July 26-27, 2007
Jul 26 04:00 Reid Seeks to Undermine Ethics Legislation Jul 26 05:33 Murtha Predicts Defeat/Pullout Jul 26 06:25 Democrats Shortcircuit Border Enforcement, Demand Path to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants Jul 26 07:31 Impressive Annoyance Jul 26 13:39 Dems, Pelosi: What Separation of Powers? Jul 27 06:54 US Troops Broker Peace Agreement Jul 27 09:40 The Burgeoning Impeachment Movement?
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Prior Years: 2006
Reid Seeks to Undermine Ethics Legislation
When Jim DeMint asked Harry Reid for his personal guarantee that earmark reforms wouldn't be stripped from the ethics reform bill, Reid refused. Not only that but he's now blaming Jim DeMint for stalling the bill. That's what we know thanks to this NY Times article:
The Senate Appropriations Committee has voluntarily adopted committee rules that would reveal sponsors and dollar amounts for earmarks, but those would not be enforceable on the Senate floor. "He [Reid] wouldn't agree not to take it out in conference," DeMint said. "They want to pretend they support earmark reform, but they don't."TRANSLATING REID
Reid said he simply did not want to negotiate a conference agreement "piecemeal" in public before the committee even meets. Reid also rejected a DeMint request to immediately change Senate rules and implement the earmark rules for the chamber. Reid said that was a matter to work out in conference.
When Sen. Reid says he didn't want to "negotiate a conference agreement 'piecemeal' in public", he's really saying that he doesn't want transparency in the system.
This is a typical Harry Reid dance of deception. Reid's biggest problem is that he isn't bright enough to pull it off. Reid's next biggest problem is DeMint himself. Sen. DeMint is a genuine reformer with the determination and persistence of a pit bull.
Amy Klobuchar, once a lobbyist herself but now Minnesota's freshman senator, has entered the discussion:
Klobuchar, who has made ethics reform her top issue, led a group of fellow freshmen senators Tuesday in announcing an ethics bill that the nine new legislators hope will pass before the looming August recess. "It's more than just the scandal of the cash in the freezer and the trips to Scotland," Klobuchar said. Voters, she said, "realized in the past year that the special interests were taking front seat and they were losing out because [of] the way business is done in Washington."This is a way for Klobuchar to point to herself and claim that she's a reformer, which is more than a little disingenuous. Her legislation talks about earmark reform but she knows that David Obey, John Murtha and Harry Reid want to sabotage earmark reform. This is the best of both worlds for Ms. Klobuchar; she gets to tout her reformer 'credentials' but she won't have to worry about living within the constraints of genuine earmark reform.
Why am I not surprised by any of this?
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 4:01 AM
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Murtha Predicts Defeat/Pullout
According to this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, John Murtha is now declaring defeat in Iraq:
Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha yesterday predicted that thousands of combat troops would start withdrawing from Iraq as soon as this fall, when President Bush delivers a progress report on the war and Congress considers billions of dollars in emergency military spending.I'd be worried about Murtha's predictions if he was as proficient at predictions as he is with earmarks. The good news is that Murtha doesn't have a clue about the final outcome. Republicans can't afford to sign onto Murtha's defeatist plans because they'd cut their throats in terms of campaign contributions. That's what the Victory Caucus is about.
"When you get to September, this is history. This is when we're going to have a real confrontation with the president," Mr. Murtha, D-Johnstown, told reporters after a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee. "I see signals that things are getting worked out."
In recent weeks, an expanding group of Republican senators has started expressing strong misgivings about the course of the war. Yet only three joined Democrats on July 18 in voting to set a withdrawal timeline, leaving the Senate eight votes short of the 60 needed to end debate on the proposal.
Mr. Murtha, chairman of the House panel on defense spending, said defections among Republicans would grow when Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, gives an update on the president's "surge" strategy, which added 21,500 combat troops there. "If we get an honest appraisal from the field, and they start to accept reality, that will be the directional change," he said.
Furthermore, Murtha is acting like Gen. Petraeus' testimony in September will send mixed messages on the surge's results. That won't be the case. Each day, more positive stories make their way into the LA Times, the Washington Post and NY Times. Furthermore, websites like BlackAnthem.com provide a steady flow of news stories, ranging from the discovery of weapons caches to reconciliation meetings happening to killing AQI terrorists.
People like John Murtha haven't noticed that the day has passed where the NY Times was the undeniable "newspaper of record". A page has turned and a paradigm shift is happening. These are just some of the reasons why Murtha's optimism is more like delusion. Here's something from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that will provide a little reality to the discussion:
Mr. Bush on Tuesday didn't seem ready to compromise. "The merger between al-Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate is an alliance of killers, and that is why the finest military in the world is on their trail," he told troops at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., rebutting critics who say the fighting in Iraq is primarily sectarian.Though Rep. Murtha wants to eliminate President Bush from the equation, he can't. It's foolish that he's even trying. It's especially foolish in wartime. Chalk Murtha's attempt to marginalize President Bush to chutzpah and elitism.
Some military commanders have said current troop levels will need to remain in place at least until next summer to improve security, according to recent published reports.
"The president has called on Congress to give our troops time to carry out our new strategy in Iraq," said White House spokesman Alex Conant. "The president believes withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States."
At the end of the discussion, this is still President Bush's issue and he'll dictate the terms of our military involvement with Iraq.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 5:35 AM
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Democrats Shortcircuit Border Enforcement, Demand Path to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants
I'm sure that somewhere, someone has polled the issue of giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship because Democrats wouldn't force the issue of citizenship over border security. That said, I can't see them being on the right side of this debate:
Senate Democrats yesterday defeated a Republican effort to authorize $3 billion for new border security and immigration enforcement. Instead, the Democrats proposed a new agriculture workers program to bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers and grant legal status to illegal aliens now working in the fields.Ted should listen to himself once. Without his knowing, he's just tried vilifying Republicans for attempting to enforce the law. He can blather all he wants about placating conservatives all he wants but Americans living in the heartland hear this as another liberal elitist trying to impose his will on people who work hard and play by the rules.
It was the first major skirmish on immigration since President Bush's bill collapsed last month, and members of both parties are filing piecemeal measures to deal with various aspects of the crisis and leave for another day the issue dealing with the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens already here.
"We're now moving to Plan B," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who took a bruising last month for his support for the broader immigration bill, and who was the chief sponsor of yesterday's border-security amendment. "That will require us to address the major changes that must be made a piece at a time. Today, we're addressing border security, visa overstays, sanctuary cities and other important issues."
But Democrats argued that the amendment broke legislative rules that separate rewriting legislation and enacting a spending bill, and, joined by three Republicans, defeated the measure 52 votes to 44 votes.
"This is not a vote on immigration," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, (D-MA), accused Republicans attempting a "do-over" to placate conservatives angered by the earlier bill. "I guess it's to try to make them politically OK among the voters."
It's also disgusting to hear Lindsey Graham refer to enforcement as Plan B. Sen. Graham won't get back into good standing with Republicans until he renounces his pro-amnesty views. The divide between Fred Thompson and Lindsey Graham is stark; Graham thinks of enforcement as a low priority in the immigration equation while Fred sees enforcement as the first priority to resolve the immigration issue.
Let's hope that GOP activists keep this vote before the voters all the way until Election Day, 2008. Let's hope that GOP candidates wield this vote like a billy club against freshman Democrats throughout 2008. You can focus group the Democrats' answers to this all day long but blocking additional funding for border enforcement is playing political Russian Roulette.
Democrats tried to get an agreement yesterday to pass an agriculture worker bill that would create a program for future agriculture workers and offer a path to citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegal alien agriculture workers already here. Republicans objected to giving illegal aliens a path to citizenship, a proposal that doomed the Bush legislation.I've asked this before but why should illegal immigrants ever be afforded a path to citizenship? Isn't it enough that they get legal status? If it isn't, why isn't it enough? Frankly, I haven't heard a thoughtful, logical explanation for providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. I doubt I ever will.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 6:27 AM
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Impressive Annoyance
Ralph Peters' column in this morning's NY Post is today's must reading. He says that "To a military professional, the tactical progress made in Iraq over the last few months is impressive. To a member of Congress, it's an annoyance." I couldn't summarize it better.
It's amazing what has been accomplished since the start of Operation Arrowhead Ripper. Sadly, to many politicians, it's been treated like it's the plague. What is undeniable, though, is that the more people like Ralph Peters and Michael Yon write about the subject, the more likely a page will turn and a new set of facts will have to be dealt with.
A trusted source in Baghdad confirmed several key developments that've gone largely unreported. Here's what's been happening while "journalists" focused on John Edwards' haircuts:If this were happening a generation ago, these would be front page, above-the-fold headlines. Unfortunately, these developments are treated like a nuisance by the NY Times and other Agenda Media outlets. Long gone are the days of "the people's right to know." Now it's a matter of fitting cherry-picked semi-irrelevant truths into the Agenda Media's articles.
- Al Qaeda lost the support of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The fanatics over-reached: They murdered popular sheiks, kidnapped tribal women for forced marriages, tried to outlaw any form of joy and (perhaps most fatally, given Iraqi habits) banned smoking. In response, the Arab version of the Marlboro Man rose up and started cutting terrorist throats.
- Since the tribes who once were fighting against us turned on al Qaeda, our troops not only captured the senior Iraqi in the organization, which made brief headlines, but also killed the three al Turki brothers, major-league pinch-hitters al Qaeda sent into Iraq to save the game.
- Oh, and it emerged that the Iraqi "head" of the terrorists was just a front, in the words of one Army officer, Omar al Baghdadi was "a Wizard of Oz-like creation designed to give an impression that al Qaeda has Iraqis in its senior ranks."
- Al Qaeda has been pushed right across Anbar, from the once Wild West to the province's eastern fringes. The terrorists are still dug in elsewhere, from the Diyala River Valley to a few Baghdad neighborhoods, but, to quote that senior officer again, "our forces have been taking out their leaders faster than they can find qualified replacements."
When Gen. Petraeus testifies before Congress in September, the filter will be removed. Harry Reid and John Murtha won't be able to spin what's actually been happening. To be certain, they'll attempt to spin Gen. Petraeus' facts. They'll take their lumps doing that, though. It won't be pretty for 'Gen. Reid' and 'Col. Murtha'.
- It isn't only al Qaeda taking serious hits. After briefly showing the flag, Muqtada al-Sadr fled back to Iran again, trailed by his senior deputies. Mookie's No. 2 even moved his family to Iran. Why? Though he's been weak in the past, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now green-lighting Iraqi operations against the Jaish al Mahdi, the Mookster's "Mahdi Army." With its descent into criminality and terror, the Mahdi Army, too, has been losing support among Iraqis, in this case, among Shias. And Iraq's security forces increasingly carry the fight to the militia:
- The Iraqi Police Tactical Support Unit in Nasiriyah came under attack by Mahdi Army elements accustomed to intimidating their enemies. Supported by a brave (and tiny) U.S. advisory team, the police commandos fought them off. Instead of a walkover, the militia thugs hit a wall, and got hammered by airstrikes, for good measure. Then the Iraqi police counter-attacked. The Mahdi Army force begged for negotiations.
- In Mosul, Iraqi army and police units stuck to their guns through a series of tough combat engagements, with the result that massive arms caches were seized from the terrorists and insurgents. In Kirkuk, Iraqi police reacted promptly to last week's gruesome car-bombing, in time to stop two other car bombs from reaching their intended targets.
- In Baghdad, the surge isn't only about American successes, Iraqi security and intelligence forces conducted a series of hard-hitting operations against both al Qaeda and Iran-backed Special Group terrorists.
Let's not underestimate the impact that the Sunnis turning on AQI terrorists and Iraqi military victories over Sadr's Mahdi Army will have on Iraqi security. This will trigger a sustained and dramatic drop in civilian casualties. When it becomes apparent that sectarian violence is subsiding, American support for Gen. Petraeus' strategy will increase.
Gen. Dave Petraeus and his subordinate commanders are by far the best team we've ever had in place in that wretched country. They're doing damned near everything right, with austere resources, despite the surge. And they're being abandoned by your elected leaders.Isn't it time we demanded that our 'leaders' fall in line with Gen. Petraeus? Isn't it time we told them they'd better pay attention to this 'annoyance'?
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 7:32 AM
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Dems, Pelosi: What Separation of Powers?
That's the underlying message of this Pelosi statement on their vote of Contempt of Congress charges against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers:
"The contempt proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee today are part of a broader effort by House Democrats to restore our nation's fundamental system of checks and balances.Ms. Pelosi's willful ignorance of the Constitution is breathtaking. The Constitution gives Congress oversight responsibilities and subpoena powers on cabinet members. It doesn't give them the same responsibilities and powers of members of a president's personal staff unless they can show beforehand that a crime has been committed. Clearly, that isn't the case here.
"The Constitution gives the Congress a crucial role in overseeing the Executive Branch in order to protect the American people against overreaching, incompetence, and corruption. I am hopeful that today's vote will help the Administration see the light and release the information to which the Judiciary Committee is entitled.
"For the last six years, under Republican leadership, Congress failed to conduct its proper oversight role, resulting in fiascos such as the mismanagement of our Iraq policy, widespread corruption by contractors such as Halliburton, and the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.
"Congress will act to preserve and protect our criminal justice system and to ensure appropriate Congressional oversight in all areas essential to the well-being of the American people."
Should Ms. Pelosi and her cronies pursue this, the Supreme Court will shoot their case down. In addition to the House overstepping its constitutional bounds, it appears as though Senate Democrats are following suit:
Leahy also said he was issuing a subpoena for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide. The deadline for him and Rove to comply was set as Aug. 2.Patrick Leahy knows that he'll get shot down the minute the Supreme Court hears the part about Karl Rove. Because Rove is the president's assistant Chief of Staff and not subject to congressional confirmation hearings, and because Leahy can't prove that Rove has committed a crime of any sort, the Supreme Court will rule that their subpoena isn't constitutional.
"For over four months, I have exhausted every avenue seeking the voluntary cooperation of Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, but to no avail," the Vermont lawmaker said. "They and the White House have stonewalled every request. Indeed, the White House is choosing to withhold documents and is instructing witnesses who are former officials to refuse to answer questions and provide relevant information and documents."
This isn't surprising considering how Democrats' affinity for ignoring the Constitution. The most recent case in point is John Murtha's persistently ignoring the Haditha Marines' most basic rights to a fair trial, their presumption of innocence and their due process rights.
It's noteworthy that House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers' didn't think twice about impeaching President Bush without a shred of evidence that President Bush had committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
Consider the constitutional crisis we might well find ourselves in if Democrats keep their majority in Congress following the 2008 elections. That's a frightening thought if ever there was one.
UPDATE: The Justice Department has told the House Judiciary Committee that they wouldn't enforce their subpoena:
White House counsel Fred Fielding has said Miers, Bolten and other top presidential aides are immune from congressional subpoenas. The Justice Department told the committee that any House-passed contempt citation that might be forwarded to the U.S. attorney for grand jury consideration would not be allowed to proceed.It's great seeing the Justice Department standing their ground. It's long past time that the Bush administration played hardball with these liberals.
The Republican former chairman of the House committee, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, suggested that the Democrats go to court to challenge the White House stand.
"If we countenance a process where our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn't even have to bother to show up, where privilege can be asserted on the thinnest basis and in the broadest possible manner, then we have already lost," Conyers, (D-MI), said before the vote. "We won't be able to get anybody in front of this committee or any other."It's time that Rep. Conyers quit with with the histrionics. He knows that there's a clear delineation between cabinet officials and the President's personal staff. I'm certain that that's part of ConLaw 101. I can't imagine a scenario where anyone to the right of Joe Lieberman would take him seriously. Much like Russ Feingold, he's a joke and a tool of the extreme left.
Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 2:34 PM
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US Troops Broker Peace Agreement
The US military has notched another impressive victory in the fight for reconciliation. Yesterday, the US military brokered a deal between 18 tribal and local leaders in volatile Diyala province.
The effort centered on the city of Khalis, near Baqouba, where U.S. and Iraqi troops are conducting an ongoing house-to-house sweep of the city. Earlier this week, around 75 sheiks and local leaders met at the Iraqi Army Headquarters in Khalis to air long-standing grievances with each other, suggest security improvements and pledge to work against al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups.That's a large contingent of local leaders to assemble in one place and air interfactional grievances. By itself, that's a monumental task. It's the first step in the reconciliation process, though. It had to be done before anything else could be done.
The good news is that these sheiks and local leaders have reached this agreement and they're working to improve the security of their people. Once someone takes ownership of a problem, the odds that the problem will persist are minimal. The other good news to this agreement is that the Iraqi military was involved in this. That's great news, especially with so many in Congress saying that the Iraqis need to step up.
As has been the case in other areas, many local residents have chafed at the continuing violence sponsored by the insurgents and the hard-line Islamic law imposed in some areas. In Baqouba, in particular, residents were shocked when local militant groups tried to enforce a no-smoking law.The fact that these tribes have rejected the Al-Qa'ida way of life is another encouraging sign. By doing that, they've said with their actions that they despise the terrorists' oppressive lifestyle.
"The sheiks are the backbone of Diyala," U.S. Army Col. David Sutherland, commander of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the area, was quoted as saying. "We are not 25 major tribes with 100 sub-tribes; we are one tribe."Unanimity of purpose in wartime is essential to winning. Let's see how quickly this reconciliation pays off.
Posted Friday, July 27, 2007 6:55 AM
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The Burgeoning Impeachment Movement?
The Nation's John Nichols insists that there is a "burgeoning impeachment movement" afoot amongst the electorate. Frankly, I haven't seen it. Frankly, I doubt it exists. I'm more inclined to believe that it's a Nichols flight of fanciful thinking. Here's the first hint of Nichols' delusional thinking:
If abuse of the system of checks and balances, lies about war, approval of illegal spying and torture, signing statements that improperly arrogate legislative powers to the executive branch, schemes to punish political foes and refusals to cooperate with Congressional inquiries are not judged as high crimes, the next President, no matter from which party, will assume the authority to exercise some or all of these illegitimate powers.Nichols doesn't specify any abuses to the system of checks and balances and he isn't specific about what lies were told about war (I'm guessing he's talking about pre-war intelligence.) Furthermore, Nichols says that punishing "political foes" and refusing to let members of the President's personal staff testify before Congress, which the courts have repeatedly ruled in the executive branch's favor, meets the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors.
What about President Clinton's trashing of Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp and Paula Jones? Nichols now says that he thinks that punishing political enemies is an impeachable offense. If that's the case, there wouldn't be any people left inside the Beltway to staff the government. Frankly, his claim that what's happening now is a congressional inquiry is laughable. John Conyers isn't conducting a congressional inquiry. He's on a witch hunt in hopes of finding anything that he can trump up into an article of impeachment.
Here's another example of Nichols' delusional thinking:
The burgeoning movement for impeachment is a rational response to a moment when polls tell us that roughly three-quarters of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. This Administration has not just let Americans down; it has frightened them. A great many understand, intuitively or explicitly, that we are experiencing a constitutional crisis and that impeachment proceedings are the proper tonic. Unfortunately, key Democrats continue to mistake the medicine for the disease. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still keeps impeachment "off the table"; she and her advisers fear that if they allow Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers to open impeachment hearings, it will rally the Republican base in defense of Bush and Cheney.Talk that the Bush administration has frightened the American electorate is silly. What objective information is this silliness based on? Better yet, is it based on anything more than Mr. Nichols' wild imagination? I suspect not, mostly because Nichols appears to believe that a "great many understand, intuitively or explicitly, that we are experiencing a constitutional crisis." That's flimsy intellectually at minimum. That statement has the intellectual heft of John Murtha's statement that he knew that there was a coverup someplace in the Haditha Marine case.
If Mr. Nichols article were a court case, it would get thrown out of for lack of evidence.
History suggests she's wrong: Opposition parties that have pursued impeachment in a high-minded manner have, in every instance, maintained or improved their position in Congress and have usually won the presidency in the next election. Pelosi should step out of the way and let her colleagues restore the rule of law. More than a dozen have shown their desire to do so by co-sponsoring Representative Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Cheney.Another leap of faith by Nichols is his claiming that pursuing impeachment against President Bush and Vice President Cheney would be high-minded. Accusing John Conyers of doing anything in a high-minded, principled fashion is laughable. John Conyers hasn't done anything high-minded in a quarter century. Let's not forget that members of Conyers' staff accused him of ordering them to babysit his children:
Deanna Maher, who was deputy chief of staff in Conyers' Downriver office, says her baby-sitting duties turned into a stint as a full-time nanny. "He handed me the keys to his car and his house, [said] take care of my child Carl and everything," Maher told CNN from her western Michigan home.Nichols' willingness to overlook important details like this call his credibility into question. If he's saying that John Conyers is taking the high road in impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney without taking into account Conyers' corruption and ethics problems, then his objectivity is questionable at best.
Maher says she moved into Conyers' Detroit home. She took care of his elder son for several weeks, she says, while the congressman was in Washington and his wife attended law classes in Oklahoma.
Maher, Rooks and two other staffers have filed complaints against their former boss with the U.S. House of Representatives' ethics committee. In 2004, one of those complaints initiated an informal investigation, but a senior congressional aide said that the probe was stopped abruptly.
Posted Friday, July 27, 2007 9:42 AM
Comment 1 by Leo Pusateri at 27-Jul-07 03:02 PM
Got three words for ya.
B. D. S.
Comment 2 by intuitive at 27-Jul-07 07:52 PM
Why does no one comment here?
