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American Heroes

That’s what we ought to call the men and women who interrogated the worst of the worst. For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, “enhanced interrogation” is not only immoral and illegal, it’s ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn’t hold water. Obviously it works sometimes, and there are plenty of senior officials, including both the current and former DNI, who have said as much. More responsible critics are satisfied to argue that the technique is illegal. Maybe they’re right, but there are plenty of lawyers, and at least one Supreme Court Justice, who will argue the other side of that. It’s not clear the United States government can prosecute a lawyer for holding a minority view, let alone convict an American hero for dunking a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands. If they want any chance at getting twelve guilty votes, they’ll have to hold the trial in Berkeley, which will at least make things easier on Professor Yoo.

That’s Mike Goldfarb. Who is both a clever writer, and quite correct.

The same twit, Mrs. Clnton, who deems former Vice President Richard Cheney not to a reliable source, continues to preach out reach to her so-called moderate Taliban, Daily Times Monitaor(PK):

Haneef Mehsud was a normal teenager who spent most of his time hanging out with friends and playing cricket before he was recruited by the Taliban and turned into a suicide bomber. Less than a month after his 17th birthday in late 2008, Haneef killed two soldiers when he rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into an army convoy on a road not far from his home in Pekai, a hamlet in the militancy-plagued South Waziristan

Hat tip:  Gateway Pundit.

Now that the one has established the principle that policy difference should be prosecuted as felonies, will President Palin prosecute Obama administration officials promoting the fraudulent theory of anthropogenic climate changes,  Social Sciience Research Network:

Myth: Everyone understands what a green job is.

Reality: No standard definition of a green job exists.

Myth: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.

Reality: Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.

Myth: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.

Reality: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.

Barack Obama is seemingly iotent on usiong bad science to destroy good jobs.   I hope President Palin makes this a crime, and proscecute the Obama administration officials.   Don’t you?

Hat tip: Karl, Patterico’s Pontifications.

Addendum: 

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, via Jennifer Rubin, Commentary Magazine:

“In the service of his ultimate mission – the leveling of social inequalities – President Obama offers a tripartite social democratic agenda: nationalized health care, federalized education (ultimately guaranteed through college) and a cash-cow carbon tax (or its equivalent) to subsidize the other two. Problem is, the math doesn’t add up. Not even a carbon tax would pay for Obama’s vastly expanded welfare state. Nor will Midwest Democrats stand for a tax that would devastate their already crumbling region.” What’s coming, says Krauthammer, is healthcare rationing. Or the 2010 election, whichever arrives first”

What defense will Obama offer for perpetuating a fraud to push his radicial agenda?

Welcome one and all to the very more popular, always talked about, never equaled most intense nightly read on the sphere… The Bitsblog Nightly Ramble.

This is the The “Well, blow me down” edition.

• Oops… I forgot: Turns out it was ‘Bring your behavioral problem to work‘ day. I got a reminder on arrival at work, this morning, of course.
• If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute: The weather around here is screwy. Snow flurries last night. Tomorrow, and the day after, they’re predicting 80 degrees. Welcome to my world.
• Harman: Oddly, David Frum confirms my read of the Harman case. This smells a CYA operation of the first order.  Harman’s an idiot, but one gets the decided impression someone’s using her as a scapegoat. We’re watching. So is Ed at HotAir, who has a different angle.   I agree with Ed, here, but this still smells to me of projection.
• Touching: Ann Coulter’s mom died last week. I hadn’t heard about it, until I noticed she’d written an Obit for a column. I’m not placing this in a separate RIP notice for a couple of reasons… For one thing, my mention isn’t so much about her Mom as what she posted about her passing. It’s a touching read. I wonder if any of the many moronic critics the woman has could get through it without questioning their convictions. Our sympathies to Ann and her brothers.
• I consume bandwidth, therefore, I am: I have watched the business with Time Warner’s proposed bandwidth cap (40gb/mo=$55) come, and watched it go, without much comment. I’ve always figured, why bother? After all, Free market principles are in force, here. Had they gone to the cap, I’d have been off cable to DSL or the Dish before the echo died.  Having already set up a caching proxy server in the house, bandwidth and speed are seldom a real issue, despite Casa de Bit being a rather high-tech, high-bandwidth establishment.  Apparently, though, they’ve decided not to go to the cap.  Of course, Chuckles Schumer tried to make out like it was all his doing. He, like many Democrats has developed the knack of leaping out in front of a lynch mob and making out like it’s a parade he’s leading, and the thing was always his idea.  I suspect we’ve not heard the last of this one, and that we’ll get a second heapin’ helpin’ of this BS come election time.  I can’t remember, but I think Chuckles’ seat is up next year.  And I can’t help but think there’s something odd about the way this all went down. Almost as if T-W was giving Chuckles a flag to wave. I’ll be interested in looking at the list of corporate donations of Time Warner, myself. Is Chuckles on the list, I wonder? I suspect he is.
• Fire them: Jen Rubin makes a great point, today:
  

  Really, at this point any CEO who agrees to do business with the government should be fired. If he signs up with the government, he in essence is turning over control of his company to political operatives who bounce from position to position like ping pong balls. Public opinion squawks, they jump and the rules are different. This is the worst form of statist intervention — lawless and unpredictable.

  You should by now have figured out why I’m a fan and put this lady on your required reading.  It’s true; Is working with the this anti-business, anti-freedom government a sound business proposition? I don’t think so. While Jennifer puts these thoughts into well written words, the concept is hardly original or unique.  On that basis, I can’t help but think there’s going to be serious shareholder backlash in a lot of companies for any board that jumps into bed with the Obama Administration.

• It’s in the pocket: One compnay that has unquestionably jumped in bed with Obama, is GE, where an interesting fight occurred at the GE Shareholders meeting, yesterday. Apparently among other things they’re worried about the leftward tilt of NBC.  O’Reilly touches on this last night, and franky, while I’ve never been a fan of his, it’s impossible to say his conclusions are incorrect.

•  Time to go, Janet: I’ll make this short and sweet, because I’m with David on this one: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is an international embarrassment, and it’s time to get her out of that position and out of the public eye. Or would be, for any other administration. Apparently, there’s a number of Republicans going to meet with Obama today to discuss just that. May have already happened by the time this gets read; I don’t know the schedule, particularly.   The problem is, she and Obama are ideologues of the same stripe. That’s why she was appointed in the first place. Getting rid of Napolitano won’t get rid of the problem… which is the mindset of the person who appointed her. Still, it’s time for her to be gone.
• Paging Ron Brown and Vince Foster…. I get the impression it’s going to be years before we fully understand what motivated David Kellerman to off himself yesterday. If he did.  But there are clues…
  

  Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Freddie Mac’s Chief Financial Officer, David Kellermann, who was found dead Wednesday in an apparent suicide, was involved in recent months in a heated dispute with Freddie’s regulator over how to reflect costs of President Obama’s anti-foreclosure program.The Post said Kellermann and other Freddie officials “tussled” with the Federal Housing Finance Agency early last month as the company prepared to file a quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Top executives, including Kellermann, were insistent that Freddie Mac inform shareholders of the cost to the company of helping carry out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan, the two newspapers reported. The Post, citing several unnamed sources, said the regulators “urged the company not to do so.” An unnamed FHFA official who spoke to the Post disputed that, “saying the regulator did not oppose disclosure but how the information was portrayed in the filing.”

  As I suggested yesterday, this thing is starting to smell.

• Can I quote you on that? 25 More Classic Conservative Quotes: From RWN, who I don’t link nearly as often as he deserves.Also see 40 Classic Conservative Quotes
• Paid Volunteers? Democrat party logic, of course, under the guise of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act that was just signed into law. McQ spouts on the subject.  I wonder; Will Lifeguards be covered under this act?  Consider the ignominy of being called an Edward M. Kennedy memorial lifeguard.
• But what if the 17 year old has a headache in school? I note Joyner commenting on the FDA’s ruling that “Plan B” can go on sale to 17 year olds without a prescription.  The timing of this is interesting, given it smacks up against the case before the USSC about strip searching a 13 year old for asprin. Priorities, ya know.
• It ain’t easy, being green:  So lemme understand this now: Obama flies across the country in a huge jet, burning 18,000 gallons of fuel in the process, so he can give a speech in front of a windmill on the virtues of being ‘green’? Tell me again how this isn’t all for show, and why we’re supposed to take the man seriously, at ANYTHING. And the rabbits. Don’t forget to tell me about the rabbits.
• They shoot up horses, don’t they?  With those 20 some odd polo ponies dying mysteriously I find the timing of this story of interest. Just sayin’…  Weird timing, maybe. (Update: they’re now saying it was the vitamin supliments, some weird cocktail called Biodyl, made by the French and banned here. But,  What if the vitamin supliments were… suplimented? )

A lot, David Freddoso, National Review:

But now, John McCormack writes, the MIT profesor admits that he wasn’t counting as a “cost” the higher energy taxes that Obama’s cap-n-trade will make consumers pay. On average, those higher taxes, based on the MIT study, will come to . . . $3,128 per American household. Whatever the federal government decides to do with the money after that (it could be redistributed or it could be used for more “green energy” projects), it is still taking that amount from the consumer up front.

Anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.   The Obama intetion to impose an carbon tax is not.   Write you Congressman.  The Obama adminstration is too stupid with with to reason.

Janet Napolitano is suppose to be the Secretary of Homeland Security.   Yet Napolitano does know North from South and she does know immrigration law, National Post(CA):

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job? She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo

Andy McCarthy, National Review:

So the question is: Is Napolitano just a dimwit or is she willfully misrepresenting the law as a rationale for not enforcing it?

Drew M, Ace of Spades:

[I]t’s becoming pretty clear that Napolitano is one dumb bitch.

In short Napolitano is an incompetent hack, and ought to fired forthwith.

Charming Barry is not charming Raul Castro.   While, Barack Obama has soften United States sanctions on Cuba, Castro is not one bit interested in warming relations with the United States:

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) — President Obama misinterpreted Cuban President Raúl Castro’s offer to start talks with the United States, Castro’s brother Fidel said Wednesday, appearing to dismiss the U.S. leader’s call for Cuba to release political prisoners.

In an essay published in state-run newspapers Wednesday, the ailing revolutionary leader said the people Washington calls political prisoners are “in the service of a foreign power that threatens and blockades our homeland

What part about no don’t you understand Mr. President?   Castro doesn’t want relations, he just wants an excuse.   Mr. President, if you had a State Department, you could have arranged a quid pro  quo.    As your gesture did was reveal you to be naive weakling.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “Keep it under your hat” edition.

• Earth day: Ah, yes… we’ve not heard much about Earth Day, this year, have we? Certainly not as much as we have in previous years.  It is today, you know. I  suppose it not being front and center is due to two situations: First, Democrats are in charge, and to call attention to the plight of Gaia as OwlGore is wont to do, would only show the electorate that the Democrats really aren’t doing all that much about ‘saving the earth’ either.  Secondly, even the Enviro-whackjobs are started to see that the whole thing was a scam from the get go. They’re not quite ready to let go of their anti-human paranoia, but neither are they willing to continue making fools of themselves, either. Me? I’m celebrating Earth day by toddling down to the gas station,  and filling up my SUV, so I can drive to a steak house I frequent.
• Save the earth from the Environmentalists: And no, I’m not joking with that graphic. John Tierny writes in of all places, the ever more rapidly going broke New York Times, that…
  

  In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety of environmental problems. There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulfur dioxide.As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

  Well, now. Ain’t that a kick in OwlGore’s butt?

• Global Cooling:  You do know, don’t you, that we’re in a period of Global cooling?  Of course Science has no clue as to why. Interesting, though that this should come up when we were told that the earth was heating, soon to become as fried as Perez Hilton’s brain on a Saturday night.  The bottom line, here, folks is the Chicken Littles who have been telling us the sky is falling, haven’t a bloody clue… That understanding is something you’d think would be a requirement to accepting their incredible call to completely change our lifestyles and don Doc Martins. but it’s always treated like we’re supposed to accept blindly the judgements of our supposed betters, like we were the bailouts and the huge spending increases. By the way, how’s that one working out?
• Save the Globe:  You can understand why John Kerry wants to use the power of government to save the Boston Globe, being as they’ve been in his pocket conststantly.  Are you getting the message on this stuff, yet?
• Good info: So, now the memos come out that report, correctly, that good info came from the waterboarding sessions.  I’m with Steve Plunk, who says at OTB:
  

  Accepting these techniques is a far cry from “yay torture”. It’s a rough world out there and the stakes are high. Sometimes too high to maintain a moral standard that makes everyone happy.I imagine the administration officials who debated these techniques did so in a somber manner understanding how serious of an issue it is. Grown ups get serious in serious times.

  Just so. And I’ll repeat Boortz’ quote from yesterday, in that context:

  If someone has the information that could save thousands of lives — OK .. just one life — and if you had a reasonable expectation that you could get that information from this guy by pulling out his fingernails or (gasp!) pouring water on his face … and if you didn’t do it … then you are every bit as worthless as he is.

  Amen and Amen. The anti-‘torture’ crowd is trying to have this thing both ways, too. They were the oens screaming ‘what the hell happened to our intel gathering?’ after 9/11, and they’d be the ones screaming the loudest had we had any further attacks on our country.  And of course now we see Obama flip-flopping on proescuting the folks who got us the information that saved all those lives, as David reported last night.  It’s as bald faced a flip-flop as we’ve ever seen, here at BitsBlog, but I don’t imagine it’ll be the last from this administration.

• What did Congress know and when did they know it? Fred Thompson notes that Congress, according to the reports the WH released, knew all about what was going on, at each step of the game, including the Democrat party leadership. So why are they getting a pass now?  Fred says let’s get them to testify under oat to what they aproved of. Bet this move to procecute disappears if this issue is forced.
• Bye Bye, Ellen Moran: Obama’s comms secratary is changing jobs… going to work for Gary Locke.  No clue why. Nor is there any word on who is taking the position yet. Guess they’re running out of tax cheats, so it’s taking longer.
• Boo freakin’ hoo: I’m telling you, gang, if this pirate gets off with a wrist slap… and I predict he will…it’ll be the best argument for exempting pirates and other terrorists from our criminal ‘justice’ system, that anyone’s ever made.
•  Unemployment by the numbers: Jim Lindgren at Volokh runs the numbers, and concludes that the states with the highest taxes and most unionized workers are the ones with the most unemployment.  Yet, what do we see Obama doing? Pushing card check, and raising taxes. Yep… hot on the trail of ‘recovery’, this guy.

Hmmmm. ABC is reporting:

Former Republican New York Gov. George Pataki heads to Iowa Wednesday to deliver a scathing critique of President Obama’s first 100 days in office.

“I think it’s time that those of us who have been silent for a while stand up and point out what I think have been just some horrendous mistakes on the part of the new administration in Washington,” Pataki told ABC News as part of the “Candidate Corner” series. “We’re seeing a president who seems to be more concerned with how popular he is in Europe than with what is happening here at home. This is a president who spends more time traveling the country than running the country in Washington.

“To be perfectly honest, I am very disappointed in these first 100 days,” he added. “I think we need to see a government in Washington that is more understanding of the nature of this country and our problems and less committed to borrowing, spending, taxing and using massive government bailouts to try to get our economy headed in the right direction.”

There is no shortage of Republican critics of Obama, but Pataki’s Wednesday speech at Drake University Law School in Des Moines is drawing notice because it is occuring in the state that traditionally hosts the first presidential nominating contest. Pataki’s address is part of the American Future Fund’s “Conservative Lecture Series.”

And for that reason, there’s much speculation that George may be thinking of putting his hat in the 2012 ring. Frankly, Pataki is too much a centrist for my taste, but he’d certainly be a better choice than the current administration.

That said, I have a contact out there, and I’ve already spoken to him. we’ll see what comes of it.

VIENNA, Va. -(WTOP)- David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, committed suicide in his Hunter Mill Estates home Wednesday morning. He hanged himself.

Fairfax County Police spokeswoman Mary Anne Jennings tells WTOP police responded to the Kellermann home after family members called police at 4:48 a.m.

“We were called from inside the house to come investigate an apparent suicide,” Jennings says.

“We’re not going to give you details of the condition of the body, except to say it was an apparent suicide.”

OK, perhaps a bit early to speculate, here. It may well have been something totally unrelated to his job. And I may well be winning the lottery, or struck by lightning. I place the chances of these at about par with each other.

So, we’ll just sit back and wait for the other shoe to drop, since it clearly will, and soon.

 Update:(Bit) About 30 seconds after I snarked on Twitter: “Ron Brown, call your office” I noticed a McPhillips post from the other day:

On the theory that this crew will not finish the year without surpassing the Clintons in all the big first year categories.

My instincts tell me that he’s just too mean and suspicious to let anyone get behind him, but I’m going to pick Rahm Emanuel anyway.

It’s going to swing this way: Rod Blagojevich has to come up with a name and Emanuel is it, despite what we’ve already heard to the contrary.

Emanuel, meanwhile, holds his own bucket of dirt and tries to use it to acquire a get-out-of-jail-free card for himself. Alas, he asks for too much behind a too easily deciphered threat and gets sent directly to Ft. Marcy Park.* He does not pass Go.

Well, clearly, that part he messed up, but the basis of the thing seems sound; There’s enough history here to make one wonder about what we’re seeing today.

I wonder if anyone picked Kellerman in the pool, then.

Fame is fleeting.   Barack Obama reign as the world’s number one celebrity is over, Brendan O’Neill, Spiked:

Susan Boyle has become a megastar. Her rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Misérables has, at the time of writing, been viewed 34,199,793 times on YouTube: around 30,000,000 times more often than the official video of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.

The King is dead, long live the Queen.

What and whom does Barack Obaam respect, Mona Charen Townhall:

This whole notion that somehow if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments previously hostile that we were soft. Only the American people didn’t buy it. And there’s a good reason the American people didn’t buy it. Because it didn’t make sense.”

Isn’t it the case that some leaders, by their dangerous and destructive actions, forfeit the right to warm greetings? Is there anyone Obama would decline to exchange friendly greetings with at a diplomatic encounter? How about Robert Mugabe? Kim Jong Il? Chavez’s close friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? If Barack Obama had been president in 1977, would he have shaken Pol Pot’s hand?

It does seem that Obama prefers unelected tyrants to constitutional leaders.   It would nice if one would remember is supposed to the President of the United States, and would start defending his own country for a change.

So who died and annointed Megan McCain a spokesman for anybody or anything  other than Miss Cairol, Kim Priestap, Pajamas Media:

What changes does she[Megan McCain] think the GOP needs to make? It needs to be hip and edgier. She laments the perception that there are no Republican politicians who are exciting enough that anyone would want to wear his or her likeness on a piece of clothing. What a short memory she has. Her father’s vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, inspired the creation of numerous t-shirts, sweatshirts, and pins with her face on them

Miss McCain has all her father’s pension for bashing republican for the aake generatiing personal publicity, but none of his achievements.  Miss  McCain go out and do something, anything, constructive,   Then come back with your opinions, such as they are.

The one, a/k/a Barack Obama, has gotten himself trapped between a rock and a hard place, Steven Thomma and Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Hours after he said that he’d never prosecute CIA officers for harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists, President Barack Obama opened the door Tuesday to prosecuting the Bush administration officials who OK’d the techniques.

Obama said it was up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether Bush administration officials should be charged with war crimes or other offenses for approving techniques such as waterboarding

Obama has politicized the War on Terror.   He riled the left into a blood frenzy.  The left can not be appeased and wants a pound of Bush administrating flesh.   The problem is that there aren’t going to be any torture prosecutions.   If Obama were the lawyer he claimed to be, he’d know it.  Hugh Hewitt, Townhall:

There is no serious prosecutor who would bring a charge against any of these Bush Adminstration officials. No one not from the far left side of the political spectrum can even frame the indictment or explain how the tactics less coercive than water-boarding could be considered criminal when Congress, offered the opportunity to declare water boarding a crime, refused to do so. When the left turns up a former United States Attorney or even senior prosecutor not named Ramsey Clark willing to lay out his theory of prosecution, that will be an argument worth responding to. This is a witch hunt, a political prosecution, one that should be a central issue in the campaigns of 2010

If the one needs a pound of flesh, the question becomes who provides the flesh.  Obama really can ill afford to get into a battle with the CIA, Ki  Priestap, Wizbang:

There is one thing we count on when it comes to Barack Obama, and that is he can never be counted on. All those CIA operatives that he spoke to yesterday to reassure them after his release of the classified interrogation memos need to realize that he will not keep his promise to them for long. If it becomes politically expedient for Obama to sell them out and prosecute them for protecting our country, he will do it.

Obama really doesn’t need the Bush administration.   Unlike the CIA, the Bushies are expendable.   Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, points out the foibles of that particular approach:

That leaves George Tenet and the OLC attorneys, but they didn’t conduct the torture, and the OLC didn’t order the interrogations, either.  They responded to a request from the CIA to opine on the legality of the procedures.  Holder can prosecute Tenet, but then he’d also have to file charges against several members of Congress who were briefed on the procedures and never objected — including current Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  If Tenet would get prosecuted for ordering the interrogation techniques, then Pelosi and others would have to get prosecuted for being accessories in not taking action to stop them.

I doubt the Obama has the gonads necessary to take on Mrs. Pelosi and Dirty Harry Reid, who have the power to impeach and remove the one from office.  Obama isn’t so dear to either Nancy or Harry that they would not throw him under the bus to save their own sorry hides.