THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Nagin Has A Chocolate Chip On His Shoulder: LA Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, 49, is following his father’s footsteps as the mayor of New Orleans – the first white mayor the majority-black city has elected since Moon Landrieu left office in 1979. The younger Landrieu beat out 10 opponents to win in a landslide with 66 percent of the vote, reports The Associated Press:
Landrieu, who lost to [Ray] Nagin in a runoff four years ago, was a welcome change for some voters who grew frustrated with the city's current mayor. Little known outside
† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: A year ago, “[e]very street corner, it seemed, had Obama wares (or Obama wear) for sale” but now “T-shirts depicting our president as a dunking Michael Jordan, a victorious Muhammad Ali, or saber-baring Luke Skywalker (yes, these shirts all existed) are nowhere to be found,” reports US News & World Report. And the Obama Store - the mecca for all things Obama - “[i]deally situated in the basement of
† BAM To DOJ: KSM In NYC Is DOA: In a pre-Super Bowl interview with CBS' Katie Couric, President Barack Hussein Obama said he has not ruled out trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in NYC, reports The Associated Press. In a separate interview, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) countered that it is not feasible and “the administration should realize that and move on.”
In the interview, Obama also walked back Attorney General Eric Holder’s oft-stated claim that “more than 300 individuals” were tried and convicted on terrorism-related charges during the Bush administration: “The prosecuted 190 [terror suspects] … got convictions and those folks are in maximum security prisons right now.” For months, Sen. Jon Kyl (D-AZ), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security has been trying to find out who these high profile terrorists are and whether they pose a comparable national security risk as Gitmo detainees – but the administration has been stonewalling. Well, 37 percent of them are accounted for – they were figments of Holder’s imagination, according to Obama.
† My Friend The Witch Doctor, He Taught Me What To Do: When President Barack Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast last week, he made a point of condemning a proposed Ugandan law that criminalizes homosexuality: “We may disagree about gay marriage, but we can surely agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are whether it's here in the
Too bad he didn’t also say, “We may disagree about abortion, but we can surely agree that it is unconscionable to target innocent children for sacrifice as Hillary mentioned in odious pagan rituals.” Oh, wait: When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her keynote address that "[i]n the Obama administration, we are looking take on religious discrimination and violations of human rights,” she wasn’t talking about Ugandan witch doctors kidnapping, killing and mutilating children to appease “the spirits.” And neither was Obama.
† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think): Five months after the Obama administration announced the creation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, the “elite” team of interrogators has finally been authorized to begin questioning terrorism suspects. The Washington Post reports that the administration is still grappling with resolving “pressing issues that emerged since Christmas - including how to draw the line between gathering intelligence and building a legal case.” But the HIG is supervised by the National Security Council - not the CIA – and will get legal guidance from the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, so it seems pretty clear that its mission will be to collect evidence rather than to glean intelligence.
Columnist Stephen Hayes takes Attorney General Eric Holder’s view that absent a "public safety" exception, the law and FBI policy require conferring Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists captured within our borders to its logical conclusion: “[T]he FBI could pick up al Qaeda's chief of operations in, say, Tampa, Fla., and unless he met the criteria for a public safety exception (i.e. had a gun), the FBI would be required to Mirandize him immediately and give him a lawyer.” If President Barack Hussein Obama opposes Mirandizing terrorists, as he claimed in a "60 Minutes" interview last year (“[D]o these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter - down the block? Of course not.”), why has he allowed Holder to supersede his authority?
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