Back to Basics

Before there was 9/11, there was 10/12. Do you remember? We are nearing the 10th anniversary of the USS Cole bombing that took the lives of these American heroes on Oct. 12, 2000:

Electronics Technician 1st Class Richard Costelow
Mess Management Specialist Lakina Francis
Information Systems Technician Tim Guana
Signalman Seaman Recruit Cherone Gunn
Seaman James McDaniels
Engineman 2nd Class Mark Nieto
Electronics Warfare Technician 3rd Class Ronald Owens
Seaman Recruit Lakiba Parker
Engineman Fireman Joshua Parlett
Fireman Apprentice Patrick Roy
Electronics Warfare Technician Kevin Rux
Petty Officer 3rd Class Ron Santiago
Operations Special 2nd Class Timothy Sanders
Fireman Gary Swenchonis Jr
Ensign Andrew Triplett
Seaman Apprentice Craig Wibberly
Hull Maintenance Technician 3rd Class Kenneth Clodfelter.

In another disgraceful act of the Obama Department of Social Justice, the Washington Post reports that the feds are “shelving” prosecution of a major USS Cole bombing suspect at Gitmo. Why? Because of bad optics.

Priorities:

The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing. The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions.

…Military officials said a team of prosecutors in the Nashiri case has been ready go to trial for some time. And several months ago, military officials seemed confident that Nashiri would be arraigned this summer.

“It’s politics at this point,” said one military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy. He said he thinks the administration does not want to proceed against a high-value detainee without some prospect of civilian trials for other major figures at Guantanamo Bay.

A White House official disputed that.

Spitting on the graves of the fallen.

Never forget.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
June 8, 2010
Constitution of No
If President Obama’s motto is “Yes, we can,” the Constitution’s is “No, you can’t.”

By U.S. Senator Jim DeMint

The new State Department mascot

Today’s syndicated column builds on my weekend post about Foggy Bottom foghorn Michael Posner. If you thought the State Department’s handling of Posner’s Arizona-bashing, China-pandering couldn’t get worse than ignoramus P.J. Crowley’s clueless defense yesterday, think again. As Allahpundit points out, Posner is in full spin cycle, playing the “taken out of context card.” Next thing you know, he’ll say it was all just a misunderstood joke between regimes. Tee-hee.

Gird your loins, meanwhile, for the full State Department pander-fest scheduled for Thursday, when Arizona-bashing, U.S.-bashing Mexican President Felipe Calderon marches to Washington with one hand demanding more foreign aid while the other hand smacks America around for failing to grant more amnesty and other taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens from his misery-racked, violence-plagued country — which, I remind you again, has no qualms about enforcing its own southern border and sending illegals home in a heartbeat. Will anyone speak truth to open-borders power in the Beltway when Calderon comes calling? He has been granted the rare honor of speaking to a joint session of Congress.

Don’t forget what Calderon said in his first inaugural address in 2007:

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.”

“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”

He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

I hope Joe Wilson is ready to call him out if and when needed. Here’s how to do it right.

***

The U.S. Department of Blame America First
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Back in 1984, when the late Jeane J. Kirkpatrick gave her famous “Blame America First” speech to the Republican National Convention, liberals at least waited for something bad to happen before blaming America.

Today, Obama Democrats have now mastered the treacherous art of the pre-emptive global apology. Foggy Bottom is crammed with so many “human rights” zealots embarrassed by the country they serve that the State Department mission statement should be replaced with a condolence card.

Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner is probably not the first Obama State Department official to badmouth America in front of foreign delegations. He was just dumb enough to get caught.

Last week, the former head agitator at the transnationalist outfit Human Rights First trashed our country’s human rights record to Chinese government officials.

Posner is an unrepentant open-borders radical who has long fought immigration enforcement and vociferously opposed post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism measures to detain enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

October 26, 2009 by Bob Livingston

In the Aesop’s Fable, The Ass and His Purchaser, a man looking to buy a donkey wanted to test the animal before completing the purchase. So he put the donkey in his field with the other donkeys to see what would happen.

The donkey immediately strayed from the majority of the herd and cozied up to the laziest donkey of all.

Seeing that, the man led the donkey back to his owner. When the owner asked how he could judge the donkey’s character so quickly the man explained, “I didn’t even need to see how he worked. I knew he would be just like the one he chose to be his friend.”

A person is known by the company he keeps.

Fables are popular because they tell the story of the way things in life really work. In business, when someone takes over a department or company, that person promotes those he or she likes to positions of authority. The new manager seeks out those who have a philosophy, work ethic and disposition similar to his.

One would expect a president to do the same thing. After all, a president is elected—supposedly—based on the vision, ideas and proposals he championed during the campaign. It would then make sense that he would put in place those who supported his vision and would therefore be enthusiastic in working to achieve it.

So who are President Barack Obama’s friends, and who has he put in charge of the effort to enact his policies? And what do the friends he has chosen and the people he has put in position of authority in his administration say about him?

Following, in alphabetical order, is a list of some of Obama’s friends, advisors and people charged with enacting his policies:

• William Ayers—Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the domestic terrorist organization known as the Weather Underground. In the early 1970s the Weather Underground was responsible for bombing the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., and setting a bomb that didn’t go off at a military induction center in Oakland, Calif. The group also murdered two policemen and a Brink’s truck driver in a botched armored car robbery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) website. Ayers surrendered to face charges in the 1980s, but the charges were dropped because of improper surveillance. Coincidentally, on Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers was being interviewed about a book he had written and he told the interviewer he didn’t think the Weather Underground had done enough. Ayers and Obama first crossed paths in Chicago in the 1990s and served together on the board of the not-for-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a boondoggle to spend tens of millions of dollars for their pet “education” projects. Obama downplayed his friendship with Ayers as casual, but evidence indicates their relationship was much more. Many now believe that Ayers penned Obama’s “autobiography” Dreams from My Father.

• Carol Browner—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Browner is an avowed socialist.