Obamacare alive and sick

There is now no check on the power of the federal government.  Obamacare can be repealed but the precedent is now set, the government can mandate anything as long as they make the penalty a tax.

 “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”

Turns out Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-Calif.) was right when he made the statement above.  Roberts is either out of his mind or the Chicago gang was able to get to him somehow.  Hope you all like Broccoli.

Just Mexicans

"It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head."
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
"No's. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt."

 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

That passage written by Mark Twain highlighted the attitude of southern Whites towards Blacks in antebellum America.  One would think we've come a long way since then but the attitude of Democrats toward the Fast and Furious scandal seems to suggest otherwise.  Was anybody hurt by the Justice Department program where guns were sold to drug cartels and allowed to be taken into Mexico?  No, just some Mexicans.  Some 300 of them.  Oh, and a couple of cops.  No big deal, we can't understand why Republicans are so outraged by this, must be politics.  No, it must be racism, that's it, the Republicans are so outraged by the deaths of a couple hundred Mexicans facilitated by our top law enforcement agency because they are racists.  After all, it's just some Mexicans.

 These are not the documents you are looking for, move along...

Blame Bush

The problem of gun walking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the previous administration, and it was this administration’s attorney general who ended it.

So said White House mouthpiece Jay Carney at a press hearing shortly after Obama invoked executive privilege in a last ditch effort to cover up lord knows what.  Carney should know better than to tell such a blatant lie so soon after Holder had to recant his testimony for pretty much saying the same thing.  Bush stopped Operation Wide Receiver as soon as some guns were lost.  There are many differences between Operation Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.  The biggest difference is the fact that Wide Receiver tried very hard to keep track of the guns so they could actually get some intel from the operation and arrest the gunrunners.  The guns had tracking devices and the Mexican authorities were included in the operation.  Holder's guns did not and Mexico was kept entirely in the dark about Fast and Furious.  Wide Receiver  failed and guns made it into Mexico because while they were tracked by U.S. officials to the border and Mexican officials were notified as to where and when they would cross the Mexican police didn't manage to capture and arrest the gunrunners, (go figure).  The program was shut down October 6, 2007.

Given the failure of that operation, which was limited to about 650 guns run out of ATF's Phoenix office, one wonders why Holder's ATF would try it again.  One wonders why they would massively expand the operation to include several cities and thousands of guns.  One really has to wonder why no effort at all was made to keep track of the weapons and while it made sense to not include the Mexican police again why weren't American agents working  in Mexico involved?  You can only conclude that they wanted to flood Mexico with weapons that could be traced to the United States after they were used in violent drug crimes.  That way they could prove the meme that had previously proved to be a lie that 90% of guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

That should outrage everyone.  In order to push a political agenda, greater gun control, the United States was willing to arm violent criminals and sacrifice hundreds of Mexican citizens.  Doesn't that make us sponsors of terrorists?  But hey, they're just Mexicans.

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Slow and Lackadaisical

In just the fourth time in 30 years Congress will vote on whether to hold an executive branch member in contempt of Congress.  Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents on operation Fast and Furious including materials created after the Justice Department wrote a letter to Congress saying no gunwalking had occurred.  Holder also claimed during congressional testimony that internal Justice Department emails that used the phrase “Fast and Furious” do not refer to operation Fast and Furious.  So you can understand why Republicans are dubious that Holder will get to the bottom of the White House national security leaks, or if he does they doubt he will share that knowledge with Congress.  It's been over a year and a half since Border Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by drug cartel members whose AK-47s were supplied by the Justice Department and the family still doesn't have any answers as to how and why this could happen.  The hundreds of Mexican citizens also killed with thousands of Justice Department supplied weapons have no answers.  No one has been fired, no one has been held accountable.

We really don't need to dig very deep to find out who leaked the information about the kill list and Stuxnet.  Obama finds it "very offensive" that anyone would suggest that the leaks come from his White House but the New York Times who wrote those stories actually say it was the White House that supplied the leaks.  From the kill list article:

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

The article quotes former White House chief-of-staff Bill Daley confirming the kill list and describing how names are added to it.  National security adviser Thomas Donilon and former national intelligence director Dennis Blair are quoted.  From the Stuxnet article describing a conversation in the White House Situation Room the Times quotes Obama:

'Should we shut this thing down?’ Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president's national security team who were in the room.

Obama is waging a war on whistle blowers while leaking national security secrets.  At the very same time he's telling federal courts that these programs are so secret that they can't even be confirmed much less disclosed or judicially reviewed.  Condemning water boarding while maintaining a kill list. Scuttlebutt says Leon Panetta actually told the White House to "Shut the fuck up" after disclosures about the raid that killed Osama.  The idea that Stonewall Holder will out the leakers much less prosecute them is as ludicrous as thinking Obama would put the nation's interests and peoples lives ahead of a few minutes of favorable press.

I am Aaron Walker

Michelle Malkin has the history of blogger Aaron Walker who was arrested for blogging in an ongoing fight with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin.  Kimberlin got leftist judge Cornelius Vaughey to put out a warrant for Walker for blogging about the cyber-terrorist.  Kimberlin, aka the Speedway Bomber, used his time in prison to get a law degree that he uses as a weapon against conservative bloggers.  By any definition Kimberlin is a public figure but he was able to get Judge Vaughey to arrest Walker for blogging about Kimberlin and his fellow terrorists at Breitbart Unmasked.  One terror tactic used by the bunch is called SWATing where the group makes 911 phone calls that appear to come from the victim's home phone reporting a violent crime in progress.  Often times this will result in heavily armed SWAT teams responding to the victims home.  Patrick Frey who blogs at Petterico's Pontifications and RedState editor Erick Erickson have both been victims.  These sick attacks on free speech have been largely ignored by the MSM but may finally be coming to light.  I hadn't any idea about any of this until I saw a link to Michelle Malkin's post that darkwords posted at The Blogmocracy last night.

You can help the victims here.  Michelle has a list of other things you can do.



 

Obama crows, Intel goes.

Al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed in Pakistan by a drone attack according to U.S. officials. The charismatic media savvy al-Libi has been highly effective in recruiting homegrown terrorists to the jihad cause.  While the official policy of the U.S. is to not publicly discuss details of drone attacks in Pakistan exceptions are always made when the news is good despite damage to Pakistani-American relations.  In fact no secret is too secret when it comes to crowing about Obama's achievements in the war on terror overseas contingency operations.

Probably the worst Obama administration leak in terms of damaging U.S. intelligence was when they wanted everyone to know they had discovered a new underwear bomb.  We had a would-be bomber on the inside that the administration burned.  Aside from blowing an extremely valuable operative's cover they disclosed methodology that would make putting in new operatives far more difficult.  It also sent a message to anyone who might think of helping the U.S., your life is not worth a minute of positive press for Obama.  That is a hard lesson that Dr. Shakil Afridi learned after being sentenced to 33 years in prison for helping Obama get Osama bin Laden.  Given the treasure trove of intel we got from that raid one wonders why we even admitted we had killed him but rather than reap the fruits of that intel we compromised most of it so Obama could run to the MSM and yell "I got him".  However narcissistic there was at least some logic in that but I can not conceive any reason why the administration  had to out SEAL Team Six.

Not all leaks are designed to further Obama's re-election.  Some are meant to damage our allies like when Obama leaked Israel's strike plan on Iran and confirmed that it was Israel who was helping kill Iranian nuclear scientists.  Some times it accomplishes both like when we recently learned that the U.S. did develop Stuxnet with help from Israel.  Sometimes info is made to discredit prior administrations like when Obama was going to release more Abu Ghraib photos.  Eventually he recanted under a deluge of criticism that opening up old wounds and putting our soldiers lives at risk wasn't worth a cheap shot at Bush.  Same thing when Holder published detailed memos describing the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.  (Hat tip Lizzy!).  Obama promised he wouldn't prosecute CIA agents involved just before going after the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez, someone who could keep secrets.

I'm glad that al-Libi and Osama are dead.  I'm glad that Obama is hypocritical enough to continue Bush's tactics in fighting Islamist terrorists such as renditions, indefinite detention, and keeping Gitmo open,  despite his criticisms of those tactics prior to becoming President.  In fact, he has gone further, incorporating things that make even me uncomfortable like assassinating American citizens.  Nevertheless I don't need to hear details every time these tactics are successful, lets keep the enemy guessing, not let them know they have been compromised, and not confirm what they might think  Especially when the only result is a photo op for The One.

 

Update:  The White House has denied any involvement in the leaks calling such allegations "grossly irresponsible."  We will see, the FBI has launched an investigation to look into the Stuxnet leaks.  This comes on the heals of a joint statement Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committees:

"These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our intelligence capability to act in the future. Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide."