What’s interesting in the news today?
1. President Obama is taking heat from the nation’s largest police union over his selection for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the DoJ. And rightfully so.
From JudicialWatch “Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), Debo Adegbile, spent more than a decade in various leadership positions—including director—at the Legal Defense and Education Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During Adegbile’s leadership the NAACP volunteered its services to represent Mumia Abu-Jamal, a member of the Black Panthers who murdered a police officer (Daniel Faulkner) in Philadelphia three decades ago.
Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death by the jury that convicted him in 1982 and his supporters—including the man who could soon be an Assistant Attorney General—have long claimed that he was the victim of a racist legal system. Nevertheless, Abu-Jamal has lost multiple appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court has twice rejected his case. In 2012, under the leadership of Adegbile, the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Abu-Jamal in his latest appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The cop murderer lost that one too, but the fact remains that Adegbile continues fighting on his behalf.
Understandably, this is upsetting to hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers represented by the National Fraternal Order of Police. In a hard-hitting letter to President Obama, the group expresses “extreme disappointment, displeasure and vehement opposition” to Adegbile’s nomination. “As word of this nomination spreads through the law enforcement community, reactions range from anger to incredulity,” the letter says, reminding that there is no disputing that Officer Faulkner was murdered by the “thug” who Adegbile continues defending.”
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2. He’s also taking some harsh criticism from the former Sec. of Def. Robert Gates in a new book. Much of it confirms what we already knew.
From TheWaPo “In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander-in-chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”
“Biden is accused of “poisoning the well” against the military leadership. Thomas Donilon, initially Obama’s deputy national security adviser, and then-Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House coordinator for the wars, are described as regularly engaged in “aggressive, suspicious, and sometimes condescending and insulting questioning of our military leaders.”
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3. More here from the NYT. He doesn’t appear to be a big fan of Joe Biden, shocking as that is. 🙂
From TheNYTimes “Mr. Gates describes his running policy battles within Mr. Obama’s inner circle, among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Tom Donilon, who served as national security adviser; and Douglas E. Lute, the Army lieutenant general who managed Afghan policy issues at the time.
Mr. Gates calls Mr. Biden “a man of integrity,” but questions his judgment. “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Mr. Gates writes. He has high praise for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served as secretary of state when he was at the Pentagon and was a frequent ally on national security issues.
But Mr. Gates does say that, in defending her support for the Afghan surge, she confided that her opposition to Mr. Bush’s Iraq surge when she was in the Senate and a presidential candidate “had been political,” since she was facing Mr. Obama, then an antiwar senator, in the Iowa primary. In the same conversation, Mr. Obama “conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political,” Mr. Gates recalls. “To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
Mr. Gates discloses that he almost quit in September 2009 after a dispute-filled meeting to assess the way ahead in Afghanistan, including the number of troops that were needed. “I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House’s lack of appreciation — from the top down — of the uncertainties and unpredictability of war,” he recalls. “I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure.”
Like I said, not surprising. It was always obvious that they’d chosen to make Iraq a political football.
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4. Here’s an update to a story I posted a while back on the govt. setting up “voluntary checkpoints” which coerced people into giving blood and saliva samples, as well as taking breath samples. The use of uniformed officers gives the appearance that they have the authority to even ask.
From USAToday “A tactic used by the federal government to gather information for anti-drunken and drugged driving programs is coming under criticism in cities around the country, and some local police agencies say they will no longer take part.
The tactic involves a subcontractor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that uses off-duty but uniformed police at voluntary roadside checkpoints where motorists are asked on their behavior behind the wheel. In some cases, workers at the checkpoints collect blood and saliva samples, in addition to breath samples. NHTSA has said previously that the surveys do not collect any DNA. Drivers are not charged at the checkpoints.”
“However, the mere presence of uniformed officers gives the checkpoints an aura of authority, says Mary Catherine Roper, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. She is studying the issue there after motorists complained about a survey checkpoint last month in Reading.
“We have a whole bunch of rules about when police can pull you over,” she says. “It looks like an exercise of official authority when a cop pulls you over. People assume it’s mandatory, and of course you’re going to stop. That’s a constitutional problem right there.”
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5. Who needs laws and a legislature when you can just rule by presidential decree? This is what happens when you have a weak Senate that won’t do their job, and a House that can’t because what they send up never makes it out of the Senate.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “The Obama administration made up for the lack of laws passed in Congress last year, issuing a whopping 3,659 rules regulations, crushing claims that Washington isn’t doing anything.
Only 65 public laws were signed by President Obama in 2013, meaning that his government issued an average of 56 new regulations for every one, a record high ratio, according to the annual analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The surge in regulations has led critics to charge that Congress is now a bystander to federal regulatory agencies.”
“Said CEI’s Wayne Crews, who provided Secrets with his new analysis, “The deterioration of the Constitution’s separation of, and balance of, powers means that regulators and bureaucrats now make most laws. Congress is so 1789, after all. The executive branch increasingly imposes its will: President Obama and his administration repeatedly say they are not going to wait for Congress, so brace yourselves.”
Harry Reid seems OK with it. He would rather just spout partisan nonsense as the White House lackey instead of doing his job anyway.
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6. It’s the end of the world as we know it, or something…. 🙄
From LifeNews “For those of us so very blessed to have raised our personal white flag in mankind’s inherently fruitless struggle against the Creator, there can be no joy in watching God-deniers continue to labor under the grandest of all deceptions. Regardless of how nasty they may be as individuals, there can be only sadness, genuine pity and prayer. Still, it is instructive.
When the atheist gives voice to his or her God-denial, it provides those in Truth a small glimpse into the same dark spirit – old as Adam – that prompted the psalmist to observe: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1).
Valerie Tarico is one such God-denier. She’s on a fool’s errand. A steadfast disciple to the unholy trinity of “LGBT,” atheist and pro-abortion activism, Ms. Tarico proudly sits on the Board of Advocates for Planned Parenthood – America’s premier one-stop-death-shop.”
“For “progressives” like Tarico, the term “religious fundamentalism” is a euphemism for orthodox Christianity. In a tedious, though unintentionally funny screed recently published at Salon.com under the headline: “10 signs that religious fundamentalism is going down,” Ms. Tarico gives empty hope to her fellow hopeless with a word salad steeped in anti-Christian bigotry and wishful thinking. I share excerpts only because they so clearly encapsulate the broader secular-”progressive” mindset. Ms. Tarico’s reflections are so hyperbolic – so far removed from reality – that they require little additional commentary.”
You can read more of her delusions at the link. But something tells me her tales of our demise are greatly exaggerated. 🙂
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Wandering Views 