Definitive Reading

*Cross-Posted at Mother of All Conservatives

Pelosi Briefed on Waterboarding in '02

Politico

Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding — but GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail ...

... In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk ...

... "In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.'"

Yes, back when we remembered what this country and its people meant to us.

Blackburn Challenges Gore's Motives

The Hill

Blackburn noted Gore's role as partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that invests in technology to address global warming.

Blackburn asked Gore if he stood to benefit financially from cap-and-trade legislation, which would force companies to reduce carbon emissions. Companies would likely turn to the kinds of technologies Kleiner Perkins helps develop.

"This bill is going to fundamentally change the way America works." Given the magnitude of those changes, I think it's really important that no suspicion or shadow fall on the foremost advocates of climate change legislation. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear the air about your motives and maybe set the record straight." ...

... BLACKBURN: Well, are, you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit?

GORE: Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I've been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there's something wrong with being active in business in this country?

No, Mr. Gore, we don't. That's called capitalism, and we know it works just fine. When it's based on fraudulent hype, however, it's called jail time. Well, at least for the rest of us.

Dem Congressman: 'Nobody In This Country Realizes That Cap-And-Trade is a Tax'

Breitbart

Obama Repeatedly Reminds House GOP of Their Zero Stimulus Votes

Huffington Post

In a meeting with House Republicans at the White House Thursday, President Obama reminded the minority that the last time he reached out to them, they reacted with zero votes -- twice -- for his stimulus package. And then he reminded them again. And again. And again.

A GOP source familiar with the meeting said that the president was extremely sensitive -- even "thin-skinned" -- to the fact that the stimulus bill received no GOP votes in the House. He continually brought it up throughout the meeting.

Obama also offered payback for that goose egg. A major overhaul of the health care system, he told the Republican leadership, would be done using a legislative process known as reconciliation, meaning that the GOP won't be able to filibuster it.

This post's alternate title: Barky Gets Snarky.

For Those of You Who Want the US to Become Another France

HillBuzz

All these people ever talk about is how they want to move to Italy, or to France, and take cooking classes or horse riding instruction or spaghetti harvesting workshops there. Because Europe is such a wonderful place and France and Italy, in particular, are so much better than America ...

... every time we think of France we think of a high school trip we took for college art and history credit, where half our fellow travelers had never been to Europe before and expected some sort of glamorous amusement park (the rest of us were more realistic, and knew what to expect in socialist countries). The transit workers were on strike in Paris at the time, so there was no transportation to speak of. Half of us lucked out and made it to the Louvre a day before a museum workers’ strike closed almost all the cultural sites around Paris. There very well may have been a garbage workers strike during that trip, too — or else the sanitation department’s job-for-life workers just couldn’t care enough about their positions to keep the streets we saw clean ...

... We’re not saying America is perfect or infallible, but it sure as Hell is worthy of our respect and appreciation. There’s a reason people keep wanting to immigrate here, and why they are not beating down the door to get into France and Italy ...

And now, it seems the French will have to wait for power to the people.

Obama's Economic Mirage

Real Clear Politics

This is hands-down one of the best articles I've read this week. I want to paste it on billboards, and hand it out on flyers at the grocery store while ringing a bell.

President Obama has made no secret of his vision for America's 21st century economy. We will lead the world in "green" technologies to stop global warming. Advancing medical breakthroughs will improve our well-being, control health spending and enable us to expand insurance coverage. These investments in energy and health care, as well as education, will revive the economy and create millions of well-paying new jobs for middle-class Americans.

It's a dazzling rhetorical vista that excites the young and fits the country's present mood, which blames "capitalist greed" for the economic crisis. Obama promises communal goals and a more widely shared prosperity. The trouble is that it may not work as well in practice as it does in Obama's speeches. Still, congressional Democrats press ahead to curb global warming and achieve near-universal health insurance. We should not be stampeded into far-reaching changes that have little to do with today's crisis.

Maybe He's Not Crazy, Maybe He's Just a Conservative

The irony of the gift of a Portugese water dog given to the Obamas by the man who watched a woman drown aside, the addition of "Bo" to the White House has seemed to be rather uneventful. You'll probably never hear these words from me again, but I actually feel sorry for Michelle Obama right now. She doesn't exactly seem like the animal-loving type, and I can't imagine what a monumental pain in the ass it must be to try to seem happy about having a spastic puppy tearing around. I mean, it's not like she actually has to take care of it or anything, I'm sure, but still.

While hosting a group of 100 children during Take Your Child to Work Day last week, Michelle told them that Bo is a "kind of crazy puppy" who likes to chew on people's feet.

Uh huh.

According to Mrs. Obama, Bo likes to keep his puppy groove on well into the night.

"It was like 10 o'clock. Everybody was asleep and we hear all this barking
and jumping around," Mrs. Obama said. "The president and I came out and we
thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo. He was playing with his
ball. And it was like there was another person in the house.

"He's kind of crazy, but he's still a puppy. So he likes to play a
lot," she said.

I'm sure that's standard protocol for the White House. When the President and/or his family thinks there might be an unknown person in the private chambers, they always go investigate for themselves. Kinda like the people who always get killed off first in horror movies.*

But maybe I'm underestimating Michelle. Heaven knows tens of millions of people underestimated how much damage her husband could do in 100 days. Maybe she's having the time of her life with a rambunctious four-legged toddler tearing around.

A dog like Bo needs a lot of exercise. I've heard the President has been taking him for walks, so maybe Michelle could partake in that activity to get a little more bonding time with the new member of the family.

She might not stay as dry as her husband though.

* That would be a JOKE, not a thinly veiled death wish for the Obamas, mmkay?

Brotherly Love

Not sure which I like more - the handshake or the bow.

Climate Legislation Catastrophe, Obamas Not New to Debt Mindset, and the Curtsy Heard 'Round the World

Cross-posted at Mother of All Conservatives

Climate Bill Could Trigger Lawsuit Landslide

The Washington Times

Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it - from beachfront property owners to asthmatics - for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.

Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers.

Um sorry, what?? "Expected to suffer"?? Guess what? I'm expecting to suffer from this economic mess my government got me (and my children) into. Think I'll be able to sue the likes of Bawney Frank and friends? Probably not. Maybe I can sue on behalf of my grandchildren. Heck, ACORN probably already has them registered to vote.

The Waxman-Markey blueprint, including the lawsuit provision, has just been released, and the Senate is drafting its own energy bill. But Mr. Waxman has set an accelerated schedule for passing the bill through his committee by Memorial Day and President Obama lists an energy overhaul bill as one of his top priorities.

An accelerated schedule for passing what's sure to be highly controversial legislation? You don't say.

Under the House bill, if a judge rules against the government, new rules would have to be drafted to alleviate the problems associated with climate change. If a judge rules against a company, the company would have to purchase additional "carbon emission allowances" through a cap-and-trade program that is to be created by Congress.

The measure sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring."

The Obama's Were in Debt -- And Now So Are We

American Thinker

An examination of the Obama’s finances show that they were living off lines of credit along with their salaries until 2005, when the book royalties came through and Michelle received her astonishing 260% pay raise at the University of Chicago.

This reexamination of the Obama’s finances was triggered by a Chicago Tribune story on whether the Obama’s should refinance their home in Chicago. In addition, it is tax time with tea parties and that is another good reason to take another look.

...

The Obamas were living beyond their means for several years according to an examination of their tax records and their mortgage documents.

In 2000, the first year that we have tax records, the Obamas had an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $240,505 and yet reported only a paltry $38 in interest, which indicates either a small savings account or interest on a checking account. In 2002 they reported $33 in interest and no interest in 2001, 2002 and 2004. This means there was virtually no savings account for those years. They were spending their entire income, plus whatever they had from lines of credit. During the five year period from 2000 to 2004, their combined AGI was $1,217,482.

It's little wonder the Obama Adminstration sees nothing wrong with this out of control spending. It would seem it's been their way of life all along.

The Nuclear Illusionist

The Wall Street Journal

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."

So declared President Obama Sunday in Prague regarding North Korea's missile launch, which America's U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice added was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions. At which point, the Security Council spent hours debating its nonresponse, thus proving to nuclear proliferators everywhere that rules aren't binding, violations won't be punished, and words of warning mean nothing.

Rarely has a Presidential speech been so immediately and transparently divorced from reality as Mr. Obama's in Prague. The President delivered a stirring call to banish nuclear weapons at the very moment that North Korea and Iran are bidding to trigger the greatest proliferation breakout in the nuclear age. Mr. Obama also proposed an elaborate new arms-control regime to reduce nuclear weapons, even as both Pyongyang and Tehran are proving that the world's great powers lack the will to enforce current arms-control treaties.

...

The President went even further in Prague, noting that "as a nuclear power -- as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon -- the United States has a moral responsibility to act." That barely concealed apology for Hiroshima is an insult to the memory of Harry Truman, who saved a million lives by ending World War II without a bloody invasion of Japan. As for the persuasive power of "moral authority," we should have learned long ago that the concept has no meaning in Pyongyang or Tehran, much less in the rocky hideouts of al Qaeda.

The truth is that Mr. Obama's nuclear vision has reality exactly backward. To the extent that the U.S. has maintained a large and credible nuclear arsenal, it has prevented war, defeated the Soviet Union, shored up our alliances and created an umbrella that persuaded other nations that they don't need a bomb to defend themselves.

Okay, So Obama Didn't Bow -- He Curtsied

by Oliver North at HumanEvents.com

Proving, once again, that the American public will buy whatever the Obama White House is selling, the spin over the bow-that-wasn't-a-bow may be nothing more than yet another distraction to keep us talking about ANYTHING other than the bigger issues at hand. I'm just waiting for the announcement that Billy Mays and the ShamWow guys have cabinet positions. Chances are, they probably even paid their taxes.

Whatever it was, the Arab press applauded the moment as servile -- and in keeping with the administration’s “apologize for America first” message. Given what else happened this week, the incident may turn out to be as trivial as giving the Queen of England a Chinese-made i-Pod as a gift from the American people.

While Obama was basking in the adulation of carefully selected Euro-crowds, and genuflecting to foreign potentates (or simply “bending, because he is so tall”), other really bad things were happening. The North Koreans defied his warnings of “severe consequences” and test-launched a long-range Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. In Tehran, the ayatollahs ignored his utopian plea for “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and claim to have turned on 7,000 more centrifuges to refine Uranium. Somali pirates “dissed” his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world” and hijacked an American-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

...

More telling than the vacuous hot air blowing from London, Prague, Ankara, Baghdad and Washington was the defense budget presented this week. It assures adversaries and allies alike that we will be unprepared to fight a serious adversary in the future. Hollow talk, empty oratory and impossible dreams are now commonplace in American politics, but the O-Team’s Euro-Expedition may have set a new foreign fantasy record. Actions speak louder than words -- no matter how flowery the rhetoric.

...

Genocidal despots -- like those ruling in Pyongyang and Tehran -- have never cowered in fear of a non-binding U.N. Security Council resolution because they know that the U.N. has raised irrelevance to a new art form. They do, however, pay attention to reality -- like what we’re buying to defend ourselves.

Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after Obama described the North Korean “provocation” and Iran’s “dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons,” his defense budget revealed how seriously he takes those and other threats. The O-Team intends to reduce our ability to project power overseas and to protect the American people from nuclear attack.

U.S. May Enlist Small Investors in Bank Bailout

The New York Times

I'm just certain there's a joke in here somewhere.

During World War I, Americans were exhorted to buy Liberty Bonds to help their soldiers on the front.

Now, it seems, they will be asked to come to the aid of their banks — with the added inducement of possibly making some money for themselves.

As part of its sweeping plan to purge banks of troublesome assets, the Obama administration is encouraging several large investment companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds.

The idea is that these investments, akin to mutual funds that buy stocks and bonds, would give ordinary Americans a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars. But there is another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats.

The FBI InfraGuard reports on Obama's Eligibility

FBI InfraGuard warns of a crescendo of public concern over Obama's eligibility




Tasked by the FBI to provide "informational analysis" on conditions which could be construed as potentially harmful to civil order and national security, InfraGard, of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), issued an unclassified Protective Intelligence Communication report in March 2009 regarding the "crescendo" of public concern about Obama's presidential eligibility.

Authored by Dr. Lyle J. Rapacki, Protective Intelligence Specialist and Agent, the report summarizes the substance of legal challenges to Obama on the question of his constitutional eligibility and concludes that if it "should be discovered Mr. Obama is ineligible, a constitutional crisis would ensue attempting to determine which of his executive branch orders should be valid." It goes on to warn that "if...Mr. Obama fights revealing his documentation, there is growing concern of civil unrest, or worse, being unleashed in the streets of our nation. The economic crisis coupled with this type of a constitutional crisis could prove to be a flashpoint that would test conventional law enforcement and elements of homeland security."

The stream of law suits, the most recent of which have been tendered by high ranking military officers and state legislators, to compel Obama to prove his eligibility have been unremitting and increasingly vocal. A request for "quo warranto" action, an apparent last-ditch legal remedy, was recently delivered to both the US Attorney for the District of Columbia and to the Attorney General.

Dovetailing with this unsettling assessment, and pretty much out of public view, are the following national security developments which, in their totality, could well signal acute domestic instability in the period ahead.

Upon the recommendation of the Army's Strategic Studies Institute, The Army Times reported that a somewhat euphemistically dubbed "Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF)," currently the role of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, but which, reportedly, might eventually comprise upwards of 80,000 troops, is being trained and readied to deal with what could be widespread civil disorder resulting from an "unforeseen economic collapse" or "loss of a functional political and legal order." (Note from Lizzi: I have not been able to find this Army Times report online to link or authenticate. If you have it, please post it in the comments.)

Symptomatic of festering civil unrest are the many "tea parties" springing up around the country, growing fears of economic disintegration and of both crippling terrorist attacks and even of perceived federal overreaching. Add to this the very real threat of a rogue nuclear EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack on the homeland which could instantaneously reduce the country to a paralytic pre-industrial condition, plus the unrest on our southern border, and there appears to be ample and justifiable cause for concern and appropriate contingency planning at every level of government. (H/T DefendUSx)

From the white paper memorandum:

Beginning as campaign rhetoric, the question of Barak Obama’s legal status as a citizen of the United States of America qualified to serve as President, is moving toward a crescendo that might be heard formally by the United States Supreme Court. Downplayed by many, including U.S. Senators on the Republican side and even Senators serving on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as late as Friday of last week, a significant meeting occurred last Thursday, March 12th in Idaho. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was speaking before a large audience (800 in attendance, including the President of the Idaho State Bar Association) on the character of Abraham Lincoln, when attorney Orly Taitz of Mission Viejo, California came to the microphone and asked the Chief Justice if he would personally review a legal brief and a complaint signed by over 325,000 American citizens as to the Constitutionality of Barak Obama’s swearing-in as President. Chief Justice Roberts personally agreed to review the legal brief and the complaint saying such in front of the audience.

...

Should it be discovered Mr. Obama is ineligible, a constitutional crisis would ensue attempting to determine which of his executive branch orders should be valid. If, however, this case continues and Mr. Obama fights revealing his documentation, there are growing concerns of civil unrest, or worse, being unleashed in the streets of our nation. The economic crisis coupled with this type of a constitutional crisis could prove to be a “flashpoint” that would test conventional law enforcement and elements of homeland security.

Read the full report here.

Obama's Fantasy Foreign Policy

And to think liberals were critical/concerned about Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience....

If the Rest of the World Can See it ... Why Can't You?

Obama Wants to Control the Banks
There's a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money.

Via Wall Street Journal

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.

Read the rest here.