Where Are My Keys?

Maybe it's time for another Obama Apology Tour?

Putin is testing you, Mr. President.  Just like al Qaeda is.  And like Iran will.  And North Korea will.  How will you respond?

Russia needs more weapons to punch through America’s new missile defence shield, Vladimir Putin said yesterday in blunt remarks that will complicate efforts to cut the nuclear arsenals of the former Cold War rivals.

The Russian Prime Minister, reasserting himself as the country’s real ruler, said that Moscow should press ahead with a new generation of weapons to stop the Americans doing “whatever they want”.

“To preserve the balance we must develop offensive weapons systems, not missile defence systems as the United States is doing,” he said during a visit to the naval port of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.

Until now, it had seemed that Washington and Moscow were edging towards a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), despite failing to meet the original target of December 5.

...

It has always been widely believed that Mr Putin was allowing President Medvedev merely to keep his seat warm while he was taking a break, as laid down by the Constitution. His return to the presidential office would signal a harder line.

President Obama’s reversal in July of plans to station the American missile defence shield close to Russia’s borders in Central Europe — and his vow to reset relations with Moscow — were warmly welcomed by Mr Medvedev. The thaw was expected to pave the way for an agreement on a new nuclear arms reduction package.

Now Mr Putin suggests that the American concessions are not enough. “If we are not developing an anti- missile shield then there is a danger that our partners, by creating such an umbrella, will feel completely secure and thus can allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and aggressiveness will rise immediately,” Mr Putin said.

He made it clear that Washington should share its missile defence plans — based on sea and land-based interceptors in Europe — with Moscow if it wanted to ease Russian concerns. “Let the Americans hand over all their information on missile defence and we are ready to hand over all the information on offensive weapons,” he said.

I thought cold water made things shrink?

Not in every instance.

 

What happens after?

Ben Nelson (D-NE) will run a 30-second ad defending his vote on ObamaCare during the Nebraska football game. 

As a fresh poll measured the political cost of Sen. Ben Nelson's health reform vote, he prepared Tuesday to take his case directly to Nebraskans during Wednesday night's Holiday Bowl game.

Nelson will air a new TV ad in which he attempts to debunk opposition claims that the Senate legislation represents a government takeover, and he makes the case for health care reform.

"With all the distortions about health care reform, I want you to hear directly from me," the Democratic senator says in the ad.

Nelson, dressed in an open-necked shirt and sweater, speaks directly into the camera during the 30-second ad.

The message will be launched during the Nebraska-Arizona football game and continue to air statewide for an undisclosed number of days.

The political damage Nelson may have incurred in providing the critical 60th vote that cleared the way for Senate passage of the health care reform bill showed up Tuesday in a poll released by Rasmussen Reports.

The telephone survey of 500 Nebraskans, conducted Monday, suggested Republican Gov. Dave Heineman would defeat Nelson in a potential 2012 Senate race by a 61-30 margin.

The poll showed Nelson with a 55 percent unfavorable rating and 64 percent disapproval for Democratic health care reform legislation.

So what happens if his poll numbers don't improve after the ads?  Will it affect his vote the next time ObamaCare comes to the Senate?

Boehner speaks..

His statement today on the CrotchBomber™ attack:

It’s time for the President to halt terrorist transfers to other countries, including Yemen, and to reevaluate his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo.”

“The terrorist plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 exposed a near-catastrophic failure at every level of our government.  News reports suggest our government had intelligence in hand that this attack was coming, yet did not piece together all the information and take the necessary actions to prevent it.  The system clearly did not work, and I’m glad the President finally acknowledged that yesterday.” 

“Just as troubling is the Administration’s treatment of this matter as a mere law enforcement issue.  We’re fighting a war on terror, and this was a terrorist act.  Our first priority should be gaining intelligence to help prevent the next attack.  The threat we face is real, and we don't need to downplay it.  We need to do a better job of connecting the dots and putting in place a homeland security and intelligence plan that helps prevent future attacks before they ever get off the ground.  We know al Qaeda is plotting more attacks, and our security depends on gaining critical intelligence and connecting those dots.” 

“The Administration’s response following this attempted attack is consistent with its dangerous decision to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists to trial in the United States through civilian courts, rather than the military commissions already in place.  We know the decision to close this prison has not stopped al Qaeda from plotting attacks on Americans, turning these terrorists over to other countries is not working, and we shouldn’t import them into the United States.  It’s time for the President to halt terrorist transfers to other countries, including Yemen, and to reevaluate his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo.” 

“All year long, Republicans have asked the question: what is this Administration’s overarching strategy to confront the terrorist threat and keep America safe?  The American people deserve answers to this question, and Republicans will push for the type of aggressive oversight to give them confidence that their government is doing everything it can to detect and stop future attacks, rather than just responding to them after they happen.”

Don't worry..

I mean, it's only a handful of people that fly.  Everyone will be required to be a part of the health care system..

Karma?

Obama Administration (remember how Senator/Candidate Obama had a problem with the Bush Administration not "connecting the dots" prior to 9/11?

What about this news:

Senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities are now looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. They did not say how these communications with the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place—by Internet, cell phone or another method.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack. One official said a link between the suspect's planning and al-Qaida's goals was becoming more clear.

Intelligence officials would not confirm whether those conversations involved Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but other U.S. government officials said there were initial indications that he was involved. Al-Awlaki reportedly corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5.

"Had this critical information been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence, and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged," Obama said in a brief statement to the media. "The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America."

Officials said Obama chose to make a second statement in as many days because a morning briefing offered him new information in the government's possession about the suspect's activities and thinking, along with al-Qaida's plans.

...

Obama, interrupting his vacation to address the airliner attack, said, "It's essential that we diagnose the problems quickly."

"There were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have—and should have—been pieced together," he said.

Why don't you talk to Jamie Gorelick, Mr. President.

There is also this:

Republicans are questioning Napolitano's judgment and a few have called for her resignation. The White House says her job is safe.

However, Obama said: "What's also clear is this: When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been ... a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable."

So in Obama's mind, there was "failure", and it is "totally unacceptable".  Yet Napolitano's job "is safe".

Unbelievable.

When will the Administration condemn these types of actions?

Running over protesters in Iran with trucks.  History is happening Mr. Obama.  Get off the sidelines.

 

Scalia was right..

Legal Insurrection has a great recap of what Scalia predicted, and what some on the Left were saying at the time:

Needless to say, Scalia was raked over the coals by the pundits because of this dissent. James Joyner had a good round-up of blogospheric reaction at the time.

Think Progress criticized Scalia's "extreme rhetoric." Matthew Yglesias, writing at The Atlantic, snarked:

I bet all those dirty hippies who said that John Roberts would be another Scalia feel sorry now completely vindicated. Just remember, when John McCain gets to replace John Paul Stevens with another member of the Roberts/Scalia/Alito/Thomas school then all your individual rights are belong to the U.S. government.

John Cole dismissed Scalia's concerns as nothing more that the wails of the "Malkin wing" of the GOP:

CNN is reporting that SCOTUS has ruled that the detainees in Gitmo have constitutional rights and can challenge their detention in civilian court. That sound you hear is six years of Republican bullshit being flushed down the drain, followed by the inevitable wailing from the Malkin wing of the GOP:

ACTIVIST JUDGES! ACTIVIST JUDGES!

Dana Lithwick quipped:

Judging by the tone of Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, however, you'd think that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority not only released Hamdan and his buddies from their imprisonment at Guantanamo, but also armed them with a rocket launcher and paid their collective train fare to Philadelphia.

While the two specific detainees implicated in the attempted Detroit bombing were released just prior to the Boumediene decision, the political pressure to release detainees already was being applied. And that pressure to release detainees deemed dangerous but perhaps not convictable in a U.S. court, remains in place even more so after Boumediene.

Why is she still employed?

Napolitano needs to go.  Today.

Janet Napolitano is impressed with Janet Napolitano’s work. In an instantly notorious statement on CNN over the weekend, the Homeland Security secretary said “the system worked” when a man boarded a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with explosives in his underwear that he couldn’t quite manage to ignite. 

Does “the system” count on all explosive devices smuggled onto international flights not detonating? When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set himself on fire while trying to blow up the plane and kill its 278 passengers, a Dutch filmmaker leapt on him, ripped a smoldering object from near his crotch, and put it out with his bare hands. Or as Napolitano put it, “Everybody played an important role here.”

This is a bizarre division of labor. You carefully pack to avoid any liquids more than three ounces. You stand in a security line. You take off your shoes. You get your fingernail clippers confiscated. You run your carry-on bags through an X-ray machine and walk through a metal detector, with an extra wanding if your spare pocket change sets off the alarm. And after all that, it’s still your responsibility to subdue the terrorist in the next row trying to set off the pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) secreted on his body.

Napolitano immediately took back her praise of “the system,” in a tacit acknowledgment that its only success was in demonstrating its own industrial-scale irrationality. At a cost of $30 billion since 2004, we’ve implemented security procedures ideally suited to harassing innocent passengers who have no intention of doing anyone harm and only want to travel from Point A to Point B with minimal inconvenience. It’s only the terrorists we have trouble handling.

If a terrorist is a proverbial needle in a haystack, Abdulmutallab constituted something closer to a sledgehammer. His father, a powerful banker in Nigeria, warned the U.S. embassy that he might be dangerous. This only got Abdulmutallab entered into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a massive database that evidently does nothing to enjoin terrorists from traveling to the U.S. on missions of mass murder.

Even by the most basic standard of post-9/11 travel, Abdulmutallab should have set off alarms. He reportedly bought his ticket in cash and only had carry-on luggage. Never mind his travel history that included a trip to Yemen, or the revocation of his visa by the British when they suspected he tried to enter the U.K. on false pretenses. For all this, Abdulmutallab — who maintains he worked with al-Qaeda in Yemen on his plot — got nary an extra pat.

Wakeup call..