† Obama - Not McCain - Will Be Bush III: Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer makes the case that with yesterday's speech on the Middle East, President Barack Hussein Obama has "openly, unreservedly and without a trace of irony or self-reflection" embraced the Bush Doctrine - well, the version of it that promotes democracy in the region:

 

“Too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills.” Note how even Obama’s rationale matches Bush’s. Bush argued that because the roots of 9/11 were to be found in the deflected anger of repressed Middle Eastern peoples, our response would require a democratic transformation of the region.

 

“We have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals.” A fine critique of exactly the kind of “realism” the Obama administration prided itself for having practiced in its first two years.

 

How far did this concession to Bush go? Note Obama’s example of the democratization we’re aiming for. He actually said: “In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process . . . Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region.”

 

Hail the Bush-Obama doctrine.

 

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, also describes Obama’s speech as “the Bush-Obama foreign policy convergence,” pointing out that “[i]n its broad strokes, yesterday’s address was a speech that George W. Bush could have given.” On the other hand, “[w]hen you dug into the details, though, the president’s speech was actually a clinic in the limits of … democratic idealism”:

 

There was the rather obvious gap between our Libya policy (the dictator must go!), our Syria policy (the dictator “start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition”!), and our Bahrain policy (“the government must create the conditions for dialogue”!).

 

There was a certain glaring omission in the list of places where America supports “free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders” - rights that hold, the president said, “whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.” But in Riyadh? Well, we’ll get back to you … And finally, there was the tentativeness with which the president danced around the central test that the Arab spring may end up posing for American policy: What do we do if Arab democracy means an ascendant Islamism, or at least variations on the Hamas-Fatah partnership, from Cairo to Damascus and beyond?

 

And, as Krauthammer notes: “no president had ever before publicly and explicitly endorsed the 1967 lines”; “Obama’s omission of previous American assurances to recognize “realities on the ground” in adjusting the 1967 border; and “Obama refers to Palestinian borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel … Does Obama’s map force Israel to give up a corridor of territory connecting the West Bank and Gaza? This is an old Palestinian demand that would cut Israel in two.”

 

There’s no Bush in this new formulation for peace between the Arabs and Jews. It’s all Obama.

 

† The Day Newt Gingrich’s Candidacy Died: Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it: "Gingrich to House GOP: Drop Dead":

 

[S]urely Mr. Gingrich knows that the Ryan plan has no chance of passing this Congress given opposition in the Senate. Our guess is that a politician as experienced as Mr. Gingrich knew exactly what he was doing and that as he runs for President, he wants to appear to be more moderate than he has sounded over the last, oh, 20 years, by suddenly triangulating against the GOP House he once led. …

 

The episode reveals the Georgian's weakness as a candidate, and especially as a potential President - to wit, his odd combination of partisan, divisive rhetoric and poll-driven policy timidity.

 

Mr. Ryan speaks softly but proposes policies commensurate with America's problems. Mr. Gingrich speaks loudly but shrinks from hard choices. Who's the "radical" and who's the real leader?

 

Former and current House Republicans are “peeved” that Gingrich took “cheap shots” at Ryan’s plan without proposing his own alternative, Politico reports:

 

Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a freshman on the Budget Committee, said that “typically, you’ll find people in a presidential campaign running against the current president of another party, rather than running against his own party.” …

 

“I’m not inclined to support somebody that makes our jobs harder rather than easier, personally,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Budget Committee and former Republican National Committee chief of staff who considers Gingrich a serious candidate. …

 

Cole, who has known Gingrich for more than 20 years, called Gingrich’s comments this time around “not helpful.”

 

For her part, in a string of interviews Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) said Gingrich had cut Ryan off at the knees (which sounds like an even more grievous injury than throwing him under the bus).

 

“Gingrich's remarks rankled for three reasons,” explained The Washington Examiner's Byron York:

 

One, they hurt the Republican plan.  Two, they were particularly disdainful; Gingrich didn't just said that he disagreed with Ryan, he referred to Ryan's plan as "right-wing social engineering."  And three, they contradicted what Gingrich himself has said about Ryan's budget. …

 

Republicans are particularly angry about the timing of Gingrich's "Meet the Press" remarks because they came the day before Ryan was scheduled to make a high-profile defense of his budget plan in a speech in Chicago.  Gingrich's attack, those Republicans say, makes it much easier for Democrats to attack Ryan, too.

 

All this had Washington Post political handicapper Chris Cillizza wondering if Gingrich is "a man out of time" – both in the Krauthammer sense (“He’s done. He didn’t have a big chance from the beginning, but now it’s over. . . . He won’t recover.”), and as a relic from the past:

 

The last time Gingrich faced the political world as a candidate was in the late 1990s. That was long before Twitter, Facebook and You Tube not to mention the explosion of granular political sites and the rise in cable news channels reshaped the world in which politicians operate.

 

The ease with which Gingrich’s adversaries can disseminate negative information about him has increased exponentially as has the ability of anyone to not only post past quotes by Gingrich but also draw significant attention to them.

 

“With over a million Twitter followers, 130,000 people on his Facebook page and a constant stream of clips, updates, anecdotes, reports, and blogs about him, if the narrative turns negative (as it most certainly has) it will be very, very difficult for him to turn around,” predicted Rich Galen, a former Gingrich communications director.

 

Added former New York Rep. Tom Reynolds: “Newt when Speaker was known to be undisciplined in media relations. … Newt will step on and be knocked off his message more times by his actions than by others.”

 

Perhaps with this in mind, Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, pointed out:

 

[T]he former House speaker - a man who has spent much of the last decade declaring the need for radical transformations of this, that, and the other thing - denounced Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposals as too “radical.”

 

Quoting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (“there are no do-overs in life”), The Washington Post noted:

 

Not for the first time in his career, Gingrich is backpedaling. But more than taking back words may be required in this case. Gingrich has undermined his candidacy not simply because, in the eyes of many Republicans, he attacked House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare. His greater problem is that he reminded people, friend and foe alike, of his inability to keep his rhetoric under control.

 

The opening round of the former House speaker’s presidential campaign has turned into a Gingrich apology tour. In between his stops in Iowa, Gingrich has been conducting interviews with conservative commentators in an effort to roll back what he said about Ryan’s plan on Sunday to NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” He has also apologized to Ryan (R-Wis.) for the harm he did to the congressman, the Medicare overhaul plan -  and to himself.

 

Well, “sorry” won’t cut it for a lot of Republican primary voters:

 

Iowan: What you just did to Paul Ryan is unforgivable.

Gingrich: I didn’t do anything to Paul Ryan.

Iowan: Yes, you did. You undercut him. … You’re an embarrassment to our party.

Gingrich: I’m sorry you feel that way.

Iowan: Why don’t you get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself?

Gingrich: Sorry you feel that way.

 

Message to Newt: You can dance, you can jive, but claiming to have been misquoted or maneuvered by the MSM into making an impolitic and imbecilic statement, isn’t going to win aggrieved Republicans over.

 

Editorial Note: Apparently, Gingrich really doesn’t know the difference between “that” and “which,” as he told FOX News’ Greta Van Susteren: “Any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood and because I have said publicly, those words were inaccurate and unfortunate.” This grammatical tic of his won’t endear him to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who “doesn't like reading "which" in a brief, when "that" will do.” The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times reports that Roberts once told legal writing guru Bryan Garner:

 

"I don’t know why, but when I see sentences with 'which' in them, it slows you down ... It starts to sound like one of those old 19th-century contracts - which and wherefore. 'That' just seems to have a better pace to it. I actually find you can usually get rid of both of them and go with the gerund."

 

† One Man’s Meat Is Another Man’s Poison (second item): The Case I-H farm equipment factory in Grand Island, NE, has added 130 workers over the past eight months because demand for combines went through the roof, thanks to the rising crop prices that are squeezing family budgets here in the U.S. and causing food riots in Third World countries. “[I]t's not just in farm related businesses,” Time magazine reports, but “after shrinking by six million positions between 1997 and 2009 … [n]early one in every six jobs that have been created by the economy since the beginning of 2010 has been in manufacturing”:

 

[A] combination of factors has caused U.S. manufacturing to see a surprising recovery in the past year and a half. …

 

[P]erhaps the biggest driver is the weak dollar. That combined with continued strong growth in such fast-growing economies as China has boosted foreign demand for U.S. construction and agricultural machinery, and building supplies.

 

The result: In the first quarter of 2011, U.S. manufacturing output grew by 9%, or five times as fast as the overall economy, which grew by 1.8% in the first three months of the year. Profits are up as well. Earnings at construction equipment maker Caterpillar leapt 426% in the first quarter to $1.2 billion. …

 

[S]ome are predicting that the U.S. manufacturing revival could be short-lived. High commodities prices have driven demand for mining and agricultural equipment. If prices fall, as they did in early May, that demand could drop off.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Waterboarding Works): The Washington Times details how the ongoing release of classified State Department cables on Gitmo detainees by WikiLeaks show that enhanced interrogation “of hundreds of captured operatives at secret overseas prisons and at the Cuban prison amounted to one of the most successful intelligence operations in history”:

 

Before the interrogations, the U.S. knew little about al Qaeda in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Years later, the CIA and military had accumulated a large database of ongoing plots and the identities of terrorists, the WikiLeaks files show. …

 

[Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed was one of three al Qaeda leaders waterboarded by the CIA. The Bush administration called it part of "enhanced" interrogations. The Obama administration has labeled it "torture."

 

The leaked detainee files show that other ranking al Qaeda operatives provided a first-ever look inside the al Qaeda killing machine:

 

‡ Ramzi Bin al-Shibh revealed how operatives gained visas to enter the West, often by gaining acceptance to an educational institute. If they were denied visas at U.S. embassies in the Middle East, they would try to gain entrance to Europe and apply from there.

 

‡ A terrorist identified as Hambali, the leader of the al Qaeda-funded Islamiyah network in South Asia, provided extensive information on his terrorist contacts in Indonesia. Responsible for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 200, Hambali disclosed the existence of the "Infraq Fisabillah" fund used to finance travel by terrorists to and from Pakistan for training.

 

‡ Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking bin Laden aide, provided a wealth of information on al Qaeda's ability to forge documents used to gain access to the West. Zubaydah, for example, forged medical files to show that a terrorist had been tortured. The supposed victims then used the phony medical history to gain political asylum in Europe or the United States. …

 

‡ Mohammed Abdah al-Nashiri, another close bin Laden aide, operated a separate al Qaeda operation in Yemen that received aid from Yemeni security forces. The revelation showed that, as in Pakistan, a U.S. ally supposedly working with the West actually was helping the enemy.

 

One of three al Qaeda captives waterboarded, Nashiri provided the names of a number of operatives still in the field. …

 

Even though leaders from both parties were briefed on the practices as early as 2002, leading Democrats derided their use as reports of secret prisons emerged around 2006.

 

In 2007, Mr. Bush signed an executive order prohibiting cruel and inhumane treatment, humiliation or denigration of prisoners' religious beliefs. After taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama dubbed some of the techniques torture, closed the secret prison system and said the administration would abide by the Geneva Conventions.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of 1,000 “likely voters” finds that just 30 percent think the U.S. border with Mexico is even somewhat secure vs. 64 percent, who think the border is not secure – with nearly half of them (29 percent) who think the border is not secure at all. Not surprisingly, nearly nine out of 10 Republicans (86 percent) don’t think the border is secure, but so do two out of three independent voters (65 percent) and more than half of Democrats (51 percent). That alligator-filled moat President Barack Hussein Obama joked about in El Paso may yet become a campaign promise.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Illegal Immigrants Swamping Small Town America: Having been thwarted by the courts in his efforts to curb illegal immigration as mayor of Hazleton, PA, freshman Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) is continuing to attack the problem with a proposed bill, “Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act,” that would withhold federal funding from "sanctuary cities" that do not enforce federal immigration laws, Los Angeles Times reports:

 

[Barletta], who represents Carbon and Monroe counties, also has asked the Congressional Research Service to calculate how much each such city - there are more than 100 in the U.S. - receives in federal taxpayer dollars.

 

"If the federal government wants to sue the state of Arizona because it claims the state is breaking federal law, then it should also sue the mayors of sanctuary cities because they are willfully breaking federal immigration law," Barletta said. "Local elected officials who choose to ignore enforcement of federal immigration policy are aiding and assisting illegal aliens. … They should not receive millions or even billions in tax dollars as a reward." …

 

The cities that Barletta would target in his bill have adopted a policy that, to varying degrees, says local law enforcement won't turn over illegal immigrants to federal authorities. …

 

Jan Ting, a Temple law professor who ran as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in 2006 but left the party because he supported Obama in 2008, said when it comes to immigration he believes most Americans would support Barletta.

 

Ting’s opinion is supported by a recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of 1,000 “likely voters,” which finds that 59 percent favor Barletta’s proposed bill, but only 29 percent think Congress is even “somewhat likely” to pass the measure.

 

[Hat Tip: Center for Immigration Studies]

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): Washington Times senior editor Richard Diamond, former spokesman for the U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland Security, is eagerly anticipating the High Noon confrontation between TX and the Transportation Security Administration over House Bill 1937, which would prosecute the TSA’s “perverse airport screening tactics” under state sexual harassment statutes:

 

The measure proposes serious criminal penalties for any "public servant" who touches a passenger in a sexual or otherwise offensive way absent probable cause. …

 

"What's our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down?" the official TSA blog asked in an article posted Saturday. "Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article VI Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government." In other words, Uncle Sam has unlimited powers, and there's nothing the states can do about it. …

 

[S]tate Rep. David P. Simpson anticipated the constitutional clash when he wrote the bill. "The 10^th Amendment was put in place to restrict the federal government from intruding on the powers 'reserved to the States ... or to the people,' " Mr. Simpson told The Washington Times. … In the event of a challenge, the legislation orders the state attorney general to defend the law as a valid exercise of the powers reserved to the states under the 9^th and 10^th amendments.

 

Mr. Simpson's bill also provides an escape clause, allowing TSA agents to escape prosecution by citing "an explicit and applicable grant of federal statutory authority that is consistent with the United States Constitution." This highlights two facts: TSA has no law explicitly authorizing the groping of passengers, and the constitutionality of this invasive technique is dubious.

 

Providing transportation security is certainly not among the federal government's enumerated powers.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, The Pubic Library): NYC Council Members David Greenfield (D-Brooklyn) and Eric Ulrich (R-Queens) plan to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to watch porn within 100 feet of a child in the library, WPIX (Channel 11, NYC) reports. The NYPL’s First Amendment arguments notwithstanding, Ulrich wants the city’s public libraries to remain “safe havens for children, and not safe havens for perverts." The legislation would make surfing for porn on the library’s computers a misdemeanor punishable with up to $1,000 in fines.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, How To Tell When A “Hate Crime” Has Been Committed): MD teen Teonna Brown, 18, and a second 14-year-old girl have been indicted for assault and committing a hate crime for the savage beating they inflicted on Chrissy Lee Polis at a McDonald's, The Associated Press reports:

  

Polis, 22, could not be reached for comment Monday, but she told The Baltimore Sun after the video of the attack went viral that she was the victim of a hate crime and had been afraid to go outside ever since the attack.

 

"They said, `That's a dude, that's a dude and she's in the female bathroom,"' Polis told the newspaper.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Josh Ferrin, who found more than $45,000 cash hidden in the garage of the new home he had closed on an hour before. KSL (Salt Lake City, UT) reports:

 

While taking it all in, he noticed a tiny scrap of carpet peeking out of a small door in the ceiling of a workshop at the back of the garage. He got a ladder and climbed up to explore the unseen space. It was dark and musty, but Ferrin could see a black metal box sitting there.

 

It was a heavy metal box - the kind used to haul ammunition during World War II - and it was filled with cash, old stamps, bond certificates and other random memorabilia.

 

"I immediately closed it, locked it in my truck and called my wife. 'You won't believe what I just found,'" he said. Tara Ferrin immediately knew the couple had to return the money to its rightful owners.

 

However, Arnold Bangerter, the former homeowner, passed away in November 2010 and his youngest son, Dennis Bangerter, the executor of Bangerter's estate, had just signed the 1950s red-brick rambler away. …

 

"Going through those boxes, I felt like I had a peek into his life," Josh Ferrin said about the man who left the surprising find. …

 

"The house needs some work," Josh Ferrin said. "I could use the $45,000 for remodeling, but he didn't save that money for us. He saved it for his family."