Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has posted an editorial today about the hate crimes legislation that is working its way through Congress.  He points out that the particular crimes that inspired the law were already illegal, and the people who committed them were either jailed or executed.  Adding ‘hate’ to the charges really won’t make a difference–the victims are still dead and the people who committed the crime are still in jail.

Mr. Jacoby states in his editorial:

“Hate-crime laws serve a symbolic function, not a practical one: They proclaim that crimes fueled by certain types of bias are especially repugnant. But that is the same as proclaiming that crimes fueled by other types of bias, or by motives having nothing to do with bias, are not quite as awful. Is that a message any decent society should wish to promote?”

He also points out that the proposed law would make it possible that a person who committed a ‘hate crime’ would be tried at the federal level as well as at the state level.  This is illegal under the US Constitution–the Fifth Amendment’s protects against double jeopardy.

This law is another example of Congress and ‘the law of unintended consequences’.  What they might have meant to do was to point out how horrible crimes which are the result of bigotry or hate are.  What they have done instead is to inject the federal government into local law enforcement issues and ignore the Constitution.

Mr. Jacoby ends his editorial with this thought: 

“The best hate-crimes bill Congress can pass is none at all. But if we are going to have such laws, why limit them to only four, or eight, categories of victims? Let Congress expand the pending legislation to include every crime of violence – regardless of the attacker’s motive, or of the group the victim belonged to. Murders, rapes, aggravated assaults, let us learn to see them all as crimes of “hate” – not the criminal’s hate for his victim, but society’s hate for the crime.”

I agree. 

Coming soon to a DVD player near you Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus.  This is a link to the trailer on YouTube.  This is a horror movie I might be able to sit through, it looks so completely ridiculous that I think I’d be too busy laughing to be scared!  Check out the trailer at the link!  The release date is May 19th.

According to Politico, Richard Umbdenstock, President of the American Hospital Association said Thursday that the agreement on reducing healthcare spending had been misrepresented by the White House.  According to the article:

“But in a conference call Thursday, President Richard Umbdenstock told 230 member organizations that the agreement had been misrepresented. The groups, he said, had agreed to gradually ramp up to the 1.5 percentage-point target over 10 years — not to reduce spending by that much in each of the 10 years.”

This may simply be a misunderstanding, but it is important.  We were lead to believe that the healthcare meeting at the White House was a wonderful unified meeting that accomplished laying the foundation for going ahead with improving our healthcare (read as socialized medicine).  That is not true, and many healthcare workers are concerned about what nationalizing healthcare will mean. 

If you are interested in seeing what nationalized healthcare brings to the countries currently using it, please see THE COST OF FREE GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE at the American Thinker website.  If you are under forty and healthy, it may work for you, but if you are over forty and have any serious health issues, it will probably do you more harm than good.

I’m sure almost everyone in the world would like to see peace in the Middle East (I’m sure there are a few terrorists that may be the exception–they want to see peace–but only after the country of Israel is destroyed).  But let’s not let the desire for peace overrule common sense.  The Associated Press (hosted by google) is reporting that Jordan’s king, King Abdullah II, is urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to the establishment of a Palestinian state as a way to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.  It sounds nice.  It sounds fair, but the historical record does not show that the idea will work. 

When Israel gave up it’s land and the greenhouses which provided income to the residents of the land, the Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses.  When international organizations gave humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, they spent it on guns and rockets.  They used their new land as a base to launch rockets into Israel.  It has been documented that in the last war with Israel, the Palestinians used civilians as shields to make Israel look as if it were committing human rights violations.  The charges of ‘war crimes’ were investigated, and Israel was cleared.  Why in the world do we think the Palestinians, if given their own country, will let Israel live in peace?

The American Thinker posted an article on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict recently.  It points out that:

“Shortly after the conclusion of the First World War and the total defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which had ruled most of the Middle East for 400 years, Britain was made trustee by the League of Nations for the whole of the geographical area known as Mandatory Palestine. Incorporated within the Mandate was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which specifically referred to the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the moral validity of reconstituting within it the Jewish National Home.

 

The British Mandatory power, however, arbitrarily tore away 80% of the Palestine Mandate in 1921 giving it to the Hashemites, a Bedouin tribe with links to Mecca. Only the land west of the River Jordan remained from the original territory promised to the Jewish people as a National Home.”

There is a fairly detailed account of the dustup between the CIA and Nancy Pelosi in tomorrow’s Washington Times.  Basically, it’s becoming a ‘he said, she said’ story.  Unfortunately, I suspect there is much more to come.  There are a few things to remember here.  First, it is not a good idea to get into a fight with the CIA–they keep very detailed records and have been known to leak things that are to their advantage.  They are quite capable of strongly inflencing public opinion by what they leak and when they leak it.  To accuse them of lying is rather foolish.  Second, to anyone who actually believes that this will be the end of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, remember–it’s different with the Democrat party–she’ll be there as long as the Democrat party has the majority.  I would love to be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.  In this matter, because President Obama released the ‘torture’ memos, the Democrats have formed a circular firing squad, I suggest that someone yell, “Fire!”.

The Detroit News ran an article today about a $900,000 ‘green’ house owned by the City of Troy which was built to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot.  The house was built with no electrical or gas hookups to prove that it is possible to build an entirely ‘green’ house.  What happened next shows what happens when people use new technology without taking into consideration the need for backup systems.

The house has never opened to the public.  The pipes froze in the winter, causing  $16,000 in damage to floors.  According to the article:

“Jeff Biegler, superintendent of parks for the city, said the flooding occurred from a glitch in the heater.

“The system was designed to kick a heater on to keep water from freezing,” Biegler said. “The heater drew all reserve power out of the battery causing the system to back down and the pipes froze.””

There is an alternate explanation cited in the article:

Joe Veryser, an associate dean of architecture at the university, said he heard otherwise.

“What I heard repeatedly was that somebody turned off the breaker during the winter and forgot to turn it back on, which caused the pipes to freeze and then break.”

Either way, we have a way to go before we can build an affordable, practical, working ‘green’ house, and as we hear all the ruckus about using energy, we need to keep that fact in mind.  Most Americans cannot afford a $900,000 house, particularly one where the pipes freeze. 

If you haven’t ssen the picture yet, please click on the link to NBCDFW News.  Zachary Boyd was sleeping when someone opened fire on his base in Afghanistan, and he didn’t have time to put on his uniform or boots.  The front page of Tuesday’s New York Times has a picture of him fighting the taliban in pink boxer shorts that say I ‘heart’ NY.  Sometimes it really doesn’t matter what you wear, you just have to do something now!

Judicial Watch and Power Line have recent posts on the October 13, 2008, government meeting with the major banks which allowed the government to take $250 billion equity stakes.  Through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request, Judicial Watch has obtained some of the major documents relating to that meeting.  The documents show Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, FDIC Chairman Shelia Blair, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke co-hosted the meeting with Paulson.

There is a lot here–pressure put on the banks–opting out was not allowed, making sure the poeple who feared ‘nationalizing the banks’ were kept quiet, and notifying the Presidential candidates (but not able to reach McCain).  The situation is frightening, but the fact that without Judicial Watch’s FOIA Request we would know none of this is even more frightening.

Please follow both links and read both articles.  We are on a runaway train here, and the only way to stop it is for people to be informed about what is happening behind the scenes.

My favorite climate-change information site, wattsupwiththat.com, has the story on the memo leaked by the Office of Management and Budget showing that Carbon Dioxide has ‘no demonstrated direct health effects’.  Whoops!  The memo states:

“An EPA finding last month that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health rests on dubious assumptions and could have negative economic impacts, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) warned.

The memo has no listed author but is marked “Deliberative-Attorney Client Privilege.” A spokesman for OMB told Dow Jones Newswires that the brief is a “conglomeration of counsel we’ve received from various agencies” about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The author(s) of the memo suggest the EPA did not thoroughly examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and human health.

“In the absence of a strong statement of the standards being applied in this decision, there is concern that EPA is making a finding based on…’harm’ from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects,” the memo says, adding that the “scientific data that purports to conclusively establish” that link was from outside EPA.”

If there is no danger from Carbon Dioxide, why regulate it or tax it?  Please follow the link to the entire article.  There is a video and a chart to add to the discussion!!

One of the hallmarks of a free economy is the ability to achieve anything you desire based on your own ability and talent.  That’s why celebrities are paid so much more than the rest of us.  That is why people work hard to get an education that goes past the minimum requirement.  That is also why financial risk takers are highly rewarded–they take financial risks.  It’s called incentive.  It is also a part of human nature that people will work harder if they know they will be rewarded for it.  That is part of what keeps an economy growing–people willing to take risks and people being rewarded for hard work and risk taking.  I challenge you to find someone with an income over $225,000 per year (I believe that’s Obama’s latest target for increased taxes) who works a simple forty-hour week.  Anyway, that is part of the foundation of our economy.

The free economy is about to be challenged.  Yesterday’s American Thinker published an article by Rick Moran stating the following:

“At the same time, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) is working on legislation that could strengthen the government’s ability both to monitor compensation and to curb incentives that threaten a company’s viability or pose a systemic risk to the economy.

Among ideas being discussed are Fed rules that would curb banks’ ability to pay employees in a way that would threaten the “safety and soundness” of the bank — such as paying loan officers for the volume of business they do, not the quality. The administration is also discussing issuing “best practices” to guide firms in structuring pay.”

This is the beginning of government wage controls.  I wonder what impact that will have on people vying for admission to some of our more prestigious colleges.  If you can’t make enough money to pay your $60,000 a year tuition, are you willing to pay the tuition?  The economy will thrive if the government restraints are taken off.  Any restraints on capitalism need to come from individual morality and ethics.  Maybe that is where we need to make the change. 

Power Line posted an article yesterday on what has been happening in Iraq as we begin to focus on Afghanistan.  Remember how the Democrats squawked about how we took our eye off of Afghanistan and went to Iraq.  They are doing that in reverse now.  We had pretty much won in Iraq by January of this year, and now things are going downhill rapidly.  No one believes we are serious about supporting freedom in that country.  April of this year was the worse month for Iraqi deaths since July of 2008, when that number was rapidly dropping.  The number of deaths in April numbered twice what the January and February number was.  The article reports:

“Moreover, the Washington Post reports that the al Qaeda pipeline from Syria is “back in business” after a “lull.”

“None of this is surprising. With the U.S. disengaging militarily, Iraqi militias, insurgents, etc. have every reason to become emboldened and to begin jockeying for an enhanced military position. And with President Obama taking a soft line on Syria (and, indeed, exploring a “dialogue” with that terror supporting state), the Syrians no longer have much reason to fear paying a price for promoting instability in Iraq.”

Nancy Pelosi has promised that we will pay an intense political role as we diminish our military presence.  This is the same sort of thinking that Democrats used when they cut the funding to South Vietnam and the country fell (after they had essentially won their freedom).  There is a book out by the commander of the North Vietnam forces that tells the story of how the Vietnam War was won by America, then given away to North Vietnam.  The killing fields followed.  If President Obama does not begin to realize who America’s friends are and who America’s enemies are, we will have another killing field in Iraq.  We will also have an exposion of terrorism in this country and around the world.

According to yesterday’s Washington Post, the John P. Murtha-Johnstown airport (in Johnstown, Pennsylvania) will receive $800,000 in stimulus funds to repave the airport’s alternate runway.  According to the article:

“The Washington Post reported last month on more than $150 million in federal funds that Murtha directed to the airport, which has six arriving and departing flights per day. Among the improvements, Murtha directed the Pentagon to give the airport a new, $8 million, state-of-the-art radar tower that has not been used since it was built in 2004, and $30 million for a new runway and tarmac so the airport could handle large military planes and become an emergency military base in case of crisis.”

If we ever want to have an accountable government in Washington, we need term limits.  This is ridiculous.  To spend this kind of money on an airport that has six flights a day is insane.  If they need to repave the alternate runway, they need to find the money to do it themselves!

I am not a big fan of Donald Trump, but I am impressed with the way he handled this one.  According to Politico.com, this is the comment he made on her answer to the question regarding gay marriage:

“It’s the same answer that the president of the United States gave,” Trump said. “She gave an honorable answer. She gave an answer from her heart.”

I am impressed.  That is the wisdom of Solomon.  If you condemn her, you have to condemn the President, whom the press loves.  However, (there’s always a however) I want to take another look at the whole dust-up.

Miss California was a contestant in a beauty pageant–this was not a political talk show.  She answered graciously and gently that her personal view of marriage was the traditional one.  The majority of Americans agree with her.  Her state just passed a law stating that belief.  She has been treated very badly on the blog of the judge who asked the question.  She has been accused of all manor of things, and generally, has not been treated kindly by the press.  An innocent, honest comment has put her in a spotlight she was not seeking.  This incident shows how people with unpopular (unpopular in the press) beliefs are currently being treated by the press.  It is a subtle intimidation.  We are walking down a road that is in danger of being patrolled by thought police.

Thank you, Donald Trump, for standing up for free speech, because that is what I believe you did today!

The Washington Times has a story this morning about a letter from the U.S. government to Great Britain stating:

“If it is determined that [her majesty’s government] is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in the future.”

The U. S. government is upset with the British because they are preparing to release a summary of the treatment of Binyam Mohamed at Guantanamo (a prisoner who was released in February).  Some things we need to remember–part of terrorist training is to say that you have been (or are being) abused as soon as you can get to the press, the Red Cross and the Department of Defense both determined that prisoners at Guantanamo were treated fairly.  Mr. Mohamed says he was tortured while in U.S., Pakistani and Moroccan custody.

This is the can of worms President Obama opened when he released the ‘torture memos’.  He has still refused to release the memos that show the plots that were prevented because of ‘enhanced interrogation’.  Mr. Mohamed and others have filed a civil lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, which is accused of supplying the equipment and personnel used to transport prisoners among nations.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that the ACLU is representing Mr. Mohamed in this case.

I would also like to point out that with the Obama Administration in place, our enemies are being treated better than our friends.  Israel is being thrown under the bus in favor of Iran, and Britain has not been treated well from the beginning.  Promises made to allies to help with missle defense are being broken.  Right now it does not pay to be a friend of America.

I apologize in advance to people who are reading this who don’t do numbers, but that is the easiest way to explain what is about to be attempted in regard to American healthcare.  My statistics come from an article at National Review written by John C. Goodman.

The article begins by discussing the cost of healthcare in America.  The author points out that raw statistics on the dollar amount spend are misleading.  For example, some other countries use to government to limit the income of doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel–that makes the cost of healthcare in their country look smaller–people are paying less–but actually, part of the reason for the lower cost is the people who are paid less because of government intervention.

The results of American healthcare are more positive than where healthcare is run by the government.  According to the article:

“The largest international study to date found that the five-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women was higher in the U.S. than in Europe.”

In discussing accessibility of healthcare in America, the article points out:

“Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners per capita as the U.S., and one-third as many MRI scanners. The rate at which the British provide coronary-bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds the U.S. rate. The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients between the ages of 45 and 84, and nine times higher for patients 85 years or older…Studies show that only 5 percent of Americans wait more than four months for surgery, compared with 23 percent of Australians, 26 percent of New Zealanders, 27 percent of Canadians, and 36 percent of Britons.”

In the area of preventive care, Americans also fare better than government programs in other countries.  For example, in Canada proportion of middle-aged who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the U.S., and three times as many Canadian women as American women have never had a Pap smear.  The article further states:

“…the mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent higher for breast cancer, 18 percent higher for prostate cancer, and 13 percent higher for colorectal cancer. In addition, while half of all diabetics have high blood pressure, it is controlled in 36 percent of U.S. cases, compared with only 9 percent of cases in Canada.”

The article has further statistics on access to healthcare in America and the role of wealth in healthcare in America and in other countries. 

The bottom line is simple.  We have very good healthcare in this country that is generally available to all citizens.  There is room for improvement, but a government-controlled system is not improvement.  I know it is being said that private healthcare will remain, but that is a myth.  As soon as the government begins to pressure healthcare providers to charge less under its system, private insurance will be forced to raise its prices to make up for the difference in cost and will be driven from the marketplace.  I would also like to remind everyone reading this about the history of the cost of government programs.  None of them ever decrease in cost.  I live in Massachusetts, the last estimate I heard on the cost of the ‘big dig’ (the new traffic routing system in Boston) was that it would eventually cost about $22 billion dollars.  When it was started, we were told it would cost $2.8 billion.  I have one final question.  “What has the government ever done really well?

The videos of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner are all over the internet.  If you choose to watch a video, it won’t be hard to find.  I am not going to link to one–I find the comments made not deserving of repetition.  One of the shortest and to-the-point comments on the dinner can be found at The Corner at National Review.  It is a simple review of the evening by Jonah Goldberg.  The only thing I would add is that President Obama promised to bring civility back to politics in Washington, D. C.  The comments made at this dinner were a definite step in the opposite direction.  There should be an apology issued from the White House–wishing your political opponents a slow, painful death is neither civil or funny.  It is sad that the Democrat party will not call out its supporters when they cross the line of civilized behavior.

Today’s New York Post has posted a commentary by John Bolton about the possible prosecution of members of the George Bush administration by the Spanish government.  The lawyers in the Bush Administration are being charged with torture for using ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ on terrorists.  President Obama has done nothing to stop this and has made no negative comments that I am aware of about what is happening here.  According to the article: 

“Despite uncertainties here, developments overseas proceed apace. Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzon recently opened a formal probe of six Bush administration lawyers for their roles in advising on interrogation techniques. Garzon did so over the objections of Spain’s attorney general. Under Spain’s inquisitorial judicial system, Garzon is essentially unaccountable, whatever the views of the elected government.”

There is a danger here to American sovereignty.  Do we want governments of other countries second-guessing our President’s decisions?  The aim of this investigation is to intimidate American leaders into not making the hard decisions that need to be made to keep our country safe.  Remember, the Spanish people are not heroes in the war on terror.  As soon as they suffered a horrific terror attack in March of 2004, they withdrew their troops from Afghanistan and essentially withdrew from the war on terror.  All of us in the western world need to be aware that the only way we will defeat terrorism is to act in unity.  The goal of the rather small percentage of Muslims who are terrorists is to bring the entire world under Muslim control (Sharia law).  That impacts all western countries–not just us.

What President Obama needs to remember is that the same Spanish court that is going after President Bush will come after him in four or eight years.  America, and only America has the right to make decisions on how to protect our country from terrorism.

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an op-ed piece by Vaclav Havel was the president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.  Today the United Nations General Assembly will vote to fill the vacancies on the 47-member Human Rights Council.   According to the article:

“Only 20 countries are running for 18 open seats. The seats are divided among the world’s five geographic regions and three of the five regions have presented the same number of candidates as there are seats, thus ensuring there is no opportunity to choose the best proponents of human rights each region has to offer.”

Three years ago, the UN made a commitment to create an organization able to protect victims and confront human rights abuses wherever they occur.  The original United Nations Commission on Human Rights was ended in 2006 because it had allowed countries who committed human rights violations to block any action on them.  This new Council was supposed to take human rights records into account when voting for members.  However, the new Council includes Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia.  I guess they didn’t reach their goal.

I admire the good will of the writer toward the UN, but considering the UN track record on human rights, I see no reason to expect things to change.  Unfortunately, the UN no longer stands for freedom and does not uphold democracy and human rights.  I think it is time to ask the UN to give its building back to the people of New York City and move elsewhere.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line has an interesting article on the fact that the Obama Administration (like the Bush Administration) is not willing to take action to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.  That’s where the resemblance ends.

This week Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoelle asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  It is suspected that Israel has had nuclear weapons for some time, and the idea here is to say that because Israel has nuclear weapons it is ok for Iran to have them.  Nice idea, but it doesn’t line up with the facts.  Israel has never questioned Iran’s right to exist and has never threatened to blow Iran off the face of the earth.  Ahmadinejad of Iran does both frequently.

President Obama has stated that until the Palestinians have their state, he is not willing to tackle the problem of Iranian nuclear weapons.  Evidently he feels that with a new terrorist state in place right beside Israel, the nuclear weapons issue will solve itself.  Sure.  A two-state solution for Israel and Palestine would be a good idea if the Palestinians were willing to form a functioning state with a functioning government.  So far they have destroyed infrastructure that would have generated income rather than increase it.  They have used the money they have received in foreign aid to buy weapons and they have chosen not to function as a state.  Why do we think giving them more land and calling them a state is going to change that?  Future behavior can be predicted based on past behavior.   Anyone who has raised children knows that.

My prediction on this is very simple.  At some point in the near future Iran will have nuclear weapons, and it will use them on Israel (and if they can develop a delivery method, on the US).  Unless Israel takes out their reactors, this will happen.  If Israel takes out their reactors, the civilized world will condemn Isreal while secretly breathing a sigh of relief.  That’s where we are.

Yesterday’s UK Telegraph ran an article with the headline “Barack Obama’s rich supporters fear his tax plans show he’s a class warrior.”  No kidding.  The article goes on to say that wealthy businessmen and investors supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and now are surprised by his anti-Wall Street rhetoric.  One hedgefund manager who was a top fundraiser for the Obama campaign commented that the rhetoric was OK on the campaign trail, but now we are in the real world. 

Part of this has to do with the American media, but part of it has to do with the American voters.  President Obama made no secret during his campaign that he wanted to ‘return America’s wealth to its rightful owners’.  That alone should have told businessmen all they needed to know.  There is nothing in that statement about earning wealth or creating businesses that generate it–it is just about transferring wealth.

The article also points out:

“Mr Obama made no secret of his plans to raise taxes on the “working rich” (individuals earning more than $200,000) by imposing a top income tax rate of almost 40 per cent, and there is little surprise that those plans remain on track, even during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

But Democratic opposition is building in Congress to many of the President’s proposals. A plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable gifts by richer people may have to be scrapped, because the charitable sector – which includes hospitals, museums and voluntary service groups – depends heavily on tax-deducted donations.”

The tax hikes were all discussed during the Presidential campaign.  For whatever reason, Americans chose to ignore the fact that historically raising taxes in a recession deepens the recession.  President Obama spent $787 billion on the stimulus package and passed a $3.5 trillion budget through Congress.  He has to find a way to pay for these things.  Corporations are going to bear the brunt of this burden and consumer prices and unemployment will increase as these corporations pay higher taxes.  Meanwhile, he has found jobs for 800 people–they will be working for the IRS to make sure everyone pays his fair share of the tax burden.

I don’t have buyer’s remorse–I didn’t vote for the man, but I suspect it’s going to be a long four years! 

According to a German newspaper, Deutsche Welle, German Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has stated that Washington has not provided him with enough information for him to act on resettling Guantanamo inmates in Germany.  Washington had asked German to resettle nine Chinese Muslims (Uighurs) held at Guantanamo.  We are not willing to send them back to China for fear that they will be killed or tortured.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann is opposed to taking in any of the Uighur detainees.  The article goes on to explain:

“…security intelligence showed seven of the nine Uighurs reportedly being considered for resettlement in Germany had been trained in camps of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and had contacts to militant Islamist organisations.”

These are the terrorists President Obama originally wanted to release in northern Virginia and provide financial aid for their resettlement.  Is it any surprise that the countries of the world are not interested in bringing trained terrorists into their country? 

There are two options in dealing with captured terrorists (men that you are sure are trained terrorists)–you can kill them on the spot or you can ship them to Guantanamo where they cannot do any damage to innocent civilians.  If you close down Guantanamo, you are going to see more terrorists shot in combat situations rather than taken prisoner.  No country with an eye for its own safety and the safety of its civilian population is going to want to take in a person who is known to have terrorist training. 

James C. Capretta & Yuval Levin at The Weekly Standard have published a very detailed explanation of what is in store for us if President Obama’s healthcare program is passed.  The basics of the program seem harmless, but the consequences are not.

1.  Employers would be required to provide healthcare for employees of pay a fine.  The money paid as a fine would be used to support the creation of a new government-run insurance option.  They would be setting up the mechanics for people without jobs or the money for private health insurance to obtain it.  So far, so good.  This is for the purpose of transition.  The idea here is to make it cheaper for an employer to pay the fine than to provide health insurance, thus phasing out private coverage.  This creates more people opting for the public plans.  It gives the illusion of choice while quietly making the choice more difficult to fund.

2.  The Obama plan puts the government in charge of deciding what healthcare is appropriate for whom.  This is dangerous.  The statistic you need to look at before deciding on government healthcare is the cancer survival rate in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.  Those statistics tell us all we need to know.

The summation of the article states:

“Conservatives can make it clear they support reform. But they must make it even clearer that the Democrats’ plan would displace tens of millions of happily insured Americans and exacerbate the worst elements of the current system: gross inefficiency, high costs, and bureaucracy. President Obama and his congressional allies are pursuing a mammoth, complex, hugely expensive, ill-designed reform that is not likely to be popular when understood. Conservatives have a very real chance at stopping it if they highlight its key weaknesses and supply a superior alternative.”

Government healthcare will eventually hurt us all.  We need to oppose it early and often!!

Michael Barone posted an article at Real Clear Politics yesterday about the Chrysler bankruptcy.  He talked about bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria, who has gone public about the pressure the White House has put on one of his clients to agree to terms in this backruptcy that were detrimental to that firms investors.  The sticking point is that the agreement that President Obama wants would give the secured creditors of Chrysler about 33 cents on the dollar while giving the unsecured creditors (the United Auto Workers retirees) 50 cents on the dollar. 

One of the basic principles of bankruptcy law is that secured creditors (who loaned money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they’d get specific property back)  get paid off in full before unsecured creditors get anything.  Michael Barone states in his article:

“Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.”

This is illegal.  It is against the law.  The administration has already begun to denouce the bondholders who have not gone along with this proposed illegal agreement.  This is an abuse of Presidential power and needs to be dealt with quickly.  Hopefully the bankruptcy judge will choose to follow the law and the Constitution (which he and the President have sworn to uphold).

Scott Johnson at Power Line has the summation of the Nancy Pelosi denial of knowledge of waterboarding at his website. He references the Washington Post report:

“Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.”

There is no seeming contradiction–her repeated statements do not line up with the hard facts.  Either the evidence or her explanation is untrue.  This is the link to the photocopies of the meeting’s agenda at Politico.com.

The ruckus about prosecuting the lawyers who advised President Bush is dying down–has anyone other than the blogosphere noticed that President Obama has decided to continue those ‘controversial’ policies.  (See yesterday’s post at rightwinggranny.com).

If you are reading this and not feeling manipulated by the media and the anti-Bush people, you are not paying attention.  Power Line has the summation and updates on the entire sorry situation.  This is not just a normal Congressional lie–this is a bit of political theatre that has been very damaging to our country’s national security.  National security used to be a non-partisan issue, to politicize it is foolish and will eventually hurt all of us.