Steve Chapman: “The 44th president apparently thought he had a mandate for the expansion of federal power and responsibility, which he has used on everything from bailing out automakers to showering the economy with stimulus dollars to trying to overhaul health insurance. . .What they forgot is that the surest way to mobilize American political opposition, irrational as well as rational, is to enlarge the government’s role in our lives.” Perhaps Obama knew this all too well — and therefore knew he needed to do it all fast before everyone woke up.
Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday didn’t sound pleased at all about Bush’s Iran policy: “I think it was very important that the military option be on the table. I thought that negotiations could not possibly succeed unless the Iranians really believed we were prepared to use military force. . . . As I say I was an advocate of a more robust policy than any of my colleagues, but I didn’t make the decision. . . . The president made the decision and, obviously, we pursued the diplomatic avenues.” And he thinks Bill Clinton’s visit to North Korea only rewarded “bad behavior.”
A revealing panel on Fox News Sunday: the liberals are utterly unable to defend Holder’s reversal of the decision of career prosecutors not to investigate low-level CIA operatives. Chris Wallace’s sardonic closing line on the Bush approach to the war on terror — that it must be “purely coincidental” we weren’t attacked in eight years — is worth waiting for.
And the Obama decision to investigate the CIA is having expected results: “Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general’s review of the agency’s interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.”
Even Dianne Feinstein is upset with Holder. Lots of senators are, in fact. Whoever in the White House thought the CIA witch hunt was a good idea got the politics very, very wrong.
When Obama gives a lackluster eulogy, devoid of any memorable lines, he is simply being “intentionally understated.” Nice to have the media watching your back, isn’t it?
Tom Ridge says he didn’t mean to accuse his Cabinet colleagues of playing politics with the nation’s threat level when he accused them of playing politics with the threat level. He’s not “second-guessing” anyone. No, he’s selling books.
Do we really think the Obama administration would let this impede their desire to throw themselves at the Syrians’ feet? “A spate of deadly bombs in Iraq this month that killed dozens of people has also significantly hampered the US-Syrian rapprochement. . . . The US believes some of those responsible for the wave of attacks, as well as some of the explosives that were used to carry them out, came across the border from Syria, and Washington wants to see Syria take much stronger action to seal its border with Iraq.” But it seems Assad is getting a lot of attention without doing anything about his border.
