As previously reported here Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama both claimed ignorance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives programs called Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious that walked guns across the Mexican border. Some of those guns were found at the scene of a shootout where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

A little digging by Andrew Breitbart’s site, Big Government, turns up this clip that says that Holder and Obama not only knew about these programs but ordered that more be done.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNhYk9NuNc&feature=player_embedded

Attorney General Eric Holder’s act of befuddlement whenever he testifies before Congress is wearing thin. He wants to prosecute the CIA agents who interrogate terrorists, he doesn’t want to prosecute Black Panthers who intimidate voters. He wants to prosecute KSM in civilian court, he wants to sue Arizona for trying to protect itself from being overrun by illegal immigrants, but he doesn’t want to read Arizona’s ten page law beforehand.

This could be Obama’s Watergate. Kudos to Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley for keeping the bright light of open government focused on this issue.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

On the one side you have Barack Obama. On the other side you have a field of candidates who are fighting for the chance to take him on one to one. In that field of candidates there is a woman, with another in the wings, a black, and a number of white males with a great depth of experience. With Herman Cain saying, while embracing some Tea Party members, “To those who say the Tea Party is racist, eat your words.” The Democrats are desperate to find another way to create class warfare and divide and conquer. At the New Hampshire debate last night, they may have found their opening.

The moderator asked Herman Cain a question about a statement attributed to him that he would not hire any Muslims in his administration but, and here is the classic Democrat wedge, he would not apply any similar test to Christians or Jews. Cain, I believe, fumbled the question but he was picked up by Newt Gingrich who said, ““Now, I just want to go out on a limb here, I’m in favor of saying to people, ‘If you’re not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration, period. ‘” He then went on to compare that to similar tests for Nazis and Communists in earlier times.

Why Only Muslims?

Where Herman Cain dropped the ball was in not turning the question around and asking, “What other religious groups have members who have pledged to kill Americans, or any group for that matter? If you can point that out, I will add them to the list that needs closer scrutiny before joining my administration.” To back up what Gingrich said I need only point to Major Nidal Hasan. As a member of the military he had to take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Having taken that oath he later opened fire on his fellow Army personnel killing thirteen and wounding thirty others. On his business cards he had the abbreviation SoA, meaning soldier of Allah. His higher loyalty was to Allah and jihad, rather than to the Constitution of the United States.

This is what Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich were talking about. They would not want such an individual in their cabinet, and why would they? To be politically correct? To apply the one-size-fits-all idiocy of the current administration and those on the left? Do we want to have anti-American jihadists in the administration that could compromise national security, endanger CIA field officers, tip off battle plans in the war on terror? Of course not.

So let’s nip this potential wildfire in the bud. Let’s not use the same stupid political correctness that performs body cavity searches on infants and gropes septuagenarian ladies at the airport, while skipping young men from the Middle East because the quota for scrutinizing young men from the Middle East has been reached. This is the thinking that will get Americans killed. But don’t look to the left to adopt policies that would put safety ahead of scoring political points.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Have we tired sufficiently of the ruling class on Mount Olympus, er, Capitol Hill? Instead of citizen legislators who go to Washington as a public service, they go to wrap themselves in power and dictate to the rest of us what is good for us, but that we are too dim to know better. Their key objective every two, four, or six years is to get reelected so that they don’t have to return to dwell among the unwashed mortals. Had enough?

Little by little, Washington is chipping away at our constitutional rights and we battle this tug-of-war as hard as we can, but taking away those rights is their full time job, while keeping them is something we do when we are not earning our daily bread. Chief among these power grabs is the right to bear arms. Every time some evil or deranged person wreaks havoc with a gun, the superior minds in Congress pass or attempt to pass laws that curtail the rights of law abiding citizens believing that until we have the kind of gun control that exists in most dictatorships, we will not be safe. But their attacks on law abiding citizens, particularly on what law abiding citizens own, rather than what they do, only serve to make us less safe and more dependent on the government.

Some Disturbing Examples of “Gun Control”

Tuscon — Jared Loughner displayed symptoms of mental instability beginning in the tenth grade, six years before that fateful day. Both Arizona and federal gun control laws prohibit the purchase of a gun by someone who is mentally impaired or a drug user, of which Loughner was both. But in our politically correct society, no one took the necessary steps to bring Loughner in front of a magistrate to have him legally declared mentally impaired. So, when he went to buy a gun, there was no record of his disability. This is not to say that he would not have obtained a gun illegally if he was denied the legal purchase of a gun, but it was not due to a lack of gun control laws.

Virginia Tech – Here is another case of a mentally disturbed person getting a gun despite well known warning signs. Cho Seung-Hui showed signs of mental problems for at least eighteen months before he shot 32 people dead. The head of one department at the school tried to help him but ran into a brick wall because he hadn’t threatened anyone at that time, so he couldn’t be forced into counseling. Gun control laws were there to prevent him from legally buying a gun. They didn’ t work. Those same gun control laws made sure no one else on campus but the police was able to defend themselves. Those gun laws did work and 32 died.

Long Island Railroad Massacre — Colin Ferguson killed six and wounded nineteen on a commuter train carrying passengers home from New York City. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-NY) husband was one of those killed and her son paralyzed. Ferguson bought his gun legally in California seven months before the crime after an FBI background check and a fifteen day waiting period. What different words put on paper would have kept this particular madman from his rampage? He took three agonizingly slow minutes to empty his gun twice before being tackled during his second reload. The average gun fight lasts 3-5 seconds, but this wasn’t a gun fight. New York’s gun control laws made sure of that. This was a massacre.

The Equal Footing

After the Tucson shooting, the aforementioned Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy had another new solution. Don’t allow the sale of ammunition magazines that hold more than ten bullets. Another law was proposed by Long Island Congressman Peter King (R-NY):

“Legislation which would make it a federal crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of any event which is attended by the President, the Vice President, members of the Senate, members of the House of Representatives, Cabinet officials, including the CIA director as well as federal judges,” said King.

Fortunately this bill went nowhere, but let me propose an alternative gun law that would put this on an equal footing.

I propose that any law restricting the right of law abiding citizens to bear arms apply equally to members of Congress. This would mean that since it is illegal in Washington, D.C. to carry a gun, members of Congress should not be allowed to carry a gun, even if they are former law enforcement officers.

If a citizen in a particular Congressman’s district cannot carry a gun, and if they wanted to protect themselves would have to hire a bodyguard with his own money, then the member of Congress would not be allowed access to any taxpayer funded security. The member of Congress could only hire security out of his own salary, not his office budget, not his campaign cash. He should be as defenseless at home, work and in public as the people he represents.

We have to return to the principle that ours is a government of the people. Laws that are good for the people are good for the government. If we are to be disarmed by law, then the lawmakers should be equally disarmed. I can almost see Chuck Schumer grabbing the microphone in front of a rolling TV camera to scoff at such parity. “We would be in danger at any public event. We would not be able to hold town hall meetings!” I have news for you, Senator Schumer, that was the whole point of the 2nd Amendment, that if you took too much power to yourself, you should be afraid of the people.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — The Declaration of Independence

So, is there a libertarian member of Congress who is willing to take this equality proposal and turn it into legislation?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Did you ever watch a business, celebrity, or government agency find itself in the middle of a media frenzy that it thinks will soon blow over and instead it only gets worse? In a way, I feel sorry for TSA Administrator John Pistole, but after listening to him try to defend what they are doing, a head slap is the more appropriate reaction. What are these idiots thinking?

Fighting the Last War

Almost every new “solution” the TSA comes out with is to fight the dismal failure they just allowed. Here are a few questions for Administrator Pistole before the TSA’s next grope:

•  How many attempted hijackings have there been by Islamic terrorists since 9/11 that have been thwarted by hardened cockpit doors or air marshals on planes? My guess is none because the Islamic terrorists moved on to the next strategy.
• Perhaps millions of shoes have been removed by passengers and run through the scanning machines. How many shoes have been found containing explosives? My guess is none because the Islamic terrorists moved on to the next strategy.
• Perhaps this question is too early to ask, but I’ll go ahead anyway, how many people have been electronically denuded and or intimately fondled that resulted in the capture of an underwear bomber? My guess is none because the Islamic terrorists moved on to the next strategy.
• How many people attempted to commandeer a plane using nail clippers? And why was a soldier, who was carrying his unloaded carbine on a military flight stripped of his nail clippers because they might be used as a weapon to take over the plane? “What about this?” the soldier asked the TSA agent, tapping the stock of his carbine.  Blank stare. “I’ll need those clippers, sir.” I am not kidding (click here to read the story). It just might be, but I doubt it that the Islamic terrorists are saying, “Why didn’t we think of that?” But is it probably more likely they are saying, “Take over a plane using WHAT???”

How About Trying Something That Works?

After all we learned from the 9/11 hijackers what did we do? We focused on nail clippers, cockpit doors, and using technology to screen flyers. But political correctness kept us then and continues to keep us stupid. Richard Reid the shoe bomber was next up.

On December 21, 2001, Reid attempted to board a flight from Paris, France to Miami, Florida, but his boarding was delayed because his disheveled physical appearance aroused the suspicions of the airline passenger screeners. Reid also did not answer all of their questions, and had not checked any luggage for the transatlantic flight. Additional screening by the French National Police resulted in Reid’s being re-issued a ticket for a flight on the following day. He returned to the Paris airport on December 22, 2001, and he boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami, wearing his special shoes packed with plastic explosives in their hollowed-out bottoms.

He “aroused suspicions” and “did not answer all of their questions”. So why was this guy allowed to board a plane, ever? But board he did and he attempted to set off his shoe bomb in mid-flight. He didn’t try to commandeer the plane and fly it into a building, mind you; been there, done that. If for some unknown reason we felt compelled to allow him to fly he should have had his own air marshal, at about 6’5” and 265 rock solid pounds named Bruno who should have introduced himself to Reid saying, “Hi, the name’s Bruno, I’ll be sitting next to you personally escorting you on your flight. Have a nice day.” Instead they let Reid on the plane, and he tried to light the fuse but it would not ignite, it is presumed because of the one day delay he was walking around in the rain and profusely sweating, that he might have dampened the fuse. But don’t worry, I am sure we had many engineers working feverishly to design some technology to prevent another 9/11.

From that moment forward we could not leave home to fly without carefully checking our socks for holes so we would not be embarrassed when everyone was walking around without shoes. Naturally that was also probably the last time we would see a shoe bomber, but never mind.

Then there was the Christmas Day bomber. Here is part of his tale:

On November 11, British intelligence officials sent the U.S. a cable indicating that a man named “Umar Farouk” had spoken to al-Awlaki, pledging to support jihad, but the cable did not reflect Abdulmutallab’s last name. Abdulmutallab’s father made a report to two CIA officers at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19 regarding his son’s “extreme religious views”, and told the embassy that Abdulmutallab might be in Yemen. Acting on the report, the suspect’s name was added in November 2009 to the U.S..’s 550,000-name Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a database of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. It was not added, however, to the FBI’s 400,000-name Terrorist Screening Database, the terror watch list that feeds both the 14,000-name Secondary Screening Selectee list and the U.S.’s 4,000-name No Fly List, nor was his U.S. visa revoked.

U.S. State Department officials said in Congressional testimony that the State Department had wanted to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa, but U.S. intelligence officials requested that his visa not be revoked. The intelligence officials’ stated reason was that revoking Abdulmutallab’s visa could have foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida.

Abdulmutallab’s name had come to the attention of intelligence officials many months before that, but no “derogatory information” was recorded about him. A Congressional official said that Abdulmutallab’s name appeared in U.S. reports reflecting that he had connections to both al-Qaeda and Yemen. The NCTC did not check to see whether Abdulmutallab’s American visa was valid, or whether he had a British visa that was valid; therefore, they did not learn that the British had rejected Abdulmutallab’s visa application earlier in 2009. The British did not inform the Americans because the visa application was denied to prevent immigration fraud and not for a national security purpose.

He bought his ticket with cash. The ticket agent refused to allow him to board the plane because he did not have his own passport, but somehow he and a “smartly dressed man” talked their way around that and he boarded the plane.

Always Two Steps Behind

So now, all of us are getting our freedom and dignity removed so that the next underwear bomber, who will never come, won’t blow up a plane. So now we have printer cartridges filled with explosives being shipped in the cargo hold. What are the full body scanner’s going to do about them? Nothing. We will have to spend millions more developing full cargo scanners and while we are working on that, the terrorists will be figuring out how to detonate explosives carried in a body cavity of a person on a plane. The new full body scanners cannot currently see into body cavities. So just imagine what the TSA will roll out after that attempt. “Just grab your ankles, this won’t hurt a bit.”

It’s Time to Get Serious Rather than Clever

It’s time to back off on the machines. Technology can be a very useful tool, but it cannot be used as a solution for all problems and this is coming from a guy who spent over 20 years in Information Technology. We need to go back to some very old, but very effective tools: brains, eyes, ears, and nose. Apply the technology resources where they will do the most good, handling information and getting the right names on the right lists to keep people off planes who are dangerous. Make their lives inconvenient by making them travel by boat, train or car, rather than putting the rest of us through hell.

The TSA should have agents checking the people,  rather than looking at monitor screens and IDs. Study their eyes, their demeanor, how they look, how they move, their behavior focusing particularly on Islamic males between the ages of 20-40. It is not racial profiling it is terrorist profiling. If anyone causes a TSA agent to feel the least bit wary, do not hesitate to politely ask that person to step out of line and question them. If the agent is not satisfied, take the person to an interrogation room and give them a detailed interview and if need be give them the full body search and if that means you have to do that to 10, 20, 30, or 50 people of similar age, color, sex, national origin, and religion in a row, do so without hesitation and brook no interference.

Between the shoe bomber, the Christmas Day bomber, and the Times Square bomber we got very lucky. But it is not as if we didn’t have the opportunity to stop them using our brains, eyes, ears and noses. We didn’t need the sophisticated technology that we so fervently pursue and believe in and we didn’t use the tools we have had for thousands of years.

I am not optimistic that we will get control over this problem. What we probably need is fewer TSA agents who are more highly paid and more thoroughly trained in behavioral analysis, but the current topic of discussion is how we can unionize all the TSA workers. That’s what we need now folks, a great way to protect the incompetent TSA workers and discourage the good ones to the point of quitting to do more interesting and less restrictive work.  Let’s start using our heads.  The American people are outraged because they don’t see the intrusion worth the risks.  If the TSA can’t figure it out perhaps they shold consult the Israelis.  Or is this administration too busy turning them into our enemies too?

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” where after storming a machine gun nest and losing their medic, the Americans have to deal with how to handle a prisoner they captured?  Some say shoot him on the spot others disagree.  They know they can’t take him with them as he will slow them down.  After much vigorous debate Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) decides to untie him, point him toward the American line and tell him to keep walking, with the hope that he will be captured by the advancing American forces. 

Later in the movie as Miller’s unit is in a pitched battle to the last man, the released German prisoner is among those killing Miller’s men.  After reinforcements arrive to turn the battle in the Americans favor and the remaining Germans surrender, the former prisoner smiles and nods to the soldier in Miller’s unit that acted as translator and argued for sparing him as if to say, “Hey, how’s it goin’ pal?”  The soldier lowers his rifle and kills the German.

I am reminded of this by the current situation with Yemen.  Started under President Bush was the insane idea of releasing enemy combatants where they can find their way back to the battlefield.  This stupid policy was, until recently, going to be accelerated under President Obama.  Either we are at war or we are not.  You can’t fight a war with half measures.  Either you fight it to win or let the enemy have their way.  If we are in a war and we capture the enemy they stay captured until the war is over.  We don’t need a bunch of lawyers standing on the sidelines tapping their foot and their watches and saying, “how much longer are you going to hold these people without charging them?”  Answer: until the war ends or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

 Is It a War Yet Mr. President?

 Backed into a corner, on his fifth (?) try to explain what his administration is doing on the War on Terror (am I allowed to call it that?), he actually called it a war, at least against Al Qaida.  He has spent the better part of his first year in office giving the back of his hand to the Bush administration.  But after seven years of Bush keeping us safe and two terrorist attacks on our soil this year with Obama at the helm and his poll numbers sinking, he has come to the realization that he owns this now.

The tough Harry Truman talk is nice (“The Buck Stops Here”), but it is just words until you actually do something with the buck that just stopped on your desk.  Why is the spectacularly incompetent Janet Napolitano still drawing a salary?  In Obama’s world it seems to be that what he means when he says the buck stops here is that he is the only one subject to firing and since we can’t fire him, everyone under him keeps on keeping on.  But who appointed these people?  It was Obama.  So he should recognize that he blundered and if the underlings don’t have enough sense to fall on their swords and resign, he should flat out fire them.

 Vacations are Important.  Anti-terrorism, Not So Much

 After the terror attack at Fort Hood, you would think that perhaps President Obama would be a little more responsive to another attempted attack, but hey, he was on an Hawaiian vacation.  Nobel Prize?  Chicago trying to win a bid for the Olympics?  President Obama will travel across the sea for that.  But an attempted attack on America?  Chill, baby, chill.  How about his director of National Counterterrorism, Michael Leiter, taking a ski vacation?  Just because stopping such an attack might be considered counterterrorism and just because that organization just failed miserably at stopping such an attack, and just because we didn’t know why it failed or if another attack might be on the way, why interrupt time with the family over that?  Family time is important, so said his boss. Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll wait.

Behind the Curve

It seems that with each attempt the enemy is one step ahead of us.  So discussions heated up about these new body scanners that can find anything, so it is claimed.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of technology, but I guess the real problem is best summed up by one pundit comparing our methods to the Israelis:

“The Israelis look for terrorists, we look for tweezers.”

Instead of reading body scanners, perhaps we should be training the TSA agents in reading body language.  That’s what the Israelis do.  If you are a Palestinian, sorry, but you go in a different line and you get more closely screened and questioned.  You may pass, but you are going to be thoroughly checked out. We should do the same.  Where is your passport from?  What visa stamps do you have in your passport indicating where you have been?  Why don’t you have any luggage Mr. Abdulmutallab?  Why did you buy a one way ticket?  Who are you staying with in Detroit?  I see you paid cash for your ticket, how much cash do you have left for your trip after you land in Detroit?  Do you have a credit card?  No?  Hmmm…maybe you should wait over there, while we check further.

 No technology is foolproof.  Having worked in technology for over thirty years I can say that with some degree of confidence.  It only takes one failure of the technology for a disaster to strike.  But if we spend less time trying to find that box cutter, shampoo bottle, tweezers, jar of honey, etc., and spend more time spotting someone who doesn’t look like they are on a nice business trip or a visit to relatives or who otherwise fit the profile of a terrorist, that’s right I said it: profile, we could probably become a lot safer without having to lock the bathrooms for the last hour of the flight.  If we had pulled the young Abdulmutallab aside and questioned him, he probably would have cracked like an egg.  Does anyone think for a minute that this kid would have given off no body language signals if questioned by a trained professional?  The right combination of skilled human observers and questioners along with technology, is what we need to be safer.   Rather than this:  We”re the TSA and You Can Count on Us!

Intelligence Sprawl

We also need to collapse the intelligence arms of our government back into one and shut the others down.  Roll back Homeland Security into the Department of Defense, put the myriad intelligence gathering arms back into the CIA, make people accountable and lessen the need for a coordinating center to gather intelligence from a dozen agencies correlate it and send it back out to the dozen agencies.  All that does is create more fiefdoms that don’t want to talk to the dummies in that other agency who aren’t as smart as we are.  As the old saying goes, “When everyone’s responsible, no one is responsible.”  Government is neither nimble nor overly cooperative.  The fewer handoffs between agencies necessary to connect the dots, the better off we will all be.

For the second time in two months there has been a terrorist attack or an attempted attack on U.S. soil.  How is this administration responding?  Well, if grandma is planning to visit the family for the next holiday and she has a bladder problem, she had better drive or take the train, because she won’t be allowed to use the bathroom during the last hour of an airplane flight.  Whew!  That was close.  I feel so much better now that we kept grandma from flying.  Don’t you feel safer?

Who’s Minding the Store?

As pointed out in several other posts, Barack Obama was elected with zero executive experience and we hold our breath as he stumbles about trying to learn what an executive is supposed to do.  He put Janet Napolitano in charge of the Homeland Security department, because her home state borders on Mexico, but without any security experience.  This was put on full display when she went on the Sunday talk shows to say the administration response to the terrorist bomber went very well and then goes on the Monday morning news shows to say they failed.  President Obama put Leon Panetta in charge of the CIA even though he has no intelligence experience.  Feeling a little uncomfortable?

Planning to Fail

President Obama has taken just about every step he can to dismantle what Bush and Cheney put in place and to discredit how they kept us safe.  Even today, Obama insiders were whispering to the Washington Post that this was all Bush’s fault.  Let’s look at the Obama record:

• Closing Guantanamo — this is one of Obama’s top priorities.  Rather than keep these enemy combatants off shore and in military hands, as any battlefield captives should be held, he is planning to release Yemenis back to Yemen.  Where did the bomber obtain instructions?  That’s right Yemen.
• Curtail Interrogation techniques — calling a technique that has no lasting physical effects on prisoner torture, and requiring that prisoners be asked only name, rank and serial number, this administration cuts off sources of valuable information that can save lives.
• Calling the War on Terror, the Overseas Contingency Operation and changing us from a war footing to a law and order footing.
• Letting the bomber lawyer up — instead of treating the bomber as a foot soldier in the War on Terror he is treated like some delinquent trying to knock over a Seven Eleven.  We should be putting him under intense interrogation to find out everything we can from him on the operation behind him.  Instead we are reading him Miranda rights, getting him a lawyer, putting him in one of the best burn center hospitals in the country, and planning to give him skin grafts.  I guess he’s part of the new health care plan.

Correctness or Political Correctness

Profiling works.  When are we going to stop ignoring this simple fact?  Look at any one of the known terrorist attacks around the world.  When someone gets on line at an airport who fits the profile of a young, male, single, Middle Eastern, African or South Asian, then pull them out of the line and give them a more thorough screening.  Pat them down.  Swab every bag for explosive residue rather than a sampling, open and examine closely everything.  Don’t say we can’t check this one because we have already checked two others and until we check our quota of old men, white grandmas, Asian children, etc. we cannot check another Middle Eastern man because we may hurt their feelings.

If enough of them get their feelings hurt, maybe all the other fair minded and peace loving Muslims around the world will rise up and take back their faith from those who have hijacked it for their own murderous aims.  Until then, we should err on the side of caution and pray that this administration figures out what they are doing to protect us.  If they don’t know what to do they should leave what Bush and Cheney did well enough alone.  It kept us safe for seven years.

Over the past eleven months, have you ever gotten a feeling that you are watching a magician, rather than a president run our country?  As any practitioner of the art of the illusionist will tell you, one of the key things is to keep the audience distracted.  Have them watch the left hand, while the right is slipping the coin into the pocket.  The Obama Administration is about to unleash their greatest trick yet, trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civil court in New York for the 9/11 attack on America.  Why?

The Greatest Show On Earth

The trial will become an absolute three ring circus, with all the world watching closely.  The liberal pundits say, “this is our chance to show the world our justice system.  We can demonstrate how civilized we are, and show the Muslim world how fair we are.”  Really?

Remember to the footage in the Muslim world immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.  They were dancing in the street, laughing and singing, shouting praise to Allah.  What do you think the reaction will be if Khalid Sheik Mohammed, jumps up in court and screams out, “Kill the infidels! This is a fraud meant to disguise these devil’s tricks!”  Do we let him ramble with a global audience?  Do we have the bailiffs wrestle him to the ground?  Do we put him in restraints for the rest of the trial?  Who exactly is going to show the world what?

We Have No Secrets

In a civilian trial there is a process called discovery, where the defense is told everything the prosecution plans on bringing to court, including witnesses, so that the defense has a chance to prepare their rebuttal case.  How much of the CIA’s methods and contacts are we prepared to reveal to the world and to Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s allies?  Or, how much are we not going to use in order to protect that information and at the same time increase the chances that he will be acquitted?

Can Anybody Say O.J.?

Do you remember the O.J. Simpson trial?  A slam-dunk if ever there was one.  There was blood evidence, DNA evidence, means, motive, opportunity, it couldn’t get any easier.  But what happened?  Judge Lance Ito, lost control of his court room in the klieg lights of national television.  One of O.J.’s attorneys or advisors told O.J. to stop taking his arthritis medication  so his hands would swell and then the famous glove trick, abra cadabra, “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”  What happened after that trial?  Dancing in the streets of the black community.

The Jury Pool

Are Muslims going to be excluded from the jury pool?  If so, on what grounds and would a judge allow it?  In the O.J. case we had what was called jury nullification, where a jury handed up a verdict not based on the evidence presented, but based on a social determination.  O.J. was a symbol for all black men put on trial and all past injustices.  He was a sports hero to millions and he wasn’t going down, no matter what.  What if a someone with strong beliefs sees disrupting the outcome of the trial as the new jihad?  Don’t use suicide bombers in New York, that’s so Middle East, let’s kill them softly by getting Khalid Sheik Mohammed acquitted or a give them a hung jury.  What better way to humiliate the Great Satan.  It will be like David and Goliath all over again.

The Real Trial

Or is it really the Bush Administration that Obama wants to put on trial?  The Obama administration’s popularity is sinking link a stone.  The stimulus package was a bust.  Cap and Trade is a disaster.  Health care a debacle.  Tea Party’s are breaking out all over.  The Democrats got trounced in Virginia and New Jersey, and even New York’s 23rd is still alive as recounts have dramatically closed the gap. A show trial of the Bush Administration is just what the Obama Administration needs to keep the focus off what they are really doing.

This is a tragedy and a travesty and there should be no end to the shame heaped upon this administration if they follow through on this.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Joe Biden said the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” but stands by its stimulus package and believes the plan will create more jobs as the pace of its spending picks up.

Does that mean Obama lied?  Biden lied?  Where’s the outrage?

There is none, which is how it should be.  But it is instructive to contrast this with what happened with President Bush.  Bush relied on intelligence from the CIA, the French, the British and others.  It all pointed in the same direction.  The information was shared with Congress and there was overwhelming bipartisan support authorizing the use of force in Iraq with 40% of Democrats voting in favor in the House and 58% in the Senate.  The senior members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Republicans and Democrats saw the intelligence.  When it was later determined that weapons of mass destruction could not be found, the mantra was “Bush lied.”  The Democrats hid under their desks rather than refute that remark.

In the case of the stimulus, the projections of unemployment capping out at 8% rather than where it is today, prompting Biden’s mea culpa, was entirely within the control of the administration.  It wasn’t corroborated by other nations’ agencies.  In addition, every Republican in the House voted against it and all but three in the Senate.  So in which situation would there be a more credible charge of lying?

But unlike the Main Stream Media and the statists, I am reluctant accuse them of deliberately lying about their policies.  Perhaps, the aforementioned Main Stream Media and the statists will show some restraint in the future and return to the days of a spirited but honest debate on the issues?  I’m not holding my breath.

Sometimes I wonder if this is all a bad dream and I will wake up at some point, in a cold sweat, comforted in knowing that it was just that.  With the enhanced interrogation techniques, aka waterboarding, that was used on exactly three very bad men, and yielded 60% of what we learned about Al Qaeda, we are now Mirandizing terrorists on the battlefield.  For those who never got a sufficient dose of crime dramas on TV here is how the Miranda rights start:

“You have the right to remain silent…”

Say no more.  That is all you have to know.  From using a technique to compel these murderous fiends to give up information about their likeminded associates, we have moved to telling them it is their right not to say anything.  Here’s my advice… steer clear of tall or government buildings.

How 9/11 Happened

This is exactly how 9/11 happened.  The Clinton Administration treated terrorism as a law and order issue rather than a war on our way of life.  They constructed walls between the FBI and CIA forbidding them to share information.  What the CIA learned about the terrorists before 9/11 they couldn’t tell the FBI and vice versa.  As a result we got blindsided.

It is interesting to note that in putting together the 9/11 Commission to investigate how it all happened and what we could do to prevent it happening again, Jamie Gorelick, the individual who constructed this barrier in her role in the Clinton White House, was added to the Commission panel when she should have been testifying before it.  (Later, without any financial background she was appointed Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, made millions during her tenure, and Fannie Mae’s actions led to the current financial debacle).

What more will the Obama Administration do to weaken our defenses?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues to cling to the thin thread that everyone is lying but she.   Considering all the details surrounding the topic of waterboarding, she is either a liar or an idiot, take your pick.  But either character trait is reason enough for her to step down.  The American people deserve better.

We need politicians with integrity.  We need politicians who don’t split hairs over whether or not they were told something could be done or something was already done.  Either way, if she thought it was wrong she should have spoken up. Now she is calling the CIA liars and ones who do it regularly at that.  How much more can she demoralize those who are dedicated to defending us?

In the stimulus bill she voted to give the American taxpayer $8 per week in relief, while giving the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse $30 million.  Let them eat cake!

She can no longer effectively lead, if she ever could.  It’s time to go.