories about these senate hearings are front page news overseas.

Second, there's President Obama's naked disrespect for the Senate and for his country. Normally, presidential nominees, especially ambassadors spend some time being intensely briefed before a senate confirmation hearing so they don't embarrass themselves or the president. That is, they're briefed and rehearsed when the president gives a damn and has the slightest respect for his country and the senate.

We're dealing here with a president who either doesn't care or whom can't be bothered.

Obama's New Pick For Ambassador - "I'm No Real Expert On China"

'But,on the other hand, I'm a well connected Democrat senator who's retiring and knows where a few bodies are buried, so....'

Unbelievable, even in the amateur hour that is our current White House.

One of the most important ambassadorships in the world, and they want to send appoint someone with no diplomatic experience whatsoever, whose knowledge of foreign policy in general is not his strong point and who admits he knows nothing about China, where he's supposed to negotiate with the Chinese and represent our interest.

Not only is this rank stupidity, but it's an open insult to the flag and the people of the United States by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

And what's even worse is that as a member of the senatorial club, he's almost sure to be confirmed, just like Chuck Hagel was.

Congressional Black Caucus Pressured Harry Reid To Use Nuclear Option

 

Now this is interesting. It appears that the Congressional Black Caucus was one of the factors putting pressure on Harry Reid to trash the Senate rules and use the nuclear option.

Apparently Melvin Watt (D-NC), one of their members was up to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency which overseas the FHA, and become another Franklin Raines. And Robert L. Wilkins. who is also black, was nominated by President Obama to serve as a judge on the DC Court of Appeals.

Wilkins, just by coincidence, was a classmate of Barack Obama's at Harvard Law school. He was a appointed by the president in 2010 to to a judgeship on the DC District Court and confirmed by a solid Democrat majority in the Senate less than a month before the new Ssenate elected in the 2010 midterms took over. His views on racial politics and other matters are about what you'd expect from an Obama nominee.

Watt is a well established time server in congress thanks to a racially gerrymandered district, and was formerly the chairman of the CBC. He now belongs to the Progressive Caucus as well as the CBC. Before getting into congress, he was a lawyer who specialized in gaming the federal and state governments for minority set asides and contracts.

He's on record as being instrumental in stopping a bi-partisan bill calling for an audit of the federal reserve, HR 1207..and apparently he's not adverse to using racist epithets against white people either, even when it's one of his fellow 'progressives'.

He was also formally investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics for serious ethics violations in 2009 over a series of fundraising events he was involved in, after which he suddenly withdrew proposals he had introduced to subject auto dealers to more stringent regulations. He was cleared on a strictly partisan vote, after which his response was to introduce a bill to slash funding of the Office of Congressional Ethics. In other words, a real credit to congress.

The Republican say their objections to Wilkins are based on legitimate concerns about the need for additional judges on the D.C. Circuit, which is actually overstaffed right now. In the case of Watt, they're concerned about his qualifications for the job and the belief that oversight of FHA is not the place where any politician should be employed, and especially not one like Watt, since it can, shall we say, be a real moneymaker if you're not adverse to feathering your personal nest.

The CBC? Oh, it's racism of course.

“It’s not the controlling point but it’s a factor, no question about it,” Butterfield said. “The fact is, no sitting member of Congress in 150 years has been denied an up-or-down vote on a confirmation. Race has got to be a factor here.”

“It goes without saying,” added Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., another senior member of the CBC. He called Republicans the descendants of Confederates.

“No one makes a big deal of it, but if you’re a fly on the wall in any of their homes — I’ll tell you what: If you track the Confederate Army to the Dixiecrats, to the conversation of the Republicans, to the districts that were affected, you may be dealing with different labels, but if they were ever able to track down their ancestors, there’s a Confederate general in every damn living room.”

Charming. But race - and racial politics - trumps everything for these people. Note what I emphasize here:

Following the Wilkins filibuster, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., chairwoman of the CBC’s Judicial Nominations Working Group, released a statement saying she would “lead a strategy discussion at the CBC meeting on Wednesday on moving African American judicial nominees through the Senate.”

One tactic could be an extrapolation of what CBC members are already doing: attack Republican obstruction of Obama’s nominees — particularly African-Americans. That could boost turnout from a critical Democratic voting bloc in 2014 and undercut the GOP’s “big tent” rebranding efforts.

“One of the severe impacts of [the filibusters], and in large part you see this in the Judiciary, is that the Obama administration has been working tirelessly to diversify the bench, and that means women and people of color on the bench,” said Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that tracks judicial nominations. “I think regardless of the motivation, it’s having a disproportionate effect on minorities and people of color, and that’s something to be upset about, and I do think it’s going to have an impact in 2014.”

Yes, it's all about ginning up turnout in the Democrat's urban strongholds, withotu which they can't win elections.Harry Reid understands that.

As for Ms.Baker, apparently she and the rest of her far Left cohorts over at People For the American Way strongly disagree with Dr. King's dictum that people should be judged - and appointed to office - on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That sounds pretty racist to me.

And inconsistent, since Clarence Thomas certainly didn't get a pass from these people during what he referred to, appropriately, as 'a high tech lynching'.

So apparently, it's only certain blacks, like Mel Watt or Robert Wilkins who merit unqualified support based on their race.Thanks to Harry Reid and the CBC, it looks like they've achieved it, too.

Larry Elder was right.

Obama UN Nominee Samantha Power Makes Deceptive Noises On Israel In Confirmation Hearings

President Obama's nominee for UN envoy Samantha Power is undergoing her confirmation hearing before the Senate, and like President Obama, she's making noises contrary to beliefs she's held for years in order to try and get the job.

Israel is the only member nation of the UN that is prohibited from ever holding one of the revolving seats on the UN Security Council, in violation of the body's own charter. Yes, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Pakistan and Zimbabwe are eligible, but not Israel.

So of course, Ms. Power came out with some pleasant sounding platitudes condemning what she called "unacceptable bias" by the UN against Israel. . And she's pledging to 'lobby hard' to get Israel one of those revolving seats on the Security Council.

That's nonsense, and Ms. Power knows it very well. Those revolving seats are doled out on a regional basis, and a number of states in Israel's region either don't recognize the country's existence or are actually in a formal state of war with Israel, so they refuse to allow it to be included as part of their region. There's no way the UN as it is now constituted would ever award Israel one of those seats, and she knows it.

But wait, there's more.

Expanding on her remarks, Power paid tribute in her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to America's "special relationship" with Israel, whose "legitimacy should be beyond dispute, and its security must be beyond doubt."

She added, "Within this (UN) organization built in the wake of the Holocaust... we also see unacceptable bias and attacks against the state of Israel."

If I were asking her a question, it would be to wonder out loud why she's suddenly voicing sentiments now that she's never before seen fit to utter in her entire career in public life!

This is the same woman whom called for the U.S. to unilaterally invade the region, force Israel into indefensible borders and engage in ethnic cleansing by throwing every Jew out of Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, turn those areas over to 'Palestine' and establish a U.S. peacekeeping force there to keep Israel from retaliating against the inevitable terrorist attacks on its civilians that would result from the new borders. Notice the smirk when she talks about the necessity of "alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import''..by which she means American Jews:



“What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in service of helping the situation, and putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing or investing literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israel’s military but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support what I think will have to be a mammoth protection force” .

You'll notice she also wants America to cut off military aid to Israel and invest billions in 'Palestine' instead. Like President Obama, she's dead set on creating 'daylight' between America and Israel and destroying that alliance, no matter what she says now.

Guess which RINO is leading the charge to get her confirmed? None other than Senator John McCain, who described her as capable and qualified.

On the other side are GOP Senators Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson, who've been asking pointed questions. Like exactly what she meant when she wrote in 2003 that America needs a "historical reckoning with crimes committed" by the U.S. government.

When she was asked exactly what 'crimes' those were, she refused to go into details, just mechanically repeating that she would she would never apologize for America, and that "I believe the United States is the greatest country on Earth.”

Remember that one of the first things President Obama did when he became president in 2009 was to take the position of UN Ambassador, which up until then had been part of the State Department and the Secretary of State and make it a cabinet level post that reports directly to him and him alone.

Samantha Power is an unrepentant Leftist from academia who is unworthy of representing the United States in any capacity whatsoever. I would not be surprised to see her confirmed, but it is a disgrace she was even nominated, let alone that she would actually hold office.

Israel's New Defense Minister 'Boogie' Ya'alon Takes Over

One of the best appointments the new Netanyahu government has made thus far is that of Defense Minister Moshe 'Boogie Ya'alon.

A former Chief of Staff of the IDF and a former paratrooper and member of the elite Sayeret Matkal special forces unit, he is a no nonsense soldier who was forced out of the Chief of Staff's position because of his objections to the Gaza withdrawal.

He's also on record as saying that thinking that Israel just needs to give one more piece of land and then it will have peace is a kind of "virus."

Ya'alon went public yesterday, sharing thoughts on Israel's security situation and his priorities as defense minister:

The new defense minister provided the public with a glimpse of his priorities on Sunday, when he used a Facebook post to list the defense issues he will soon be tackling.

First on the list was, naturally, the Iranian nuclear program, which threatens Israel, the Middle East, and global security as a whole. According to unconfirmed yet widespread reports, Ya'alon has, until now, been in the camp of those opposed to a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, preferring to let the US take the lead.

However, even if the reports are true, Ya'alon's stance could change in light of new intelligence or new developments.

Secondly, Ya'alon made reference to the Middle East instability that is washing over nearly all of Israel's neighbors. Under [former defense minister] Ehud Barak's watch, the IDF has made good progress in shifting its focus towards emerging terror threats from Syria - home to an arsenal of chemical weapons - and the Sinai Peninsula, and Ya'alon will be seeking to continue the preparations.

Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are threats that cannot be separated from the regional instability. Hezbollah, armed with over 60,000 rockets and well trained guerrillas, remains the most formidable enemy in Israel's immediate area. The IDF has spent recent years intensively training itself for the next encounter with the Shi'ite terror group, which is currently attempting to target Israeli civilians overseas. Ya'alon will be briefed in full on these preparations.

The last defense issue mentioned by Ya'alon is the "Israeli - Palestinian issue," - a reference to the stalled diplomatic process vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Ya'alon's position on this issue is well known - he holds that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah is not a viable peace partner at this time.

Yasser Koach, Aluf Ya'alon!

The Palestinian Authority not only isn't seriously interested in negotiating anything or making any concessions, only in having their demands met as Mahmoud Abbas had said many times.

Not only that, but it's questionable whom Mahmoud Abbas speaks for anyway. His term as President ran out three years ago, Fatah's support even in the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria is lessening while that of Hamas is growing, and there's no possibility of him delivering on his end of any deal that was made even if he wanted to.

Ya'alon, who was IDF chief of staff when the Second Intifada was defeated is exactly right to put them at the lowest priority.

Muslim Brotherhood Enabler Brennan Confirmed As CIA Director

Well, the trifecta is now complete. Kerry at State, Hagel running the Defense department, and Islamist enabler John Brennan heading our CIA.

All of them have the following in common with our president; all of them heart Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood, all of them agree with President Obama about creating 'distance' between the U.S. and Israel to curry favor with Islamists, they all like the idea of engaging with Hezbollah and Hamas and none of them particularly consider a nuclear Iran a problem, all statements to the contrary.

It's a recipe for disaster.

I've already had a lot to say about Brennan here and here, but terrorism experts Steven Emerson and John Rossomando have an excellent rundown on Brennan here that's a worthy read.

Brennan was easily confirmed 63 - 34, and there are some surprising names on both the yeas and the nays lists.

I hope that every one of the Senators who voted to confirm these men is fully prepared to be accountable for what follows.

Sen. Rand Paul Says He Will Stall John Brennan's Confirmation

 

Republican Senator Rand Paul is going to try to block John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director, either through a filibuster or via his friends on the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"I will do everything I can to stop him, and I told him I will filibuster it," Paul said. "Unfortunately I am not enough. You know, it takes 41. And we could not hold 41 together on the Hagel nomination. So my guess is I will not get 41."

Paul explained his strategy for blocking Brennan via the committee vote.

"My best chance, though, is that I have allies in the Committee," Paul said. "The Intelligence Committee is pretty powerful on these things. And the CIA realizes that, and the president has to deal with the intelligence committee. If the Intelligence Committee will continue to object and ask my question, Brennan will not come forward. They have the power to hold his nomination — and right now, see he was supposed to be approved by the committee last Thursday and they moved it to this Tuesday. So that means that I have a very good chance the White House will be forced to respond."

The senator's question? He wants a response from the Obama Administration on whether drone strikes would ever be used within the United States.

"When John Brennan has been asked, he says that there are no geographical limitations to the use of drones strikes," Paul said. "And so the follow-up question is, obviously, does that mean even the U.S. border is not a geographical limitation?"

"We have laws in the United States that say the CIA is not to operate in the United States and we restrict our own military from operating in the United States … And so I am very, very concerned about this," Paul said.

Five or six years ago, I would have considered this question tinfoil hat material. Today, I feel it's entirely legitimate.

I admit to being disappointed that this is what John Brennan's conformation hangs on, as I'm far more interested in his assistance and sympathies towards Iran, Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood as well as a number of controversial statements he's made. But like Chuck Hagel,Brennan will almost certainly be confirmed.

Putting Hagel and Brennan in these positions carries the same context that giving Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White or Owen Lattimore similar national security cabinet positions would have back in the 1950's. Remember you heard it here first.

Hagel: Enforce 'Palestine' On The Pre '67 Lines By Sending U.S. Troops Into A $160B Death Trap

The real reason President Obama wants Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense so bad is not just because he's a Republican who can be a convenient figleaf for the president's planned hollowing out of our military.

It's because he profoundly agrees with President Obama's views on Israel and with top level Obama advisers like the president's NSC assistant Samantha Power. The way to 'solve' what they see as the Israel problem is to invade with U.S. troops, forcibly evict any Jews living outside the pre '67 lines including Jerusalem and leave American 'peacekeepers' in place to enforce it.

That is exactly what Chuck Hagel, long time Israel hater and former Carter NSC adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcraft, Arab lobbyist Carla Hills and a slew of the usual suspects proposed to President Obama in a 2009 report entitled "“A Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement”.

The report calls for an imposed settlement and of course, links the Israel problem with al-Qaeda, even though the Arabs waged genocidal jihad on Israel before al-Qaeda was even in existence.Here are a few lovely ideas contained in this document. First it mentions that America's pro-Israel community might be a tad upset, but that an American president ought to be able to perform the massive con job needed to convince most Americans why this is so vital, and why vast amounts of taxpayer dollars need to be spent:

"A new U.S. effort to reach an Israeli-Palestinian agreement may anger certain domestic constituencies. We do not, however, believe it is beyond the capability of any American President to explain to the American people why this long-running dispute must at long last be ended and why it will take much diplomatic heavy lifting and public expenditure to make it work."


Yes, this calls for yet another episode of nation building at the American taxpayer's expense.

The report calls for a non-militarized Palestinians state, enforced by an estimated 60,000 U.S. troops under UN mandate, plus, believe it or not, Egyptians and Jordanians ( who will of course be paid for by the American taxpayer as well. The document envisions this as being in place for - wait for it - 15 years. It also calls for U.S. recognition and support of Hamas ( "shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might help clarify the movement’s views and test its behavior.")

As if Hamas hadn't already made its views totally clear as well as its behavior! Hagel and company want to Israelis to lay down and accept a terrorist group with clearly genocidal intentions as a 'peace partner', backed up financial aid to Hamas and by U.S. force of arms. And that demilitarized Palestinian state? The Arabs were quick to disavow that almost as soon as Israeli PM Netanyahu proposed it.

The report goes on to link the creation of Israel with 'considerable and ongoing Palestinian suffering' as though Arab violence and support for a jihad against Israel with the murder of every Jew in Palestine had nothing to do with that. Needless to say, there's no mention of the enforced ethnic cleansing of almost a million Jews for the Arab world and their suffering. it also links U.S. problems with Iran to the 'Israel problem', as though all the Ayatollahs need to become peaceful and give up their nuclear program is Israeli capitulation and the creation of 'Palestine'. There's also a slam at "militant settlers and their political supporters", with no mention of Israeli attempts to swap land for peace in Gaza or via Oslo.

But wait..there's more. The report urges that Israel be muscled into ceding the strategic Golan Height back to Syria..in exchange for a Syrian promise "to participate in no anti-Israeli alliances of any kind" and to make an attempt to "use its influence" to get the likes of Hezbollah to agree to peace with Israel.The Syrians might agree - why not? But you can guarantee that once they have the land back, the promises will be quickly forgotten.

I'm sure President Obama absolutely drooled as he read this. That's likely one reason why Chuck Hagel was made co-chairman of the president's Intelligence Advisory Board.

There was an interesting NATO analysis and feasibility study of this proposal made by Florence Gaub, an analyst NATO Defense College. She mentions the following points:

"..there are over 19 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. In total, 4.2 million inhabitants in the area live in cities of this kind, with more than half a million living in refugee camps. This itself implies two things: first, arms caches are difficult to locate without local knowledge, and arms smuggle is facilitated greatly. Disarmament measures would be even more difficult to enforce than they already are under friendlier circumstances."

In other words, like UNSC 1701, disarmament would simply not occur..especially if aome of the peacekeeping force were Arab or Turks.

"Independently from the local security forces, the NATO force in Palestine (hence the minimalist version) would, if it follows the example of the successful cases of Bosnia and Kosovo, need forces ranging from 43,700 to 76,000 men, including the police forces. Of these, between 16,100 and 28,000 would patrol Gaza, and between 27,600 and 48,000 the West Bank. Page 10

Current theatres of operations would have to be reduced in size before a suitable size NATO mission in Palestine would be available without introducing longer deployments – something many Allies would like to avoid."

"Stabilisation missions are largely infantry missions. This is topped in our case by the fact that in worst case scenario, the tasks would entail urban warfare and counterinsurgency, which are also infantry heavy tasks."

In other words, (a) most of our NATO allies would be even less anxious to assume the cost of maintaining combat troops in the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria as they were in Afghanistan,especially for the 15 years anticipated, so most of them would be Americans or paid for by the U.S. (b) since disarmament is unlikely, these troops (as well as Israeli civilians) would be sitting ducks for terrorism attacks by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah's al-Aksa brigade and others.

Needless to say, since the American taxpayers are likely to tire fairly quickly of seeing American troops come home in body bags while defending 'Palestine' th emission would quickly collapse...except the Arabs would have the land, Israel would be left with a lot of dead civilians and indefensible borders and the security guarantees given them would be absolutely worthless...just as they were in Gaza and Lebanon.And the cost, essentially money borrowed from China to enforce 'Palestine' would be staggering.Remember, it currently costs around $100,000 per year to deploya an American soldier.

"Aside from the costs for the mission itself, additional costs can be expected, due to the training of the Palestinian police, building infrastructure and providing equipment. Some estimates calculate between $9.61 billion and $16.72 billion per year, not calculating reconstruction efforts, which in the case of the recommended 5 years would result in a total number between $48.05 billion and $83.6 billion."

"NATO’s mission in Palestine would have slim chances of success, and a high probability of failure. One should not be blinded by perceptions of a historical opportunity and embark on an endeavor that could cost NATO credibility, prestige, money and lives simply because it seems to be a politically symbolic chance in a lifetime to establish NATO as a global security provider.

"The territory involved presents aspects that would cause any campaign planner nightmares – densely populated, urban areas with highly intermingled conflicting populations, a volatile political ambiance where the tides can turn any second, and a very experienced opponent if it ever comes to counterinsurgency. Thus, this mission would need thorough preparation, careful planning, sufficient staffing and funding, a significant amount of political will, and would leave a very narrow margin for success. At the current stage, and with its other operations ongoing, it seems irresponsible to hasten NATO into a mission that has all the ingredients to turn into a quagmire that equals the Alliance’s involvement in Afghanistan."

There's another little detail that needs to be explored. Suppose Israel decides not to cooperate in her own national suicide? What if they don't accede to dividing Jerusalem again ans creating 500,000 Jewish refugees?

Ah, that's the fun part. Israel isn't Serbia. They're a nuclear power with a well trained and well armed military. So either implementing this diktat either involves NATO,led by America, attacking Israel, perhaps in coordination with Arab armies (an unlikely scenario, but not impossible with this president) or a total severing of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

This is why President Barack Obama wants Chuck Hagel in so badly.

Any Senator whom votes to confirm Chuck Hagel when this comes to a vote needs to realize that this is exactly what they're voting for. Deploying 60,000 U.S. troops into a death trap, spending $160,000 billion we don;t have on 'Palestine' and severing the American-Israeli alliance.

As Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe said earlier this week, anyone voting to confirm the likes of Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary is going to be held accountable. They can't say later they weren't aware, that they didn't know.

Hagel Closer To Confirmation As GOP Senator Caves; 15 Others Ask Obama To Withdraw Nomination

 

Interesting days in Washington...

GOP Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama is on record saying that he will now vote for Chuck  Hagel tobe conformed as Secretary of Defense.

"He’s probably as good as we’re going to get," Shelby said of Hagel in a Wednesday speech, according to a report in the Decatur Daily.

As good as we're going to get? Now, there's a rationale for making a clueless anti-Israel, pro-Iran and pro-Islamist Secretary of Defense if I ever heard one.

A deal of some kind was obviously made between Shelby and the White House since Shelby also apparently kissed off a large chunk of the GOP caucus at the same time. His announcement came at the same time that 15 GOP Senators led by John Cornyn ( R-TX) sent a letter to President Obama asking him to withdraw the Hagel nomination:

“While we respect Sen. Hagel’s honorable military service, in the interest of national security, we respectfully request that you withdraw his nomination.It would be unprecedented for a Secretary of Defense to take office without the broad base of bipartisan support and confidence needed to serve effectively in this critical position.

While Senator Hagel’s erratic record and myriad conversions on key national security issues are troubling enough, his statements regarding Iran were disconcerting. More than once during the hearing, he proclaimed the legitimacy of the current regime in Tehran, which has violently repressed its own citizens, rigged recent elections, provided material support for terrorism, and denied the Holocaust.

Regarding U.S. policy on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, Senator Hagel displayed a seeming ambivalence about whether containment or prevention is the best approach, which gives us great concern. Any sound strategy on Iran must be underpinned by the highly credible threat of U.S. military force, and there is broad bipartisan agreement on that point.If Senator Hagel becomes Secretary of Defense, the military option will have near zero credibility. This sends a dangerous message to the regime in Tehran, as it seeks to obtain the means necessary to harm both the United States and Israel.

The letter is signed by Senators John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), David Vitter (R-La.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.).

You'll notice John McCain's name isn't on the list. Yes, Chuck Hagel, shamefully, is a step closer to confirmation.

Even from a standpoint of intelligent politics, conforming Hagel makes non sense. Even the dumbest, egocentric RINO ought to realize that Hagel is simply a Republican fig leaf for President Obama's hollowing out of our military. When the inevitable crunch comes, the Leftist media talking heads will be sure to mention that  the damage was done by Chuck Hagel, a R E P U B L I C A N.

The letter also makes a point I've mentioned on these pages. What kind of message does the White House thinks nominating people like Hagel, John Brennan and John Kerry to key national security posts sends to the Ayatollahs? To Israel? To the Islamists. To our diminishing number of friends and allies in that part of the world?

On second thought, that's probably exactly the message President Obama and his enablers want to send. Particularly to Israel.

Appeasement is always a zero sum game...because it never ends, and the price just keeps getting higher.

 

Democrats Lack Votes To Confirm Hagel..For Now

Chuck Hagel's conformation, which seemed to be a sure thing a few days ago is in limbo - at least for now.

The Democrats, led by majority Leader Harry Reid attempted to shove his confirmation through by were three votes shy of the sixty votes needed to override Senator Lindsay Graham's hold. Essentially, this is now a filibuster situation.

Senator Reid had the gall to accuse Republicans of disloyalty. Reis qangrily made a huge point about Leon Panetta was leaving his post at noon that day, saying the country would be without a defense secretary.

“In less than two hours, our country will be without a secretary of defense at a time when we have a war going on in Afghanistan, there are about 70,000 troops there, we have a nuclear weapon that was detonated in North Korea a few days ago,” Mr. Reid said.

Yes, Senator Harry Reid..Senator 'The war is lost', the man who did his best to sabotage the surge strategy. This was the senator who hearted MoveOn, the man who petulantly blocked an appropriation bill that included a pay raise and badly needed supplies for our military because he was angry after he introduced a bill to cut all funding for the Iraq War while our troops were under fire and even some of his fellow Democrats shied away from voting for it.

Would someone like Senator Reid even remotely understand what loyalty to country means?

And for that matter, as usual he lied. As the White House confirmed, SecDef Leon Panetta had already agreed to stay at his post until a successor was confirmed.

What tripped Hagel up was not his obvious unfitness for the position, but his refusal to answer senate questions about his financial dealings and the Obama White House's continuing stonewall of Republican efforts to find the truth about the Benghazi disaster. This deviousness even convinced Senator John McCain to vote against cloture.

Today, some other information surfaced about Hagel that ought to preclude his becoming Secretary of Defense to any sensible person.

As a product of his public fondness for Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, Hagel's made a few dollars over the years speaking to rabidly anti-Israel, pro-Arab groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and anti-semite James Zogby’s Arab American Institute.

Hagel failed to disclose these speeches to the senate.That alone ought to deep six him.

The one to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee must have really been something, because they're outright refusing to release the tape of Hagel's remarks.

But unfortunately for Hagel, a partial account of his speech to Zogby's Arab American Institute has surfaced, from a journalist and Hagel supporter who was there:

 
Hagel said the U.S. Department of State was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office, according to a contemporaneous report of the event.
Republican political consultant and Hagel supporter George Ajjan wrote about the March 2, 2007, speech on his website the following day, writing a description “point by point through some of the more important elements of his speech.”
“Point six“:

The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office…
Wow. A very bold statement by Hagel bound to further raise the ire of the “Jewish Lobby” (yawn…), but it does express his strong belief in a comprehensive solution to problems in the Middle East. Hagel mentioned this theme several times – comprehensive, he said, in the sense that all tools should be used to achieve American foreign policy objectives (diplomatic, political, economic, and military), but also comprehensive in the James Baker sense of addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict holistically as both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have proved too lazy and too incompetent to do.

Reached by phone, Ajjan confirmed his 2007 account of the event, saying he was “taking notes as [Hagel] was speaking.”

“If I wrote it, then that’s what happened at the time,” Ajjan told the Free Beacon.
He added that the event, which was cosponsored by the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the American Iranian Council, was closed to the press.

“When [Hagel] said the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli ministry, I think that was during the Q&A,” said Ajjan. “Even in the blog, I was surprised that he said that. It was a very bold statement.”

Rutgers is a hotbed of vociferous anti-Israel activity, and its Middle East Studies Depart has enjoyed significant funding from the Saudis and others who, shall we say, are not exactly friendly to Israel. Hagel was obviously in his element and felt he could open up.

Ajjan, by the way, is vehemently anti Israel, going back a long way.

No wonder Hagel didn't disclose this.

The Senate should insist that Hagel disclose full information about these and any other speeches he made, as well as the financial disclosures demanded by the senate.

I have to wonder at the Democrats still backing Hagel. His views on Iran directly contradict what President Obama has said publicly. What message do they think his appointment would send to the Ayatollahs? And what kind of message would it send to Israel?

And that's particularly true of Democrats like Chuck Schumer, whom claim to be pro-Israel. It's time they stood up and sent this remarkably unqualified and unfit candidate back to his career shilling for Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and performing for the other demented purveyors of the myth of the 'Jewish Lobby'.

Hagel Will Need 60 Votes To Get Confirmed As Defense Secretary

Former Senator Chuck Hagel was narrowly approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee, 14-11 in a straight party line vote. The committee's Democrats decided to vote for him in spite of his execrable performance before the committee and his refusal to disclose foreign funding.According to a number of sources, one of those foreign funders Hagel is reluctant to disclose is a group called Friends of Hamas.

However, Senator James Inhofe made it plain that Hagel isn't going to be confirmed in the Senate without 60 votes:

Inhofe's demand for 60 votes is related to his overall objection to Hagel becoming defense secretary, which is based on Hagel's past record on issues ranging from Iran, Israel, Hamas, and cuts to the defense budget. Inhofe also wants Hagel to further disclose financial records related to his past speeches.

"We're going to require a 60-vote threshold," Inhofe told The Cable. {....}

Inhofe insisted that his demand for a 60-vote threshold is not a "filibuster." Inhofe said he will object to unanimous consent for a simple majority vote, which will prevent Reid from bringing the Hagel nomination to the floor without first filing for cloture, which requires 60 votes to proceed to a final vote.

"It's not a filibuster. I don't want to use that word," Inhofe said.

It may be a distinction without a difference, but it's a distinction that GOP senators like [Arizona Republican John] McCain are prepared to embrace. McCain has repeatedly said he is opposed to filibustering Hagel but told The Cable Tuesday that he would vote against a cloture vote this week if the White House doesn't provide the information he has requested on the president's actions the night of the Benghazi attack.

"We need to know what the president's conversations were," McCain said. "I would vote no [on cloture] on Thursday [unless the information is provided]."

Graham is also opposed to a "filibuster" of Hagel, but told The Cable today he would place a "hold" on the Hagel nomination after the committee vote.

"I think the president has stonewalled the Congress on Benghazi. I think a lot of people are worried that we don't have all the information on Chuck Hagel," said Graham. "I'm not inclined to filibuster. I'm going to hold him and Reid is not going to not honor my hold and try to hold the vote on Thursday."

There are two Republicans who have said they support Hagel, Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Mike Johanns (R-NE). There are 55 Democrats.Are they all prepared to have an obviously tainted and unqualified nominee like this heading the Department of Defense? Do they really think so little of themselves and of the country?

We'll find out.

John McCain Seals The Deal For Hagel To Be Made SecDef

Yes, you have that right.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was making progress piecing together a bi-partisan coalition to filibuster the obviously unqualified Chuck Hagel's appointment as Secretary of defense when he ran into - who else- Senator John McCain:

“I do not believe that we should filibuster,” McCain told POLITICO. “To vote against is entirely the judgment of each individual senator, but a filibuster I think would be inappropriate.”

Asked if he would vote for cloture if a filibuster were mounted, McCain answered, “Yes.”

The White House and Democratic leadership are already confident that a solid majority exists for the Hagel to be confirmed on a simple majority vote. McCain’s opposition to a filibuster should make it easier to get the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture.

Senator McCain considers himself someone who is actually interested in America's defense, but that's absolutely impossible to square with this decision of his. The Democrats need 5 Republicans to vote for cloture to put Hagel's appointment to a simple majority vote, With McCain and Republican Senators Mike Johanns of Nebraska and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, they already have three.

I hope I'm wrong, but I stand by what I said when Hagel was first nominated...he was almost certain to be confirmed, along with John Brennan and John Kerry. So we're gong to wind up with a trifecta of appeasement oriented apparatchniks who support Islamists and like the president, figure that doing so along with creating daylight between America and Israel President Obama has spoken of wil but us peace and quiet.

Rest assured, it won't.

McCain ought to know better, but as I've said before he's a great American but a lousy and egotistical excuse for a Senator.

Committee vote on Hagel ought to come along around this Thursday.