A New Era: American Hegemony

Financial Times Deutschland, Germany  "At one time Bill Clinton sometimes came to similar summits an hour late for no reason, and all the others had to wait for him. Obama is more polite and punctual. However, it is no longer certain that they would wait for him as well."

Ghailani Verdict Links

Weekly Standard "Senator Webb: Ghailani Verdict Affirms Need for Military Commissions"
 Link: "The new commission system is consistent with international standards. Moreover, it balances robust procedural and substantive rights for the defendants, including prohibiting the introduction of evidence obtained through torture, against the reality that these are not common criminals but violators of the law of war.”"  Senator Jim Webb

Wrong Again On Terror Trials    “You’ll recall that Attorney General Holder assured the American people last year that Ghailani would not be acquitted of the charges against him." Sen.Mitch McConnell

Justice Was Not Done "The civilian prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani was a misadventure because politics was permitted to trump justice and, predictably, justice was not done. "  Andy McCarthy

The Ghailani Debacle  "In other words, what in the world was the bomber doing in an Article III courtroom? He was, quite bluntly, part of a stunt by the Obama administration, which had vilified Bush administration lawyers for failing to accord terrorists the full panoply of constitutional rights available to American citizens who are arrested by police officers and held pursuant to constitutional requirements." Jennifer Rubin

Civilian Trials for Terror Suspects and America’s Image Abroad  "For all President Obama’s miscalculation in sending Ghailani to a normal criminal court, he also remains committed to holding some detainees indefinitely simply because of the risk they would pose — a risk that has been amply documented by the number of Gitmo detainees released by the Bush administration who have gone back to terrorism."  Max Boot

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/GlennFoden

Ghailani Trial Provides Road Map to Victory for Future Terror Detainees  'The trial also provided a legal roadmap for future detainees to escape entirely, or like Ghailani, to severely limit the scope of conviction should the Department of Justice attempt to continue with this misguided policy.'

Professor Richard Lindzen’s Congressional Testimony

Watts Up With That? "Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating."

Don't touch my junk

Charles Krauthammer "We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
"The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. "
Remember the villain is not the poor, put-upon inspector at the security gate; it is the oppressive force of political-correctness that suffocates us all.

For the GOP, California is a deep blue hole

LA Times  "The negative overlay both explained and helped determine the fates of the party's candidates in November. As a GOP tide swept the nation, Republicans here lost all statewide offices, with one contest, for attorney general, still unresolved but leaning toward the Democrat. Republicans here also failed to gain any congressional seats and lost a legislative seat."

'Captain Kinetic' receives Military Cross for holding off Taliban's Zulu-style attack with his men using fixed bayonets

UK Daily Mail  "The combat was so fierce that soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets as the insurgents pushed to within just 30 metres of the tiny compound's mud walls.

"Had the patrol base been over-run, it would have been a catastrophic defeat that could have threatened the UK mission in central Helmand.

"But at the end of six weeks of attacks, the soldiers of 5 Platoon, No 2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards had killed at least 84 of the enemy while barely suffering an injury themselves."

Bristol the Pistol

Jeannie DeAngelis  "How ironic, liberals blaming excessive voting for an "undeserving" contestant being in contention to win the "whole shebang." If the coveted, oversized mirror ball trophy finds a home with Bristol ‘the pistol' way up in Wasilla, Alaska, liberals are the reason. Wasn't it two just years ago that "democracy at work" taught Dancing with the Stars viewers to vote for an unqualified, "ubiquitous" candidate who ended up walking away with the ultimate prize? "

New battle lines in the fog of ObamaCare

American Thinker "An assortment of unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, are among 111 entities receiving ObamaCare waivers, reports the Examiner. Also notable on the waiver list are health insurers Aetna and Cigna."

A Time for Strength‪

National Review  "The current environment requires clear, decisive leadership, and President Obama is not providing it.
"The ruling in the Ghailani case makes clear that President Obama’s decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Gitmo detainees in civilian courts was a mistake and will not work. The Ghailani case was supposed to be the easy one, yet the Obama administration failed. "....
"...we should all have grave concerns about President Obama’s overall approach to national security. His artificial 2011 deadline to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan has led to confusion and a guessing game on the ground about Washington’s long-term intentions."

Terror-trial travesty    "Defense lawyers had argued that Ghailani's disclosures were inadmissible because they were coerced -- and prosecutors were loath to risk having their entire case tossed by the judge.
"Under normal circumstances, that's fine. But this case involved a foreigner making war on America.
"The result: A bloody-handed terrorist will now largely escape accountability for his heinous acts.
"Yes, Ghailani is facing 20 years to life -- but that's only about a month for each of the 224 people he helped kill.
"Team Obama is still trying to figure out what to do about KSM & Co. There's no longer any question: Trying them in a civilian court would invite disaster. "

Carville defiant on Obama comment

CNN  via Lucianne  "Democratic strategist James Carville compared President Barack Obama to his Democratic primary rival and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday, implying in rather lewd terms that Obama needs to toughen-up.
"And he's not sorry for it."

The derailing of the “Peace Train”

Stand for Israel Blog "In a better world – a saner world, in fact – Yusuf Islam and those who hold similar views would not be invited to share the podium at high-profile events. They would be called on to disavow, strongly and in no uncertain terms, their previous support for violence against innocents, and to back up those disavowals with actions. Until they did, it would be made clear to them that they stand outside the bounds of civil society.
"But this is not our world. Today radical Islamists, who use religious convictions to legitimize their oppression and murder of Jews, Christians, and anyone else they disapprove of, have found allies in a legion of apologists in the West.

Obama to present US Israel-Palestinian border map within 3 months

DEBKAfile "Our sources disclose that the boundaries the US map will adhere a lot more closely to Palestinian territorial aspirations than to Israel case. While no one is talking about imposing it on Israel, a rejection by the Netanyahu government would place it on a collision course with the Obama White House."....
"According to our Washington sources, Obama believes that leaving Israel with no more than 4-4.5 percent of the pre-1967 West Bank area should satisfy its essential security requirements. In terms of population, this would entail the evacuation of dozens of settlements plus two important towns, Efrat in Gush Etzion in the south which has a population of 8,000, and Ariel in Samaria which has 20,000 inhabitants."  Logo: standforisrael