Part 11--January, 2010

* 1/6/10--Someday, somebody not from Hollywood will make a movie about President Obama's disastrous vacation. About how his aides waited for nearly three hours after the Christmas airliner attack to wake him. About how he waited three more days to appear publicly. About how even then, he didn't grasp the seriousness of the situation, racing through a bloodless speech so he could play golf. Until that film is made, reality is frightening enough. Even the true believers in the White House now realize they blew the response to a potentially catastrophic attack by an al Qaeda-trained terrorist. When the alarm first went off -- the 3 a.m. phone call -- they hit the snooze button, putting the president's personal comfort ahead of the country's. Everything since has been damage control, including yesterday's endlessly advertised meeting with his national security team. Obama's remarks afterward were direct and forceful, but the door of doubt about his national security leadership has been blown off the hinges. The images that stick are the ones out of Hawaii, with the president in vacation mode -- no tie, a perfunctory appearance on Dec. 28, no questions, then off for more fun in the sun. Behavior doesn't get less serious or more callow. The images accurately reflect a troubling mindset that borders on religious faith about how to combat terrorism, with Obama himself the high priest. He is a war president who defiantly shuns the mantle. So be it. The Oval Office and the choices are his. And so is the responsibility. If America gets hit again, it's on him. All of it. Obama often complains about the problems he inherited from George W. Bush, but he also inherited a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11. If Islamic terrorists succeed on his watch, he can't blame Bush. Not after he has made a series of important choices that make the country less safe than it was. Dick Cheney is hardly alone in this belief. From prosecuting CIA agents who acted in good faith to freeing Gitmo prisoners to putting Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York's civilian courts, Obama is fighting the war on terror his way. His continuing determination to close Gitmo smacks of a dogma untroubled by facts or common sense. It is his burden. He and he alone will own the results, just as Bush will go down in history as the president who failed to connect the dots that could have prevented 9/11. In theory, Obama knows as much. In practice, it is hard to imagine how he would live with himself if the vast security apparatus constructed since that awful day failed on his watch, leaving thousands, perhaps tens of thousands dead. Would he second-guess himself? Would he wonder if there was something he could have or should have done? He wouldn't be human if he didn't. Yet how then to explain his determined willfulness to test the limits of the enemy's good will? How to explain his trust in a rational reaction from people who have repeatedly demonstrated their fanatical adherence to a murderous cult? Even now, as he sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he rolls out the welcome mat at home. The offer of a lawyer, a plea bargain and the presumption of innocence to the Nigerian who tried to blow up 300 people over Detroit is exactly what the far-left ideologues of the American Civil Liberties Union would do. That the president of the United States does it means he is operating from the fringes of American society. No president in modern times has ever strayed so far from the center. No commander-in-chief has ever been as optimistic about a savage enemy. Barack Obama is flirting with unprecedented disaster. His and America's. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 1/6/10--As DC Democrats slink behind closed doors to craft a final health-care bill -- thousands of pages long and sure to sap the nation's economic future -- Americans need to ask: Just what are Dems so ashamed of? "We will do what is necessary to pass the bill," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted, as she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to forgo a panel to finalize legislation. Instead, they'll build their Frankenstein's monster of a bill in secret, mocking democratic principles all the way. So much for President Obama's vows of transparency -- and bipartisanship. "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN," Candidate Obama vowed back in 2008, "so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents . . . That approach, I think, is what is going to allow people to stay involved." That is, until Pelosi, Reid & Co. hide in the back rooms buying votes -- more Cornhusker Kickbacks, anyone? -- and doing all manner of secret violence to an industry that comprises one-sixth of the US economy. "My Republican colleagues and the American people have been largely shut out . . . as Democrat leaders packaged their health-care bills behind closed doors and layered them with billions of dollars in sweetheart deals," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. C-SPAN itself called on Congress to open talks: "President Obama, Senate and House leaders . . . have all talked about the value of transparent discussions," Chief Executive Brian Lamb wrote. "Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation," he said, "we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American".... Obamacare's tax hikes and Medicare cuts will sock New Yorkers harder than other folks, even as Albany loses out on perhaps $1 billion in Medicaid funds. Better not to shine a light on that downer. Or any other, Dems say openly. "Now is not the time to get stuck on any one point," Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said. "The important thing for us now is to get a bill done." And to hell with democracy.--NY Post Editorial

* 1/6/10--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended Congress' work on a healthcare bill Tuesday saying the process has displayed historic transparency, just as C-SPAN mounts an effort to open the negotiations. C-SPAN wrote a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday asking that TV cameras be allowed to film negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform legislation. But Pelosi said Congress has already been transparent throughout the process. "There has never been a more open process for any legislation," Pelosi said at a press conference. Pelosi also hinted that holding informal negotiations--likely without TV cameras--might be the most practical way to push the legislation through. "We will do what is necessary to pass the bill," Pelosi said. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), assistant to the Speaker, said the healthcare bill had been "subjected to unprecedented level of public scrutiny." Pressed on whether C-SPAN cameras would be allowed in negotiations, Van Hollen hedged. "We don't even know if there's going to be a conference committee," he said, alluding to the likelihood that Democrats will reconcile the two bills behind closed doors.--TheHill.com

* 1/6/10--The health bills in Congress rob you of your constitutional rights. Here are five provisions (of many) that fail the constitutionality test and reveal Congress's disrespect for the public:

* Section 3403 of the Senate health bill, establishing a commission to cut Medicare spending, says the law can't be changed or repealed in the future. This whopper shows that Congress thinks its work should be set in stone. Wrong. The people always have the right to elect a new Congress to change or repeal what a previous Congress has done.

* A Senate health-bill amendment mysteriously allocates $100 million to an unnamed facility that "shall be affiliated with an academic health center at a public research university in the United States that contains a state's sole public academic medical and dental school" (Sec. 10502, p. 328-329). Why not name the facility? This pork deal was arranged by Sen. Chris Dodd for the University of Connecticut Health Center, although 11 hospitals in the nation technically meet these specifications. If Congress wrote the provision in Polish or Russian to keep the public in the dark, it would be unconstitutional. The language is a deception. The fact that legislators commonly do this makes it more damaging, not less so.

* The bills require you to enroll in a "qualified health plan," whether you want it or not. Forcing people to buy insurance obviously reduces the number of uninsured. But Congress doesn't have the authority to force people to buy a product. Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Nev.) said on the Senate floor, "If Congress may require individuals to purchase a particular good or service . . . We could simply require that Americans buy certain cars . . . for that matter, we could attack the problem of obesity by requiring Americans to buy fruits and vegetables." Some Congress members claim the "general welfare clause" of the Constitution empowers them to impose a mandate. But they're taking the phrase out of context. The Constitution gives Congress power to tax and spend for the general welfare, but not to make other kinds of laws for the general welfare. The Senate bill (pages 320-324) claims the "interstate commerce" clause of the Constitution gives Congress this authority. But for half a century, states have regulated health insurance. In fact, individuals are barred from buying insurance in any state except where they live, the antithesis of interstate commerce. Congressional majorities have frequently resorted to the commerce clause to justify their lawmaking. In FDR's first term, Congress cited it to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave the federal government power to micromanage local businesses, setting wages and hours and even barring customers from selecting their live chickens at the butcher. Two Brooklyn brothers, owners of Schechter Poultry Corp., a kosher chicken business, challenged that interference. In 1935, the US Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional. In 1995, the high court again admonished Congress against using the commerce clause as a basis for expanded lawmaking, even when the purpose is as worthy as keeping handguns out of a school zone (US v. Lopez). The court ruled that Congress must stick to its enumerated powers and leave states to police school zones (and, perhaps, mandate health insurance).

* Never before has the federal government intruded into decisions made by doctors for privately insured patients, except on narrow issues such as drug safety. Nothing in the Constitution permits it. But the Senate bill makes you enroll in a plan and then says that only doctors who do what the government dictates can be paid by your plan. "Qualified plans" can contract only with a doctor who "implements such mechanisms to improve health-care quality as the [current or future] secretary [of Health and Human Services] may by regulation require" (Sec. 1311, p. 148-49). That covers all of medicine, from heart care to child birth, stents to mammograms.

* Finally, the "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment bars government from taking your property without compensation. It should protect everyone, no matter how unpopular -- even insurance companies, but Congress ignored it in writing the health bill. The Senate version goes beyond reining in insurance-company abuses, a just cause, and actually caps insurance-company profit margins at well below current levels, robbing shareholders. Next year, Congress could impose similar caps on profit margins of bodegas, pizzerias and grocers, by arguing that food -- also a necessity -- is too expensive. Your business could be next. In 2010, ordinary citizens will have to stand up for their constitutional rights, just as the Schechter brothers did 75 years ago. Congress members swear to uphold the Constitution, but it appears many are ignorant of what it says. They should be mandated to take a course, as pilots and doctors are. Congress needs to be reminded that the Constitution defines and limits its powers. --Betsy McCaughey, NY Post

* 1/7/10--WASHINGTON -- You know the ship is in serious trouble when even the rats start jumping into the frothy abyss rather than risk sticking it out on the cracking boat. Sen. Chris Dodd's announcement yesterday that he would abandon his hopeless bid for re-election is only the latest in an alarming and growing body of evidence that President Obama and Democrats in Congress have blown through more political good will in one year than most parties do in a decade. With elections still 10 months off, 13 incumbent congressional Democrats have decided to give up rather than face the certain wrath of voters. These are the kinds of defections a party suffers when it is toiling away in the forgotten minority, not when they hold a stranglehold in the House and a supermajority in the Senate. And not when they are guaranteed that all of their legislation will be blindly signed by their fellow Democrat in the White House. Even more astonishing is that Connecticut's Dodd is the second powerful committee chairman this week, along with North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, to surrender his seat despite holding pivotal control over some of the most far-reaching legislation ever drafted by Congress. Things are so bad that one Alabama member of Congress decided last month that life in the powerful majority with all its perks simply wasn't worth it anymore if it meant he had to be a Democrat. So, in one of the strangest political defections of recent history, he joined the powerless minority. Perhaps the biggest lie of Dodd's long political career came yesterday when he insisted he was quitting because his job is done and it's time for the next generation of public "servants." No human on earth has ever given up the Senate Banking Committee chairmanship just so somebody younger can take up the reins of graft and greed. No, Dodd is giving up because voters were about to throw him out for his extensive involvement in so many of the policies that led to this economic collapse, not to mention the special treatment he enjoyed as one of the politically chosen.--Charles Hurt, NY Post
* 1/8/10--After much bribery and arm-twisting, the Senate managed just before Christmas to pass its version of ObamaCare by a 60-39 vote (amazingly, without a single GOP "aye"). Now, the bill heads for conference deliberation televised by C-SPAN, just as the cable channel offered and Barack Obama promised numerous times:

"We will have a public, uh, process for forming this plan. It'll be televised on C-SPAN.... It will be transparent and accountable to the American people." --Barack Obama, November 2007

"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process." --Barack Obama, January 2008

"[T]hese negotiations will be on C-SPAN..." --Barack Obama, January 2008

"We're gonna do all these negotiations on C-SPAN so the American people will be able to watch these negotiations." --Barack Obama, March 2008

"All this will be done on C-SPAN in front of the public." --Barack Obama, April 2008

"I want the negotiations to be taking place on C-SPAN." --Barack Obama, May 2008

"[W]e'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who is, who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." --Barack Obama, August 2008

"We will work on this process publicly. It'll be on C-SPAN. It will be streaming over the Net." --Barack Obama, November 2008

Or not. Democrats let slip this week that there would be no typical conference committee on the competing House and Senate versions of the health bill, as "leaders" opted instead for private negotiations with "key" congressmen and senators, none of whom is Republican. Once an agreement is reached, each legislative chamber will vote again and send the unified bill to the president. Without a conference committee, a rule requiring public access to the conference report for at least 48 hours before a vote would conveniently not apply. That means even more liberty-stealing treachery can be slipped into the bill with little notice. Funny how the "public option" doesn't mean that the public gets to know what's in the bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) nevertheless had the gall to declare, "There has never been a more open process for any legislation in anyone who's served here's experience." In response, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto mocked, "Has a more false or awkwardly worded statement ever come out of anyone who has served as speaker of the House's mouth?" In spite of Democrats' best efforts at "transparency," there are many extra-special things that we actually do know about the bill. For example, on page 1,020, the Senate bill states: "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." In other words, the bill creates an eternal law by prohibiting future elected Congresses from making changes to this subsection. What's in the subsection in question? The infamous "death panel" -- the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB), whose objective will be to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending" (read: to ration health care). Meanwhile, the bill contains what amounts to a marriage penalty worth $2,000 or more in insurance premiums each year. The Wall Street Journal explains, "The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single." Finally, Obama signaled this week that he's willing to break another campaign promise: The "no tax increases on the middle class" pledge. He threw his support behind the Senate's tax on higher end "Cadillac" insurance plans, something unions and House Democrats oppose. The more the public learns about this continuing saga, the more vigorously opposed they become to "reform." No wonder Democrats want the process to remain secret.--Patriot Post

* 1/8/10--More than 20 Republican senators wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Friday objecting to the administration’s decision to try terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian courts. The GOP senators want the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to bomb a Northwest Airlines jet tried in military courts and declared an enemy combatant. By bringing Abdulmutallab before a judge and allowing him to face charges, critics say, the administration is missing an opportunity to interrogate him more thoroughly.--TheHill.com

* 1/9/10--WASHINGTON --(AP)-- President Obama yesterday responded to a report that raised doubts about the recovery's sustainability by outlining a plan to create "the jobs of the future." "Building a robust clean-energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," the president said. Unemployment remained 10 percent in December, following a decline the previous month, but rose 0.1 point, to 17.3 percent, if you count those who've stopped looking for work or who can't find full-time jobs. The larger-than-expected loss of 85,000 jobs in December put new pressure on the administration to step up job creation.

* 1/9/10--WASHINGTON – (AP)-- He says "the buck stops with me," but nearly a year into office, President Barack Obama is still blaming a lot of the nation's troubles — the economy, terrorism, health care — on George W. Bush. Over and over, Obama keeps reminding Americans of the mess he inherited and all he's doing to fix it.

* 1/10/10--There appears to be a battle raging within Barack Obama. How this war is resolved will decide how we fight the war on terror and determine if we win it at all. In his speech last spring in Cairo, Mr. Obama said, "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." Defending the honor of Islam and protecting Muslims is one of the goals that Barack Obama has set for himself. It constitutes a personal definition of his presidency. But is he doing so to the point of misleading the public in general, and at the risk of jeopardizing the American people in particular? The near-deaths of three hundred people on Christmas due to an Islamic terrorist plot -- an act of war against America -- did not rouse Obama from golf and relaxation until three days later. When he finally spoke, he disrespected us, as before, by claiming that this was a "lone event" disconnected from anything larger. But most Americans knew what it was, and the subsequent reports and al-Qaeda announcement told us that this was an act of jihad, a part of the larger scheme of radical Islam in its war against America. After the Fort Hood massacre, the president's first reaction was to intone the silly assertion that we "do not know what prompted this outrage." In fact, everyone immediately intuited what was verified more each day after the carnage: that devotion to the Islamic cause generated Nidal Hasan's decision to kill American infidels. The president was strangely unwilling to tie these murders to Islam or jihad or imams, even knowing that the jihadist yelled "Allah aqbar" as he mowed down innocent Americans. In all these matters, Mr. Obama's first concern seems to protect things Islamic rather than name and fight the Islamism intent on destroying us. This attitude predates his presidency, and it is one of the animating and personal goals of his worldview. Even before becoming senator of Illinois, he tells us in The Audacity of Hope (pp.261) of his earlier decision: "I will stand with them [Muslims] should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." For Barack Obama, the recognition that this is not simply generic "extremism," as he likes to call it, but specific to Islam and carried out by devout young Muslim men borders on the "ugly direction" against which he promised to stand. But by so doing, Mr.Obama is misleading the country and standing in the way of the measures needed to protect the American people and win the war on terror. What we get from the president after each incident is not a tough, impassioned call to wipe out jihadists, but the warning that we "should not rush to judgment" or draw any conclusions regarding Islam or Muslims. The more Islamic terrorism, the more warnings we receive from him not to mischaracterize Islam. But how can the American public be accused of "rushing" to judgment when this has been happening before our eyes for thirty years already? After decades of these incidents -- and they are coming quicker now -- Obama expects us to participate in his cover-up for Islam by immediately agreeing that these attackers are either "alone," or "misfits," or "crazy." They are not crazy, but devoted to a cause; not misfits, but fit into a very large Islamist groupthink; not alone, but part of an ideology, most often coordinated by Islamists and clerics higher up. These are agents of Islamism on the same level as the German agents of Nazism who tried to do damage within our borders during WWII. At least back then, the safety of the home-front was more important to our leaders than protecting "feelings." Until President Obama acknowledges the Islamic context behind these acts of worldwide jihad, we Americans remain at great risk. One cannot vanquish what he does not believe is a culprit. And thus, the most likely candidates setting out to kill us -- Islamic young and mostly single men under 40 -- are not routinely checked, nor are the mosques where many of these plans are hatched and coordinated. Obama and his people are elevating and sanctifying the doctrine of "no profiling" as if it were a fundamental principle of humankind more important than life itself. A society that suspends analytical and rational judgment in favor of a politically correct fantasy is on the road to unscientific darkness and eventual suicide. One hopes that Mr. Obama is guided by foolishness only and nothing more. Barack Obama's failure to tell the truth about Islamism goes beyond the routine excuse-making of the politically correct ideology that has negatively infected our country. Mr. Obama's preoccupation here is personal. Though not a practicing Muslim, nor a visibly practicing Christian, in office, he has a cultural and ethnic fidelity to Islam that skews common sense and is resulting in harm to our nation. After all, Islam is a culture in which Obama was raised. It represents to him what Americanism and the Judeo-Christian ethos represent to us who were raised in them. Obama grew up in Islamic Indonesia from age 6 to 12 -- formative years, the years in which the subconscious is molded --and he seems to have liked it very much. "One of the prettiest sounds on Earth," as Obama told The New York Times in March of 2007, "is the Moslem call to prayer." Such warmth of identification is to be expected concerning those things that supply a childhood. As a youngster, Obama was identified as a Muslim, and he spent two hours a day in elementary school studying Islam. He seems unwilling to move beyond his youthful, rose-colored view of a more-secular Islam to today's facts. He remains fixed in his adoration, as demonstrated during his Cairo tour, when he referred to the Quran as the "Holy Quran." He never waxes that way about our Constitution, for that was not his mother's milk. The dozens of citations in the Quran allowing murder and mayhem are to Obama not organic, whereas the allowance in our Constitution for the now-defunct system of slavery sours him on its entirety. Yet for Obama, the Quran is not stigmatized, even with its numerous references and validations of slavery and its continuance of slavery even today by those who cite its authority. In another address, Obama spoke not of Islam as a religion, but The Islam, The Path, as would someone who sees in it something transcendent. Never has he waxed reverent about America's accomplishments as he has about Islam's contributions to the world or his concoction of Islam's enormous contribution to the development of the United States. The utter lack of pain and passion in Obama's non-emotional responses to both the Fort Hood massacre and the Christmas scare was striking. He spoke of it as he would a highway bill. I'm sure he is not happy, yet it doesn't seem to be personal. Contrast this with how he reacted and condemned the Cambridge police at Harvard regarding Professor Gates. He appeared to be affected -- because he was. And yet, Professor Gates was not terrorized as were the passengers aboard the Delta flight, who thought they would soon die. All this rhetoric about not "profiling" (which is simply the use of rational judgment) and about not blaming Islam may sound "enlightened," but for Obama, it constitutes verbal weapons in defense of Islam. His war is not for victory over jihadism, but to defend the honor of Islam under today's difficult circumstances. For him, it is a balancing act between the Islam he loves and the duties imposed on him by the presidency. It is hard to shed the teachings, culture, and religious life of one's youth. And the Islamic world is Obama's world. Much of his ethnicity and the people that are natural to him derive from it. Obama cannot conceive of a clash of civilizations where the one intent on destroying the civilization he's supposed to protect is Islam, his Islam. Obama will not allow sensible military rules of engagement that give maximum and routine protection for our soldiers if by so doing, some Afghan Muslims will lose their lives. He seems to identify with those people as much as he does our young Americans. He does not allow the necessary profiling of young, single Islamic men because he thinks of how that would make some of his own family members feel, as well as how the young Barack Obama would have felt. Those feelings are understandable for Barack Obama, private citizen, but not for a president of the United States. Today's global mayhem and chaos is not from Basque terrorism. We Americans tolerate intrusive measures at airport check-ins not out of fear of another Timothy McVeigh or white neo-Nazis, as the ACLU wants us to believe. That's a deliberate obfuscation -- one that the president is endorsing -- and such obfuscation and denial invite danger. The jihadist relishes striking on Christmas specifically, since it is the goal of jihad to profane and degrade Christian and Jewish sacred time and sacred objects. Islam sees this as a contest between religions. Had we been allowed to acknowledge the Islamic content behind current terrorism, we would have been on especially high alert on Christmas Day. Last November, we elected our first president with Islamic affinities and familial ties. The problem is that today's clash is with Islam. We need a president whose first loyalty and cultural empathy is to and with Americans. We don't have that in President Obama. He cannot forever dally and hide behind new "commissions" that have nothing new to tell us regarding what must be done. Obama must soon choose between his emotional need to protect Islam and his presidential requirement to protect the American people. Unfortunately for him, the two are not compatible.--Rabbi Aryen Spero, AmericanThinker.com

* 1/10/10--I try not to overdose on the fear factor, but the shocking intelligence failure in the Christmas airline plot isn't the only national security night mare facing America. While we were all absorbed with the underwear bomber, the Iranian nuke mess took another big turn for the worse. President Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for the mad mullahs to make a deal on uranium enrichment came and went, but not without incident. There were three, none good. Most troubling, the White House proved it still doesn't have a Plan B, even though its unBush diplomacy has proven to be a total dud. Get a load of the double-talk from press secretary Robert Gibbs. Asked at a briefing what the US will do now, Gibbs did a good imitation of comic Professor Irwin Corey, without the laughs. "Well, the next step is ongoing, and that is working with our partners in the P5+1 and throughout the international community in looking at the next steps to hold Iran accountable." In plain English: We don't have a clue. Unfortunately, the Iranians know what they want -- the bomb. The only question is whether we will stop them. That's been the question since Obama took office. He promised during the campaign it would never happen, but with each passing day, it appears we are on a glide path to accepting a nuclear-armed Iran. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 1/10/10--So, have you been following those health-care negotiations on C-SPAN? OK, that was below the belt. Maybe it's unfair to expect the negotiations to be televised just because President Obama promised they would be -- at least eight times. But at least we know that the media will be able to cover the conference to reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills. Oops, I guess we won't see that either -- because the Democratic leaders have decided to forego the traditional procedure. Instead, they'll rely on a seldom used method known informally as "ping pong," because it involves passing an amended bill back and forth until the House and Senate can agree. Doing it this way lets House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid avoid all that messy public debate and media scrutiny. Of course, Pelosi insists that the process is "the most transparent in history." Sure. That's why we're still finding hidden goodies in the bill rammed through the Senate on Christmas Eve. --Michael Tanner, NY Post

* 1/11/10--"Most of the domestic groups that we pay attention to here are white supremacist groups. They're anti-government, in most cases anti-abortion, they are usually survivalist type in nature, identity oriented. ... Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and Christian identity oriented." --TSA nominee Erroll Southers

* 1/12/10--When President Obama was still a senator from Illinois, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid characterized him as a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." This, according to Reid, made Obama better suited for the presidency. As news of this past occurrence came to light this week, the blowback immediately started to hit Reid. RNC head Michael Steele, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) all called for Reid’s resignation, to which Reid sloughed off the criticism, essentially responding “Get lost.” Perhaps that’s because he had the backing of Obama, who immediately forgave the Majority Leader and told America to move on. But conservative blogs weren’t so quick to move on. Many pointed to Obama’s treatment of Robert Gates’ arrest in Cambridge, or the treatment of Trent Lott, who lost the House Speakership after his off-handed comments on Strom Thurmond’s past bid for the presidency. Why dismiss Reid’s comments when others were dealt with so harshly? Then there were those who didn’t see any problem with Reid’s remarks at all. Liberal blogger Ezra Klein asked, “Do people seriously dispute that light-skinned African Americans have traditionally been more palatable to white Americans? We literally have studies on this subject.” --TownHall.com

* 1/12/10--WASHINGTON --(AP)-- Targeting an industry whose political deafness has vexed his administration, President Barack Obama is weighing a levy aimed at recovering tax dollars from government-rescued financial institutions. The proposed levy could put Obama on the popular side of public opinion that is decidedly against Wall Street and angry over shortfalls in a $700 billion bank bailout fund. A senior administration official said Monday that Obama would seek modifications to the law that sent billions in bailout money in 2008 and 2009 to a flailing Wall Street that was approaching collapse. The government official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president's thinking. The idea received an early boost from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, where there have been calls for a hefty tax on bank bonuses.

* 1/12/10--(AP)--Five times as many high-school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental-health issues as youth were in 1938, according to a study released yesterday. Students tested in 2007 exhibited far more signs of anxiety, depression and "psychopathic deviation," says the Clinical Psychology Review study. Mental-health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external -- from wealth to looks and status -- has contributed to the uptick in mental-health issues. (How about the 40-year liberal assault on religion and religious values?)

* 1/13/10--WASHINGTON -- President Obama's top economist said yesterday the stimulus plan has created or saved up to 2 million jobs. The analysis is part of a quarterly report to Congress on the controversial $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts Obama signed weeks after taking office.
Republicans have denounced the stimulus as an expensive flop, pointing to a national unemployment rate stuck at 10 percent and December figures showing the economy shed 85,000 more jobs. But the report from the President's Council of Economic Advisers estimated the annual growth rate last year would have been roughly 2 percentage points lower, and there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs. "That's truly a stunning and important effect," said Christina Romer, the council's chairwoman. "It has done exactly what we have anticipated it would do." --Post Wire Services (Wasn't it "anticipated" to stop unemployment from hitting 8%?)

* 1/13/10--WASHINGTON -- Nervous Democrats went sharply negative yesterday in the unexpectedly tight race to hold on to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts. Democrats and their money are flooding into the state, along with new ads reliving old elections and invoking radio king Rush Limbaugh as Hitler, in an attack on the Republican candidate. The state's attorney general, Martha Coakley, released the first negative ad of the campaign comparing state Sen. Scott Brown to former President George W. Bush and ex-veep Dick Cheney. "Who is Scott Brown really?" the ad's announcer asks. "A Republican. In lockstep with Washington Republicans," he answers as pictures of the retired Bush and Cheney flash across the screen. Then a picture of Limbaugh, appearing to give a Nazi salute, is shown. In all the scramble to produce the ad Coakley's campaign misspelled the word "Massachusetts" in the ad, as Massachusettes.--Charles Hurt, NY Post

* 1/13/10--ADD two more names to the list of Obama administration officials who didn't let the attempted Christmas Day terror attack interrupt their vacations. CIA boss Leon Panetta stayed in California despite the attack and a subsequent Afghanistan bombing that killed seven of his agents. His top deputy, Stephen Kappes, was also out of town, although he returned just after the Dec. 30 bombing that killed the agents. It was reported earlier that a top counterterrorism official, Michael Leiter, left for a six-day ski vacation the day after the airliner attack. There were no sightings of Vice President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, either. The president, of course, is in no position to complain. Doing a good imitation of Puxsutawney Phil, he stayed hidden in his Hawaii hole until a perfunctory appearance on Dec 28. He then went back to more golf and tennis until after New Year's Day. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 1/13/10--Here's another reason why al Qaeda terrorists don't belong in US civilian courts: the right to a speedy trial. The lawyer for embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to receive a civilian trial, this week claimed that his client's years in detention violated his right to a timely adjudication of the case. He's demanding Ghailani's release. Insane? You betcha. But it's the predictable consequence of Team Obama's efforts to shoehorn Islamist cutthroats into a justice system that was never designed for them. Consider: POWs -- uniformed soldiers of a belligerent state -- can be legally held for the duration of the conflict. Terrorists like Ghailani and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad are due far fewer rights. And, lest there be any mistake, al Qaeda has yet to sue for peace. Judge Lewis Kaplan may still dismiss Ghailani's motion -- as he ought. (If he doesn't, expect KSM & Co. to employ the exact same argument when their trials start.) But whatever happens, the fact that arguments for the release of an al Qaeda terrorist are given serious attention in a US courtroom is repugnant on its face. Didn't President Obama just say that "we are at war" with these folks? Besides, the speedy-trial argument is just the start: American criminal law is riddled with procedural protections completely incongruous to wartime realities. Was Ghailani not told that he had the right to remain silent? Well? How much you want to bet that some where in the fine print, some terrorist lawyer finds his get-out-of-jail-free card? The nightmare is just beginning.--NY Post Editorial

* 1/13/10--"We can think of several reasons for Harry Reid to resign as Senate Majority Leader, though the flap over his obtuse racial comments isn't one of them. The uproar is nonetheless instructive about the perils of identity politics. Mr. Reid is apologizing to all and sundry for saying in private in 2008 that Barack Obama should run for President because he was 'light-skinned' and spoke with 'no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.' Republicans are calling for Mr. Reid to resign, on grounds of the Trent Lott precedent. When the Republican leader in 2002 joked at a birthday party for Strom Thurmond that America might have been better off had the one-time Dixiecrat won his 1948 Presidential campaign, Democrats demanded Mr. Lott's resignation. An Illinois state senator with a big political future went so far as to suggest at the time that Republicans needed to 'drive out' Mr. Lott in order to 'stand for something.' Mr. Lott resigned, notwithstanding his profuse apologies. In contrast, Mr. Obama and various black Democrats have rushed to Mr. Reid's defense. ... In any event, this is hardly Mr. Reid's worst rhetorical offense. That prize goes to his all too public comments in April 2007 that 'the war is lost' in Iraq, even as the surge was finally making victory possible. That was a betrayal of American soldiers risking their lives in Iraq, and to the extent it emboldened the enemy, it may have cost American lives. If Mr. Reid has apologized for that defeatism, we don't recall it. That's reason enough to resign." --The Wall Street Journal

* 1/14/10--WASHINGTON (AP) -- Retail sales unexpectedly fell in December, leaving 2009 with the biggest yearly drop on record and highlighting the formidable hurdles facing the economy as it struggles to recover from the deepest recession in seven decades. In another disappointing economic report, the number of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week as jobs remain scarce....For the year, sales fell 6.2 percent, the biggest decline on government records that go back to 1992. The only other year that annual sales fell was in 2008, when they slipped by 0.5 percent....In the jobs report, the Labor Department said new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 444,000. Wall Street economists polled by Thomson Reuters expected an increase of only 3,000.

* 1/14/10--MIAMI (AP) - A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, and that number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages. The number of households that received a foreclosure-related notice rose 21 percent from 2008, RealtyTrac Inc. reported Thursday. One in 45 homes were sent a filing, which includes default notices, scheduled foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions. In December, more than 349,000 households, or one in 366 homes, were hit with a foreclosure-related notice. That represents a 14 percent spike from November and a 15 percent jump from December 2008.

* 1/14/10--A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against Pres. Obama if the '12 elections were held today, according to a new survey. The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else. Fully 37% say they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama. Meanwhile, just 39% would vote to re-elect the pres. to a 2nd term, and only 23% say they definitely would do so. Obama's first year in office has been marked by an unemployment rate that surged to 10%, an increased commitment of troops to Afghanistan and a health care battle that has taken a serious political toll on the WH. Obama's approval rating is down to 47%, the poll showed, a 14-point drop since the April survey. 45% disapprove, up 17 points from April. Only 41% say they trust Obama more than Congressional GOPers, while 33% pick the GOP over the WH. That 8-point gap is down from a 21-point edge Obama sported as recently as Sept. Just 34% say the country is moving in the right direction, down 13 points since April, and 55% say it is off on the wrong track, up 13 points over the same period. But as GOPers focus on taxes and spending, that message seems to be causing Obama the most harm. Among those who believe Obama's policies have moved the country in the wrong direction, 45% cite spending and government regulation as a top cause for their opposition. Meanwhile, those who think Obama's policies are moving the country down the right track largely cite long-term benefits of his initiatives. In the meantime, health care legislation is by no means popular, but a majority of Americans don't oppose the legislation yet. 44% said they support the legislation under consideration, down 5 points from the last poll in Sept., while 46% oppose it. The poll, conducted by Financial Dynamics, surveyed 1,200 adults between Jan. 3-7 for a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.--NationalJournal.com

* 1/14/10--BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts's top election official says it could take weeks to certify the results of the upcoming U.S. Senate special election. That delay could let President Barack Obama preserve a key 60th vote for his health care overhaul even if the Republican who has vowed to kill it wins Democrat Edward M. Kennedy's former seat. Secretary of State William F. Galvin, citing state law, says city and town clerks must wait at least 10 days for absentee ballots to arrive before they certify the results of the Jan. 19 election. They then have five more days to file the returns with his office. Galvin bypassed the provision in 2007 so his fellow Democrats could gain a House vote they needed to override a veto of then-Republican President George W. Bush, but the secretary says U.S. Senate rules would preclude a similar rush today.
The potential delay has become a rallying point for the GOP, which argues Democrats have been twisting the rules to pass the health care bill despite public opposition. It's also prompted criticism from government watchdogs. "We believe that elections should be by the people and for the people, and when the people have spoken, the system ought not be politicized," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar, a former member of Congress. "If the Republican wins, the person should be seated immediately. If the Democrat wins, the person should be seated immediately." Massachusetts Democrats already changed state law last fall so the governor could appoint a fellow Democrat to fill the seat after Kennedy died in August. Now that interim replacement, Sen. Paul G. Kirk Jr., says he will vote for the bill if given the chance, even if Republican Scott Brown beats Democrat Martha Coakley in Tuesday's special election to fill the seat permanently. Brown, a state senator, has pledged to vote against the bill; Coakley, the state attorney general, supports it. Businessman Joseph L. Kennedy, no relation to the late senator, is also mounting an independent campaign, but he has trailed badly in public opinion polls. He, too, opposes the bill. Kirk and Coakley represent the crucial 60th Democratic vote to prevent a filibuster of the legislation. A Brown victory would shift the chamber's balance to 59-41—just enough for Republicans to block the legislation. Yet passing or stopping the bill could depend on when the new senator is seated. Obama is angling to get the bill passed before he delivers his State of the Union speech, most likely in early to mid-February. "Until a new senator is sworn in, Sen. Kirk is the senator," Coakley said. While Galvin wrote a letter in 2007 so Democrat Niki Tsongas could assume a U.S. House seat immediately after a special election, an aide said he would not do so in the case of the upcoming Senate election. "The Senate requires the certificate of election, which can only be issued after this period takes place," spokesman Brian McNiff said. Democrats control the Senate, and they argue there is recent precedent for withholding a seat until local officials certify an election. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his colleagues waited 238 days before seating fellow Democrat Al Franken last year after Republicans challenged his 2008 election all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court. "When there is a certified winner in Massachusetts, the Senate has received appropriate papers and the vice president is available, the successor to Kennedy/Kirk will be sworn in," said Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle. She said that could take "a week or more."

* 1/15/10--Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that President Obama's plan to slap a tax on banks is aimed squarely at the city's lifeblood and could turn Manhattan into a crumbling wreck like Detroit. Bloomberg warned that the plan could bring about the collapse of the city's financial sector and starve New York of revenue it needs to provide basic services. --NY Post

* 1/15/10--It took two days of wrangling behind closed White House doors under the demanding gaze of big-labor bosses, but President Obama won a major health-care victory yesterday. The same can't be said of America. The deal in a nutshell: a big, fat wet kiss for labor unions, which won exemption from a proposed 40 percent tax on on expansive private health-insurance plans until 2018. Meanwhile, those with generous plans that are not the product of collective-bargaining agreements get to pay beginning immediately. And to pay and pay and pay. The tax (along with deep cuts in Medicare funding) was meant to be the chief funding mechanism for Obama's plan. But now that unions have been effectively exempted, the cash will have to come from elsewhere: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's proposed "millionaire's tax" on high earners, perhaps; there's even talk of slapping a Medicare tax on investment income. C-SPAN was barred from the Senate-House-White House negotiations -- but labor fat-cats like AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union head Andy Stern and various teacher and government-employee representatives were on hand to make sure the pols toed the line. And toe it they did. It's now pretty clear the Democrats will say anything, do anything and spend anything to shove some health-care deal -- any deal -- through. The union carve-out is perhaps the most egregious example of special-interest pandering, but doubtless other side deals are being cut as well. And none of them, you can bet, will help restore any of the hundreds of millions of dollars set to be stripped from federal health-care aid to New York. The irony, of course, is that anything resembling equitable health-care reform was gutted a long time ago, in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's desperate attempt to collect votes. What's left is a bill that barely pleases 60 senators, maybe 218 friends in the House and a few Big Labor fixers -- while Obama's job-performance polls drop like a rock amongst hard-working Americans doing their best to make ends meet. Talk about a terrible deal.--NY Post Editorial

* 1/16/10--(Bloomberg) -- Even if Democrats lose the Jan. 19 special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator, Congress may still pass a health-care overhaul by using a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said. That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama's top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened. “Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Getting health-care reform passed is important,” Van Hollen said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “Reconciliation is an option.”

* 1/17/10--President Obama had some low points in his first year, but it looks like we ain't seen nothing yet. Year 2 of his reign of error is shaping up as more of the same, only worse. Much worse. In just one day last week, Obama hatched two incredibly awful ideas. Either alone would be bad news for the country. Together they could create more damage to a nation already staggered by 10 percent unemployment, huge deficits and political polarization. What iceberg? Full speed ahead! The Thursday decisions to punish banks for making money and to exempt union workers from an onerous health-care tax appear to have little in common, but they actually share a vital link. Both are the spawn of rank politics, with Obama using government power to reward friends and punish enemies. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 1/18/10--BOSTON -- With the fate of his hard-fought health-care plan hanging in the balance, President Obama yesterday swooped into Boston in a desperate effort to save a historically Democratic Senate seat from falling to the GOP. Obama took a break from last-minute negotiations on the health-care plan -- which he has called his top domestic priority -- to plead with Massachusetts voters to elect Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general. Coakley is in a surprisingly tight race against a previously little-known state legislator, Republican Scott Brown, to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. The election is tomorrow.--NY Post

* 1/19/10--TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's defence minister warned on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic could strike back at Western warships in the Gulf if it were attacked, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. The Westerners know well that the existence of these warships in the Persian Gulf serve as the best operational targets for Iran if they should want to undertake any military action against Iran," Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said.

* 1/20/10--Think maybe the voters of Massachusetts caught President Obama's at tention yesterday? Think maybe he'll pay attention? The message couldn't possibly have been more clear: Voters in the bluest of states turned to no-name Republican state Sen. Scott Brown to fill the shoes of their beloved Democrat, Ted Kennedy. There went the Democrats' filibuster-proof lock on the Senate. There went any reasonable presumption that Obama policies on health care, the economy and national security enjoy enough support to sway skittish congressional Democrats in an election year. And there went the notion that Obama himself can muster the political horsepower to significantly influence politics and policy in the same nation that swept him into office just 14 months ago. Polls had state Attorney General Martha Coakley up 20 points over Brown scarcely a month ago. Yes, US politics have become so volatile of late that sweeping projections about last night's returns probably shouldn't be made quite yet. Still, this is the fifth time in three months that Obama has focused his star power to effect political and policy outcomes -- losing each time. It didn't work in Virginia and New Jersey, where he roller-skated in for Democratic gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine last November. Or in Copenhagen, when he popped in to tout Chicago as host for the 2016 Olympics. Or in Copenhagen again, last month, at the global climate-change conference. And now this.
Obama needs to get better at anticipating outcomes. Each time he commits his personal prestige -- and that of his office -- and then loses, he diminishes both. So far, he merely looks foolish. But this is going to have serious negative consequences soon. Coakley, for sure, bears great responsibility for her loss: She barely campaigned, taking time off to vacation and suggesting, at one point, that standing in the cold shaking hands with voters outside Fenway Park was beneath her. She took the seat as a given. But then, who can blame her? In Massachusetts, Democrats view Senate seats as entitlements. And, of course, her campaign was riddled with damning gaffes: At a critical point, a Coakley ad misspelled the name her own state. She denied the presence of terrorists in Afghanistan. She even called famed former Boston pitcher Curt Schilling a Yankees fan. Meanwhile, independents troubled by America's course under Obama & Co. -- the stagnant economy, the health-care debacle, massive government spending, weak national security -- may have seen a chance to shift direction: Brown vowed to be the 41st GOP senator, ending the Democrats' ability to beat filibusters and pass bills. He clearly pressed the right buttons: He vowed to block ObamaCare, which a broad swath of Bay State voters oppose. And he opposed Team Obama's decision to offer civilian trials to terrorists. He won. Coakley lost. But, obviously, so did Obama. Here's hoping the president understands why.--NY Post Editorial

* 1/20/10--Let me be clear (as President Obama loves to say): After a year in office, there isn't much for this White House to brag about foreign policy-wise, in spite of rhetorical flourishes and grandiose promises. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's campaign-style, "biography based" approach to international affairs just isn't making the grade, especially on today's weighty issues. Iran: Tehran's nuclear (weapons) program advances despite our drawing of a line in the sand, after line in the sand -- after line in the sand. News that Tehran has made strides in developing nuclear weapons, not just enriching uranium, only darkens the outlook. Obama's response? Keep on threatening tougher sanctions, even though we can't get Moscow or Beijing to agree to them -- while making plans to inevitably accept Tehran into the Mushroom Cloud Club. And what about his snubbing of Iran's heroic dissident movement? Shameful. North Korea: Pyongyang remains as troublesome as ever, immune to Obama's charms. It will likely light off another nuke this year -- and shoot more missiles in our direction. The "Norks" won't even return to the negotiating table.

China: The president's trip to Beijing last fall was a flop: He made no progress on opening the Chinese market to ease our $200-plus billion trade deficit, a would-be bennie to our still-stumbling economy. Nor was Obama's personal intervention enough to get Beijing, the world's largest greenhouse-gas producer, onboard at the Copenhagen climate conference (not that it disappointed those who saw that treaty as an economic-growth killer). Meanwhile, China's military build-up proceeds apace, scaring neighbors witless -- and now there are reports of Beijing extending its reach with its first permanent military base abroad, this one in the Arabian Sea.

Russia: Washington-Moscow ties are increasingly cold, despite White House affections. Sensing weakness, Russia is now holding America's European, anti-Iran missile-defense system hostage to strategic-arms-control reduction talks -- an Obama priority. Worse, Washington cuddles with Moscow despite Russia's occupation of Georgia's South Ossetia and Abkhazia; we've even put Georgia's (and Ukraine's) NATO membership on ice to appease the Bear. Obama's Russia policy has left other former Soviet states nervous, too. Skipping ceremonies on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall only bolstered the sense of indifference New Europe now feels from the New World. And what exactly is it that we've gotten in return from the Kremlin?

Venezuela: Strongman Hugo Chavez continues to be problematic, cutting deals for Russian nuclear reactors and more arms, allowing narcotics traffickers to cross his country, harboring Colombian FARC terrorists and bankrolling the Latin American, anti-Yanqui Left. And don't forget Chavez's "axis of unity" with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bad actors keep entering the region via regular Venezuela-Syria-Iran flights. The White House's reaction? We sent our previously expelled ambassador back to Caracas. But it's not all horrible news.

Iraq: While the situation is fragile and violence persists (at much lower levels), the Bush surge is working. Critical elections come this spring and US combat troops are due out this summer.

Terror: While the "Crotch Bomber" shows the Obama team hasn't improved the homeland-security system, they've maintained the Bush-era Predator drone strikes on al Qaeda overseas -- an approach that's still working. Unfortunately, Obama's outreach to the Muslim world (e.g., the Cairo speech) basically has had no positive effect.

AfPak: It's too early to give a grade on this with a new strategy just in place, but the fight against the terrorists on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remains a challenge. The question is: What will the prez do if he doesn't get his quick victory? Egged on by media fawning, Obama wrongly assumed he could turn Obama-chic abroad into foreign-policy results. Oops: Turns out countries (and groups like al Qaeda) act to promote their own interests, uninfluenced by anyone's popularity.

The world needs US leadership to deal with big problems. More than that, this country needs traction on these issues -- something, regrettably, that Obama has yet to deliver.--Peter Brookes, Heritage Foundation.

* 1/20/10--...Think back a year ago and imagine someone saying Obama would throw his support behind Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia and Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts — and lose all of them. Think back a year ago and imagine someone saying he would celebrate his first anniversary without having gotten health care, financial regulation or energy legislation signed into law. And that less than 50 percent of the public would hold a favorable view of his presidency. Obama clearly remains popular at the personal level, a big asset that Republicans privately concede could easily help turn things around for this White House in the months ahead. But it is similarly clear that the Obama magic of 2008 has vanished. His personal popularity is plainly not transferable to other Democrats. His power with Democrats is somewhat diminished. So much now rides on health care for Obama. His top advisers have told reporters for months that he will be judged on one issue and one issue alone: getting health care signed into law. They now realize the bill — and, with it, Obama’s reputation and leverage on Capitol Hill — could go down. As they look ahead to the rest of the year, White House advisers talk publicly of bold action, but most of the talk in private is smaller, less controversial action. Deficits. Incremental changes to energy policy. Debt commissions. This is not the way Obama — or many of the people watching him at his inaugural address a year ago — expected that he would mark his first anniversary.--Politico.com

* 1/21/10--(AP) A day after the Massachusetts election, partly considered a referendum on runaway government spending, Senate Democrats yesterday proposed letting the federal government borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay its bills. That would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion.

* 1/21/10--The people have more than spoken. From the heart and soul of dependably Democratic Massachusetts, a state long saddled with the unfortunate nickname "Taxachusetts," voters have issued a primal scream: Enough! But can President Obama hear? Leaving a press conference on the first day of the rest of his term, the clearly shaken and crippled leader was assaulted with a softball question: "What's the lesson of the Massachusetts vote?" Obama was caught off guard. He had no spin handy that would fail to make him look arrogant -- or loony. So he snubbed the obvious query. And got the hell out of there. It was a telling moment. It was hangover morning in Washington. The day after the giddy special election that installed Republican Scott Brown into the late Teddy Kennedy's old Senate seat, a chair dyed so deep blue, it leaves permanent marks. Yet voters issued a wakeup call, telling Obama that he'd lost possession of his famous mantras, "hope" and "change," to an unknown upstart whose virulent opposition to the president's big-government legislation sounds fresh and sexy. Only later in the day did the president regain any composure. He told ABC's George Stephanopolous he'd lost touch with the average American in his furious rush to get stuff done -- but sneaked in the sly assertion he'd underestimated voter anger over events "in the last eight years." The day before, it was sheer lunacy. Democrats in disarray pointed fingers every which way in a desperate attempt to control the bleeding out of Massachusetts. Obama's own White House sank into deep denial immediately after the vote was tallied, denying that Brown's election over Democrat Martha Coakley, just two days after Obama made a personal appeal to the voters, was a body blow aimed at the president's agenda, particularly health care. And his lack of seriousness on terror. Officials spun the loss by feeding Coakley into the shredder, saying their girl was simply a crummy candidate. Obama wasn't the only one cynically blaming administrations past. Howard Dean said, in the thick of Coakley's loss, that it "was not anybody's fault -- well, maybe George W. Bush's fault." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs piled on, slamming Bush for "the current mood of the country" -- as if voters have not the intelligence to create their own moods. He also said Obama would press forward on his march for a health care bill. Coakley's pollster, Celinda Lake, quickly screamed that it was the Obama administration, not Coakley, and not Bush, who was deaf and dumb to the mood of independent voters.--Andrea Peyser, NY Post.

* 1/24/10--We the people of the United States owe Scott Brown's supporters a huge debt of gratitude. They didn't merely elect a senator. They ripped the façade off the Obama presidency. Just as Dorothy and Toto exposed the ordinary man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz," the voters in Massachusetts revealed that, in this White House, there is no there there. It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement. At the center is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches. He never advances a practical idea. Every proposal overreaches and comes wrapped in ideology and a claim of moral superiority. He doesn't listen to anybody who doesn't agree with him. After his first year on the job, America is sliding backwards, into grave danger at home and around the world. So much so that I now believe either of his rivals, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, would have made a better, more reliable and more trustworthy president. They warned us he wasn't ready. Yes, we're stuck with him, but we're no longer stuck with his suffocating conformity. The second Boston Tea Party opened the door to new ideas and new people of both parties. Obama's reactions were predictable. More self-pity, blaming George W. Bush, and claiming that the voter revolt is due to ignorance about the health-care plan they hate. Blah blah blah. Hasn't he heard? The magic is gone. Massachusetts changed everything. America's spirit of independence has been emancipated and the cult of Obama-ism is finished. The health-care debacle perfectly captured his utter lack of governing substance. He embraced major provisions he rejected during the campaign, misled the public about costs and impact, and got competing versions through Congress only with a grab bag of outlandish bribes and exemptions. He pledged transparency, then retreated to secret deal-making that corruptly rewarded unions and fleeced everybody else. The result was a national scandal that would have done tremendous damage if it became law. His sudden adoption of a bank tax springs from a baser motive -- political desperation. He unveiled the tax as polls showed Scott Brown closing in on victory. White House flunkies said the tax marked an aggressive turn to populism and Obama obliged by trotting out the "fat-cat banker" phrase. Which, of course, is bizarre when you want those banks to lend money to create jobs. And you can be sure Obama will hit up those fat-cat bankers for contributions at election time, as he did in 2008. Even his attacks are cynical. His foreign policy is a dangerous muddle. He is feckless about both Iran's brave dissidents and the mullahs pushing for nuclear weapons. He took a bad situation in the Mideast and made it worse with pernicious demands on Israel. Muslims reject his bended-knee apologies, giving him nothing for his amateurish squandering of American power. Frightening details are still emerging about the disastrous handling of the Christmas Day bomb plot. The decision to quickly put the al Qaeda-trained Nigerian into civilian courts stems from his fixation on giving terrorists constitutional protections. The talk in Washington is that he look to Bill Clinton's presidency for comeback answers, or maybe Ronald Reagan's. Political history won't help him much. Obama's crisis is personal. The inner hollowness and facile talent that propelled his rise gave him none of the grit necessary to meet the challenges. Where would he begin? America has survived bad presidents before and we will survive this one. Fortunately, we're no longer waiting for him to grow into the job. Massachusetts proved the nation is ready to move forward.--Michael Goodwin, NY Post

* 1/24/10--WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden's word choice in the latest audio message attributed to him is seen as a "possible indicator" of an upcoming attack by his Al-Qaeda network, a US monitoring group warned Sunday. IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist websites, also said that manner of the release and the content of the message showed it was "credible" that it was a new release from the Saudi extremist. "The Osama bin Laden audio message released to Al-Jazeera on 24 January 2010 contains specific language used by bin Laden in his statements in advance of attacks," IntelCenter said in a statement. The group said it considered the language "a possible indicator of an upcoming attack" in the next 12 months. "This phrase, 'Peace be upon those who follow guidance,' appears at the beginning and end of messages released in advance of attacks that are designed to provide warning to Al-Qaeda's enemies that they need to change their ways or they will be attacked," the group said. In a statement carried by Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden praised the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a US airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day. He warned the United States that, "God willing, our attacks against you will continue as long as you maintain your support to Israel." IntelCenter said the audio statement "appears to be exactly what it purports to be, an audio message from bin Laden." "The manner of release, content of message and other factors indicate it is a credible and new release from bin Laden," it said. The center said similar language attributed to bin Laden was made in a March 19 2008 condemnation of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed which was followed by an attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad on June 2, 2008. The phrase also was used in bin Laden's April 15, 2004 European truce offer, which was followed by Al-Qaeda attacks in London in July 2005, according to the IntelCenter, which said the 14-month lapse could be explained by the "difficulty" in actually putting an attack into operation.

* 1/25/10--Two men were stopped boarding US-bound planes at Heathrow days before Britain's terror threat was raised to "severe". News of the incidents came hours after Home Secretary Alan Johnson lifted the threat level amid fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack. The new level, which means an attack is reckoned "highly likely", is second only to "critical". Security sources say an Egyptian was stopped last Saturday as he tried to board an American Airlines flight to Miami. A man from Saudi Arabia was banned from boarding a United Airlines flight to Chicago the next day and sent back to Saudi. The incidents and the raised threat level follow the failed Christmas Day bombing on a plane over Detroit. Anti-terror officials said the past week had seen an "unusually high" number of people on their no-fly list trying to board US-bound planes.--Mirror.co.uk

* 1/25/10--WASHINGTON (AP) -- Figures on government spending and debt (last six digits are eliminated). The government's fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

Total public debt subject to limit Jan. 22 12,245,872

Statutory debt limit 12,394,000

Total public debt outstanding Jan. 22 12,302,465

Operating balance Jan. 22 142,454

Interest fiscal year 2009 383,365

Interest fiscal year 2008 451,154

Deficit fiscal year 2009 1,417,121

Deficit fiscal year 2008 454,798

Receipts fiscal year 2009 2,104,613

Receipts fiscal year 2008 2,523,642

Outlays fiscal year 2009 3,521,734

Outlays fiscal year 2008 2,978,440

Gold assets in September 11,041

* 1/26/10--Intending to die in the act of destroying a jetliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab instead landed alive in Detroit as a kind of message in a bottle from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He knew more about its recruiting, training and operations than anyone who is ever likely to fall into our arms babbling like a scared 23-year-old. But the Obama administration shut him down. It didn't go so far as to tell the Customs and Border Protection officers to cover their ears and try not to listen when Abdulmutallab made incriminating statements on the initial ride to the hospital, but it came close. It had an FBI team inform Abdulmutallab of his right to remain silent, after which he predictably remained silent. This is brazen self-sabotage. We are in a war of intelligence. People risk their lives every day to get the information to understand the terror networks arrayed against us and identify specific threats. Why would we pre-emptively silence a priceless source of timely intelligence? It literally didn't even occur to the administration to do otherwise. Top terrorism officials weren't consulted. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the director of National Intelligence, the FBI director and the secretary of Homeland Security were all out of the loop. Some as-yet-unidentified top Justice Department official, who probably is known around the office as "general," made the call. According to an Associated Press account, after Abdulmutallab chatted with customs officials about his plot, FBI agents showed up and talked to him for about 50 minutes. He told them he'd worked with al Qaeda. The agents didn't Mirandize him, relying on an exception in cases involving an imminent threat to public safety. Then, a new FBI team arrived with instructions from Washington to read Abdulmutallab his rights. It's the last we've heard from him.--Rich Lowry, NY Post

* 1/26/10--In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism gives the Obama administration an "F" for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report. A bipartisan, independent commission on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction says that the Obama administration has failed in its first year.--FoxNews

* 1/27/10--Whose side is the Justice Department on: America's -- or the terrorists'? It's just insane that a lawyer who defended Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard -- and who sought constitutional rights for terrorists -- could be one of the Obama administration's top legal officials. But there's Neal Katyal, occupying a top perch at the Justice Department as the principal deputy solicitor general. Then there's Jennifer Daskal -- who just months ago was an anti-Guantanamo activist. Now she's in Justice's National Security Division -- working on detainee issues. Talk about conflicts of interest. All kinds of rules prohibit government employees from influencing policy to the benefit of their previous employers. If Katyal, Daskal and other conflicted Justice lawyers had worked for corporations, they'd almost certainly be subject to these regulations. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are hopping mad about the situation -- and rightly so. Months ago, Senate Judiciary Committee member Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder to disclose who in the administration had previously represented or agitated for alleged terrorists. The AG's reply? "I will consider that request." Holder must be thinking long and hard -- because committee members have yet to receive a response. Meanwhile, they've started asking other questions of Justice -- like who came up with the brilliant idea to Mirandize undie-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, limiting the amount of intelligence he might provide about al Qaeda and future attacks. With high-profile terror cases coming up -- like Abdulmutallab's, and the outrageous Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial in New York -- Americans need to know: Is our government putting in a good-faith effort when it comes to punishing the men who want to blow up our people? The call to treat terrorists like civilians in court has been all Team Obama. Which means the president and his administration also owe the American people an answer: Is the government's prosecutorial deck stacked in favor of the terrorists? A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, tells The Post that the department will be responding to Sen. Grassley's request "very soon." Will it be soon enough? It's time for Holder and Justice to come clean. Now.-NY Post Editorial

* 1/28/10--The president can read the election results; that much is clear from his State of the Union Address last night. Hey, it's a start. Alas, it's not so clear that President Obama and his fellow Democrats understand just why folks are upset. Yes, last week's GOP electoral triumph in liberal Massachusetts sounded alarms that Obama & Co. couldn't ignore. But while the president spoke for some 70 long minutes last night, he didn't actually propose to do anything much to address voters' concerns. Which makes you wonder: If he can't pare down a 7,000-plus-word speech that says next to nothing, how will he trim his trillion-dollar deficits or deliver on any of his other promises? "Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010," Obama said last night. Well, yes: Polls show voters care more about the economy than, say, health-care reforms. And, yes, Obama did call for some tax incentives for small businesses. Which is fine -- but a recovery plan this does not make. At the same time, he's sticking by his health-care-reform package -- the one voters resoundingly reject. "I want everyone to take another look at the plan," he insisted. "Do not walk away from reform . . . Finish the job." Likewise, he urged renewed commitment to his similarly unpopular, job-killing cap-and-tax plan. Hello? What did he think Massachusetts voters were saying? Fact is, last night's address was less a substantive than a political speech -- riddled with bluster and prevarication. Obama claimed to have cut taxes and saved "millions" of jobs, "isolated" Iran and opened government. Where was he -- Opposite Land? And, of course, he made sure not to miss his chance to blame George Bush for . . . everything. Over and over again. Nor does he yet even remotely fathom the extent of public anger over his decidedly unserious approach to terror -- as evidenced, for starters, by his insistence on trying terrorists in civilian courts, in places like New York. So, yes, it's good that Obama senses public frustration. Question now is: Why won't he do anything to address it?--NY Post Editorial

* 1/29/10--WASHINGTON -- Despite polls showing adamant voter opposition to Democratic health-care legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday she's determined to jam a bill through Congress. "You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence," she told reporters. "If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in, but we're going to get health reform passed." But first, she said, Democrats must work out significant differences among themselves, specifically between the Senate version of the bill and the more liberal House version, which would expand the federal government's role in health care even more. --NY Post

* 1/30/10--The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won't be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night. Administration officials said that no final decision had been made but that officials of the Department of Justice and the White House were working feverishly to find a venue that would be less expensive and less of a security risk than New York City. The back-to-the-future Gitmo option was reported yesterday by Fox News and was not disputed by White House officials. Such a move would likely bring howls of protest from liberals already frustrated that President Obama has failed to meet his deadline for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It would also indicate that after years of attacking the Bush administration for its handling of the war on terror, Obama officials are embracing one of the most controversial aspects of it. The administration is likely considering Gitmo because Congress is moving to cut off funding for holding the expensive trials in civilians courts. --NY Post

* 1/30/10--The state of our union is mostly free. This may shock citizens who call America the “Land of the Free.” Alas, as the Heritage Foundation demonstrates, Washington has transformed Francis Scott Key’s timeless truths into mere lyrics. In conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, Heritage’s 16th annual Index of Economic Freedom ranks 179 of Earth’s economies on ten factors including fiscal discipline, free trade, labor freedom, and corruption. By these measures, America is not No. 1. If economic freedom were an event at Vancouver’s Winter Olympics, America would not earn even a bronze medal. In fact, the U.S. fell from No. 6 last year to No. 8 today. No. 1 Hong Kong leads Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Switzerland. Even Canada is economically freer than America. Even worse, for the first time, the Index rates America “mostly free.” From a perfect “Freedom Score” of 100, the U.S. slid from 80.7 points in 2008 to 78 in 2009, thus dropping from the “free” category to “mostly free.” Denmark and Chile complete the top ten. So, at least, America is freer than they are. America's 2.7 percentage-point decline was among the steepest recorded. Only eleven economies deteriorated more rapidly. These include such Marxian paradises as Bolivia, Ecuador, Libya and Venezuela. Not even Cuba, Zimbabwe, or North Korea (rates Nos.177 to 179 slipped as much, although they already sat at the bottom of the list. So, what went wrong? Authors Kim Holmes, Anthony Kim, and Terry Miller explain that, for America, "Economic freedom has declined in seven of the ten categories measured in the Index." These include "notable decreases in financial freedom, monetary freedom, and property rights".-Deroy Murdock, National Review