Obama and Alinsky - The President Has Learned Well and Thus Suspect!

LONG BUT FULL OF CONTENT!
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You must read: "The Roots of Obama's Rage!" by Dinesh D'Souza to understand Obama. To defeat your enemy you must know him and Obama is our nations's enemy.

Again I repeat, Obama is no fool only those who support him and who are blind to the negative impact of his policies.
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As previously mentioned, Bernie Marcus, co-founder and former chairman of Home Depot, spoke to a crowd of about 300 last night at a President's Dinner function.

For political junkies, such as myself et al, Bernie's remarks did not reveal anything particularly startling but his personalization brought home the fact that Dodd-Frank was crippling small banks and restraining loan making. The politization of the NLRB was impacting job growth by small business and the outrageous regulations by the EPA and other big government bureaucratic agencies was stifling energy independence.

Bernie explained why the creation of Home Depot, would be impossible today and since small businesses are the main driver of employment how the wind was being sucked out of any meaningful recovery.

In answer to an audience question pertaining to education Bernie pointedly replied 'poor teachers were a root cause of our education problems' which, in turn, would eventually produce a work force incapable of allowing our nation to compete.

I would suggest Bernie's answer is only part of the education problem equation and that the break up of the family unit, the dumbing down of the curriculum were equally serious causes.

In the final analysis, most thinking and rational un-biased voters know what are problems are. The question is what are the solutions? Obviously, to those who feel as Bernie does, making Obama a one termer will go a long way towards writing the correct prescription.

Bernie, and a group of high profile current, retired CEOs and entrepreneurs executives, have founded Job Creators Alliance "http://www.jobcreatorsalliance.org/" to preserve the free enterprise system for succeeding generations. Bernie is going around the country, with others, encouraging small business owners to join. The purpose of this organization is to serve as their lobbyist and to get their message out about the crippling impact government is having on their plight.

American Capitalism's foundation is small business and our anti-Colonial president has proven he is an anti-Capitalist in both words and actions.

My wife and I had the pleasure of sitting with Bernie at the dinner table and he told about the pressure and bludgeoning threats on General Motor Bond holders to cave to the administration's plan to restructure the auto industry basically turning it over to labor. He recounted the conversation he had with one of Obama's biggest Wall Street Banker supporters who now spoke of Obama is language unfit for repeating.

Bernie's characterization of Warren Buffet was pointedly unflattering and he related the many political, financial and tax benefits Buffet and his company have received as a result of being in bed with Obama.

Read Chapter 6, in "The Roots of Obama's Rage" entitled - "Becoming Barack" and you will understand the impact and influence Saul Alinsky's teachings have had on our president when it comes to his divide and conquer strategy and how Obama's alignment with white wealth is part and parcel of his goal to achieve political power. In psychiatry it is called "association with the aggressor."

Bernie was kind enough to say he reads my memos religiously. I know this to be a fact because he has been receiving them for over forty years beginning when I published one a week, dictated them to my secretary who typed, Xeroxed and mailed them to about 100 people. (You remember the words secretary and dictation don't you? ) Now my memo goes to some 400 plus and I try to do them on a daily basis hunting and pecking.

Bernie's administrative associate has confirmed he reads them and the Wall Street Journal and considers himself current.

Wake up America. Re-elect him at our peril! (See 1 below.)
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War on the horizon according to Arnaud de Borchgrave. (See 2 below.)
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The inner sanctum on Santorum? (See 3 below.)
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Because of the impending birth of another granddaughter I am unable to go to the Annual AIPAC meeting in March and hear Netanyahu. Tremendous pressure is being applied on him by Obama to forget about Iran. (See 4,4a and 4b below.)
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Harvard reveals its stripes once again as Walt does his thing? (See 5 below.)
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Barone preaches prudence. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Fed Writes Sweeping Rules From Behind Closed Doors
By VICTORIA MCGRANE And JON HILSENRATH

The Federal Reserve has operated almost entirely behind closed doors as it rewrites the rule book governing the U.S. financial system, a stark contrast with its push for transparency in its interest-rate policies and emergency-lending programs.

While many Americans may not realize it, the Fed has taken on a much larger regulatory role than at any time in history. Since the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul became law in July 2010, the Fed has held 47 separate votes on financial regulations, and scores more are coming. In the process it is reshaping the U.S. financial industry by directing banks on how much capital they must hold, what kind of trading they can engage in and what kind of fees they can charge retailers on debit-card transactions.


The Fed is making these sweeping changes—the most dramatic since the Great Depression—almost completely without public meetings. Rather than discussing rules and voting in public, as is done at other agencies with which the Fed often collaborates, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Fed's four other governors have held just two public meetings since July 2010. On 45 of 47 of the draft or final regulatory measures during that period, they have emailed their votes to the central bank's secretary.

The votes, in turn, weren't publicly disclosed until last week, after The Wall Street Journal requested the information for this article. On Feb. 14, for the first time, the Fed posted on its website the names of the Fed governors voting for or against each closed-door regulatory action on Dodd-Frank since July 2010, when that law was enacted.

The Fed isn't breaking any laws by not having open meetings. But it is breaking from a long tradition of airing regulatory matters at open meetings. Bipartisan critics—including lawmakers and former regulators—say the Fed's cloistered approach deprives the public of insight into how rules are being written and makes it harder for Congress and others to hold them accountable for their decisions.

"People have a right to know and hear the discussion and hear the presentations and the reasoning for these rules," Sheila Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said in an interview. "All of the other agencies which are governed by boards or commissions propose and approve these rules in public meetings," she said. "I think it would be in the Fed's interest to do so as well."

The Fed's recent approach to writing financial regulations is very different from its practice in the 1980s and 1990s, when it held as many as 31 public meetings a year, according to data provided by the Fed. The governors publicly discussed not only regulations, but also obscure matters, like how much to spend on portraits of former chairmen. That began slowing in the late 1990s and fell sharply in the 2000s, and now such meetings rarely occur.

Fed officials contend they allow plenty of sunlight into their regulatory deliberations, but open meetings, which tend to be scripted and are sometimes perfunctory, don't always add value to the process. Ever-growing demands on governors' time has made it harder to coordinate schedules to allow for frequent meetings than in past decades, they add.

The Fed's closed-door process has obscured internal disagreement on at least one big issue. Last October, Fed Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin dissented when the Fed issued a proposed regulation implementing the controversial Volcker rule, which would restrict U.S. banks from making bets with their own capital.

Ms. Raskin's dissent, which she cast by email, wasn't publicly disclosed by the Fed until Feb. 14. Neither she nor the central bank has publicly explained her reasons for dissenting to the draft rule, which the Fed is writing with several other regulators.

Ms. Raskin said in an interview that she was concerned that the draft rule, mandated by Dodd-Frank and named for former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, would be too unwieldy for banks to comply with and for regulators to enforce. She also worried that some of the exemptions were written too broadly. She said she had ample opportunity to talk through her views during the drafting process.

Her dissent is significant because regulators are still writing the rule and her views could inform banks, industry groups and others as they engage with the Fed to shape the measure, say veterans of the regulatory process. The deadline for comments on the Volcker proposal was Feb. 13, however, so it is too late for letters to be informed by her dissent. "I would have liked to have heard that discussion," said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), a leading critic of the Volcker rule, when informed of Ms. Raskin's dissent.

The official directing the Fed's rule-writing effort, Daniel Tarullo, a governor appointed by President Barack Obama, said the central bank should have disclosed Ms. Raskin's dissenting opinion in the Volcker rule. "I can't think of any justification" for not disclosing Ms. Raskin's dissent, he said in an interview before the vote tallies were posted on the website. "When there is a dissent from any vote it has got to be noted," he said, and the practice of not publishing such internal dissents "has got to be changed in my view."

More broadly, Mr. Tarullo said open meetings aren't always the most effective means to increasing public understanding, and they aren't a gauge of regulators' work. "You can have a scripted meeting that does not show any engagement at all," Mr. Tarullo said.

Open meetings could also strain the already busy schedules of top Fed officials. The Fed currently has 250 separate rule-writing projects under way. "Compared to other waves of rule-making this is a tsunami," said John Weinberg, head of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The seven-member Fed board currently has two vacancies.

Mr. Tarullo said he has asked for open meetings on several final rules. A request from any governor means an open meeting must be held.

The Fed's method of writing rules for the financial industry contrasts with the way its policy committee—the Federal Open Market Committee, comprising the seven Fed governors and five Reserve Bank presidents—sets interest rates. Although their sessions are closed to the public, that group has regularly scheduled meetings on interest rates and in-person votes, intense discussion and prompt disclosure about how individuals voted and the reasons for any dissent. Mr. Bernanke has pushed the Fed to be more open on interest-rate policy, by making public its internal economic and interest-rate projections. He holds quarterly news conferences to explain the committee's decisions and thinking.

"As an agent of the government, a central bank must be accountable in the pursuit of its mandated goals, responsive to the public and its elected representatives, and transparent in its policies," Mr. Bernanke said about monetary policy-making in a 2010 speech.

Federal Reserve officials argue that their rule-writing process is already transparent. The Fed generally gives the public 60 to 90 days to comment on its proposed measures, longer than in the past. Banks and others interested in Fed rule-writing say they have frequent closed-door meetings with Fed officials to express their views. Participants in those meetings are disclosed on the Fed's website, a new practice adopted after the passage of Dodd-Frank.

Fed officials say they are called to testify before Congress and are grilled on the status of controversial regulations as they are writing them.

Mr. Tarullo said the Fed has been more transparent on regulatory issues in other ways. For instance, in 2009 the Fed disclosed details of its findings from "stress tests" on the nation's largest banks to determine their ability to withstand severe strains in the financial system. It plans to publish results from tests being done this year, too.

The Fed's approach to regulatory rule-writing is nevertheless striking in the wake of demands by Congress and the Supreme Court in 2010 that forced the Fed to disclose which banks got its emergency loans during the financial crisis.

And it differs from that of other top financial regulators. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, each governed by a board or a commission, have all held open meetings on most of the draft and final rules they have considered, at times with debate and public dissent, according to their websites and agendas.

Some Fed officials privately complain that the more public rule-writing approach at other agencies is often inefficient. The challenge in scheduling meetings, they say, is complicated by the fact that many rules are being written by several agencies at the same time.

"For [the Fed] to be accountable, they've got to air and discuss and debate their viewpoints," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, who supported stripping the Fed of its supervisory authority when Congress was writing Dodd-Frank. The Fed fought hard to keep its powers. "The Fed's record shows, among other things, that it's not infallible. Look at the housing crisis," he said.

Under federal "sunshine" laws, no more than three Fed board members can meet without formal notice and opening the gathering to the public, unless it meets one of several exemptions. For instance, meetings on the supervision of banks and other financial institutions for which the Fed is responsible can be closed because the discussion includes confidential information about specific companies. But the Fed governors don't regularly meet for discussions on supervisory matters either.

The governors do meet on monetary policy—another exemption from sunshine laws. Out of 61 closed-door meetings held since the start of 2010, the vast majority have been on that topic. They have met 10 times over the same period to discuss supervisory issues, according to an analysis of agendas on the Fed website.

Michael Bradfield, who served as Fed general counsel between 1981 and 1989, said he is troubled by the infrequency with which the Fed board convenes meetings, closed or open, to consider supervisory matters. The governors are in effect delegating much of their supervisory authority to their staff, he said.

"Governors have the responsibility and they should be actively involved and not merely looking at staff documents in their offices," Mr. Bradfield said. He recalled numerous occasions when he was at the Fed and then-Chairman Volcker changed the board's view on an issue through "vigorous discussion" at almost weekly meetings devoted to bank supervisory issues.

Enlarge Image

"It makes a big difference if you sit down at a table and discuss things," he said.

The Fed's rule-writing process works like this: Teams of Fed staff write long initial drafts of rules and send governors summaries called "term sheets." With those term sheets as a guide, Fed staff meet with governors, usually one at a time, to present options and solicit feedback. For rules dealing with the biggest banks, Mr. Tarullo generally decides when a rule is ready to go to the full board for a vote. The Fed has approved 47 regulatory measures since late 2010, according to law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

The Volcker rule vote was the only closed-door vote in which a governor formally dissented, according to Fed records. But some observers believe open meetings could reveal more nuanced differences. "Do they all have the same view every day? Obviously not. Do they have the same approach to economics? Obviously not," said Mr. Shelby, the Alabama senator.

Other regulators have recently moved toward greater transparency. The CFTC, for instance, has publicly discussed more than 90% of the 60 or so proposed Dodd-Frank rules it has issued and all but a handful of the final rules, Gary Gensler, the agency's chairman estimated. That is after years of practically no open meetings before Mr. Gensler arrived in 2009.

The CFTC also has convened more than a dozen public roundtables—several with the SEC—in which staff and market participants debate aspects of major rule-making, all streamed live to the public via the Internet.

The FDIC has opened up meetings of an advisory committee created to counsel the agency on the new power to seize and dismantle large, failing financial firms, a central plank of Dodd-Frank law. At its daylong Jan. 25 meeting, FDIC staff made presentations on how they see key aspects of its new authority working. They fielded questions and criticism from advisory members—financial executives, former regulators and academics. Fed staff attended but didn't speak.

Write to Victoria McGrane at victoria.mcgrane@wsj.com and Jon Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath@wsj.com
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2)De Borchgrave: New Mideast War Coming Soon
By Arnaud De Borchgrave


Arnaud de Borchgrave reports — From Tunis to Tripoli to Cairo to Damascus, what seems real one day is no longer the next. Policymakers in Western capitals agree that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s suppression of dissent, with a toll of 6,000 dead so far — and still climbing — makes him the war criminal.

This clear good-vs.-bad-guys script suddenly blurred as al-Qaida’s sympathizers showed up in the ranks of pro-western rebels fighting for the overthrow of Assad. A new player: The Al-Baraa Ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade began fielding suicide bombers.

In Libya, liberation from Moammar Gadhafi’s 40-year-tyranny gradually morphed into inter-tribal warfare. Salafist extremists were in the mix. Libyan ambassadors abroad are receiving contradictory instructions from different government ministries in the hands of warring tribes.

Thousands of Russian surface-to-air missiles bought by Ghadafi's regime and other weapons lay abandoned in the desert, available to any terrorist group with plans to down commercial aircraft anywhere in the world.

In the Libyan capital, Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former al-Qaida chief turned over to British intelligence by Ghadafi and tortured under the secret 2004 U.S.-British “rendition” program, has produced incriminating documents from the late dictator’s intelligence headquarters.

Belhadj has a strong hand to play. He’s the commander of the “Tripoli Military Council,” the revolution’s top military man in the capital city, and former head of the “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” a branch of al-Qaida. He is suing Britain’s MI6.

In Cairo, a new parliament dominated by fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood, with 47 percent of the seats, appeared shaken while trying to project a moderate image for their western interlocutors.

Salafists, or Muslim extremists who rooted for the late Osama Bin Laden, emerged from the most recent ballot count with 25 percent of the new parliament. Together, with 72 percent of Parliament, these two branches of Islam will dominate constitutional reform

Liquor, women with uncovered heads or in swimsuits on the beaches of the Mediterranean and Red Sea will be officially banned. But if enforced, the tourist trade, about 20 percent of Egypt’s national income, will suffer.

As the Arab world continued to unravel, the Iranian nuclear crisis had a near-monopoly of front-page news. Clandestine hits between Iran and Israel have become commonplace. Cyberterrorism is evidently Israel’s preferred form of action to disrupt Iran’s covert nuclear program. Iran’s riposte seems to be car bombs against Israeli officials and their friends.

For many Israelis, there is little doubt that Iran will attempt to wipe out the Israeli nation in a single strike against Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Similar paranoia gripped the United States in the late 1940s and ’50s.

Israel’s three principal intelligence chiefs who retired last year — Mossad, Shin Bet and IDF — have opined in print and on TV news that they do not believe the theocratic dictatorship in Qom or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran have any such intention. They know that a single nuke aimed at Israel would trigger massive retaliatory blows from Israel — and would leave them without a country.

Several generations of Americans and Israelis have no recollection of the game of nuclear chicken played by Russia and China after World War II. In 1957, Mao Zedong said China could survive and prevail in a nuclear war.

Mega death for Mao was a shortcut to defeating capitalism and its imperial powers. He claimed he was not afraid of atomic warfare. China then had a population of 600 million extremely poor people.

Even if 200 million were killed by American atomic weapons, Mao concluded, 400 million would survive and China would still be a major power while the U.S. would lose its raison d’etre, or reason for existing.

Chinese hyperbole saw a new beautiful civilization growing on the ashes of imperialism.

During China’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-60), 43 million died. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), one of Mao’s interpreters estimated 10 percent of a population of about 800 million had been killed. All told, 123 million were killed by order of the “Great Helmsman.”

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, till his death in March 1953, Stalin repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. Some analysts at the time said Stalin believed he could destroy America and inherit Europe intact.

For Stalin, 20 million people “purged” during his bloody dictatorship (1929-53) were just a statistic. Another 20 million were killed in World War II, including 11 million soldiers.

In the light of wholesale slaughters during the first half of the 20th century, including 6 million Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps, and the nature of Stalin’s and Mao’s dictatorships, it was normal for Pentagon “tank” and academic think tanks to be debating first- and second-strike capabilities. These became the stuff of doomsday debates, which today appear anachronistic and irrelevant.

Not for Israel. One nuclear missile obliterating Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would be a global catastrophe. Israel would survive, but Iran would cease to exist as a nation hours later. Israel’s fighter bombers with air-to-air refueling tankers have been on instant standby for months. Violating the air space of other countries wouldn’t even be a consideration.

Despite the counsel of three outgoing Israeli intelligence chiefs and the opinions of three U.S. former CENTCOM commanders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes his country cannot wait for Iran to produce its first nuclear weapon.

So what happens when Netanyahu calls President Obama and says, “Mr. President, I am calling to inform you I have ordered our Air Force to take out three key nuclear targets in Iran”?

Obama knows that the United States will be drawn automatically into the conflict as Iran unleashes its asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities up and down the Persian Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes 20 percent of the world’s oil consumption,

Congress, where the American Israel Public Affairs Committee wields decisive influence, then will vote a resolution of support for Israel.

President Obama’s freedom to maneuver diplomatically will be sharply curtailed.

The October surprise: The United States will be in its third war in 10 years.

Noted editor and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave is an editor at large for United Press International. He is a founding board member of Newsmax.com who now serves on Newsmax's Advisory Board.


© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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3)Sex, Lies and Rick Santorum

The politics of the double standard on social issues.

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he declared that marriage is between a man and a woman. For the most part, his position was treated as a nonissue.
Now Rick Santorum is campaigning for president. He too says that marriage is between a man and a woman. What a different reaction he gets.

There's no mystery why. Mr. Santorum is attacked because everyone understands that he means what he says.

President Obama, by contrast, gets a pass because everyone understands—nudge nudge, wink wink—that he's not telling the truth. The press understands that this is just one of those things a Democratic candidate has to say so he doesn't rile up the great unwashed.
It's arguably the most glaring double standard in American life today. It helps explain why candidates with social views that are fairly conventional among ordinary Americans—the citizens of 31 states including California have rejected same-sex marriage when put to a vote—find themselves depicted as extreme. It also speaks to why even some who share Mr. Santorum's social views nonetheless fear that his outspokenness on these issues will only undermine his candidacy.
That has led some folks to suggest that Mr. Santorum simply drop these issues altogether. Their hope is that by concentrating his energies solely on Mr. Obama's management of the economy and foreign affairs, Mr. Santorum might avoid dividing his party and America. However reasonable the argument may be on paper, it is simply not practical.

It's not practical, first, because Mr. Santorum is running as what he is, a conviction politician. Having been dismissed for months by Republicans hostile to his social views, he is not likely to take their advice now. He appreciates that he did not get where he is today by trimming his sails.
Indeed, that's one reason he has now overtaken Mitt Romney as the front-runner in Michigan. Mr. Romney is behind because Republican voters have yet to be persuaded he stands for anything. Mr. Santorum is ahead because even those who might not sign onto all his social particulars are hungry for a nominee who does not bend with the wind.

Dropping the social issues is also not practical for another reason: The media won't let him. When Mr. Obama used a prayer breakfast earlier this month to suggest that the Gospel of Luke was a call for raising taxes on the wealthy, the press corps yawned. When Mr. Santorum complained about the "phony theology" behind the president's worldview, suddenly it landed on every front page and lead every news show.

So what's the answer? The answer is that when Mr. Santorum discusses these issues, he needs to fold them into his larger narrative about the free society. That narrative has to do with pointing out the dependency that comes with an expanding federal government, the importance of family, and the threat to freedom when, say, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or a Health and Human Services secretary can substitute their own opinions on these issues for the judgment of the American people.

Mr. Santorum comes to the task well equipped. He echoes Ronald Reagan, for example, when he talks about how small government requires strong families. Or when he's pointing out the intolerance of a federal government bent on forcing religious individuals and institutions to underwrite practices (e.g., contraception and sterilization) they regard as abhorrent.
There is, however, one area where Mr. Santorum needs to demonstrate a discipline it's not yet clear he has. That is the ability to resist the efforts to drag him out of the public questions into the weeds of theological debate.

In short, Mr. Santorum must resist the temptation to run for president on "Humanae Vitae," the 1968 papal encyclical prohibiting artificial contraception. Of late the former Pennsylvania senator has pointed out that, despite his personal views, he has voted for contraceptive funding in the past. Alas, he has also said that artificial contraception is the kind of moral issue he plans to talk about as president.

These are important issues. They have large implications for society, and those few who have actually read "Humanae Vitae," as Mr. Santorum has, might be surprised to find how prophetic that document was in its warnings about the consequences of the contraceptive mentality for society, including the weakening of the marriage bond. A presidential debate, however, is simply not the vehicle for clarifying the coherence of the Catholic Church's view of human sexuality.
That doesn't mean Mr. Santorum should compromise his views. To the contrary, he needs to keep his comments simple, clear, and focused on the political point he is hoping to make. That in turn will require letting pass a great deal that he might be itching to respond to.

Mr. Santorum cannot change the double standard. With a little discipline, however, he need not let himself be defined by it.
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4)Obama to try and talk Netanyahu out of Iran strike after his advisers failed


After a high-ranking US delegation headed by White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon failed in three days of tough talks (Feb.18-20) to dissuade Israeli leaders to back off plans for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites, the White House invited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for talks with President Barak Obama on March 5. He will try and break the stalemate which ended his advisers’ talks with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.

The defense minister, addressing his Independence Party later Monday praised Israel’s security relations with the US as very good and very important for a strong Israel. The dialogue between the two governments, he said, is marked by openness, mutual respect, understanding and attentiveness. At the same time, Barak hinted at discord by adding, “Both are sovereign nations which are ultimately responsible for their decisions in relation to themselves and their future.”

White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon faced an acrimonious Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in two hours of stormy conversation in Jerusalem Sunday, Feb. 19, according to updates reaching senior US sources in Washington. The main bones of contention were Iran’s continuing enrichment of uranium and its ongoing relocation of production to underground sites.
Israeli officials declined to give out any information on the conversation. Some even refused to confirm it took place.

Apparently, Netanyahu accused the Obama administration of drawing Iran into resuming nuclear negotiations with world powers by an assurance that Tehran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium up to 5 percent in any quantity, provided it promised not to build an Iranian nuclear weapon. The prime minister charged that this permit contravened US administration guarantees to Israel on the nuclear issue and, moreover left Tehran free to upgrade its current 20 percent enrichment level to 90 percent weapons grade. This Israel cannot tolerate, said Netanyahu, so leaving its military option on the ready.

He warned the US National Security Adviser that no evidence whatsoever confirms Washington’s claim that Tehran intends suspending enrichment and other nuclear advances when negotiations begin. Quite the contrary: Even before the date was set, Iran started working at top speed to build up its bargaining chips by laying down major advances in its nuclear program as undisputed facts.
Tehran now claims to have progressed to self-reliance in the production of 20 percent-enriched uranium, the basis for the weapons grade fuel, in unlimited quantity. Once the talks are underway, Netanyahu maintained, there would be no stopping the Iranians without stalling the negotiating process. Going by past experience, Tehran would use dialogue as an extra fulcrum for its impetus toward weapon production without interruption.

Monday, Donilon and his delegation meet Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The mission of this high-powered US delegation in Israel takes place to the accompanyment of a resumed US media campaign for discouraging Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear installations.

Sunday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, offered this opinion to CNN: “Israel has the capability to strike Iran and delay the Iranians probably for a couple of years. But some of the targets are probably beyond their reach.”

Monday’s New York Times carried an assessment by “American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon” under the caption, “Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israel Jets.”

Military sources report the main argument, dredged up from the past and long refuted, is that Israeli Air Force bombers cannot cover the distance to Iran without in-flight refueling.
That array of “analysts” apparently missed the CNN interview and therefore contradicted the assessment of America’s own top general that “Israel has the capability to strike Iran…”
Reality has meanwhile moved on. Four events in the last 24 hours no doubt figured large in the US delegation’s talks with Israeli leaders:

1. Monday, the IAEA sent to Tehran its second team of monitors this month for another attempt to gain access to nuclear facilities hitherto barred by the Iranians. The inspectors will also demand permission to interview scientists which according to a list drawn up at the agency’s Vienna headquarters hold key positions in their nuclear program.

2. The Russian Chief of Chaff Gen. Nikolai Makarov estimated that the attack on Iran would be “coordinated” by several governments and “a decision would be made by the summer.”

3. Moscow recalled Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kutznetsov from the Syrian port of Tartus to its home base at Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula.

4. Turkey is beinding over backward to assure Iran that data collected by the US missile shield radar stationed at its Kurecik air base will not shared with Israel. It is especially anxious not to annoy Tehran after foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi announced that the resumed nuclear talks with the five Permanent Security Council members and German (P5+1) would be held in Istanbul.
However, the Iranians certainly know exactly what is going on after watching the recent joint US-Israeli radar test which demonstrated that Israel is fully integrated in the missile shield radar network and that the US radar station in the Israeli Negev interfaces with its station in Turkey
and Israel’s Arrow missile Green Pine radar.

When he visited Ankara last week, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen assured his Turkish hosts that “Intelligence data collected within the missile defense system will not be shared with third countries. It will be shared with the allies within our alliance.”
His statement was quite accurate – except for the fact that the radar stations collecting the intelligence data are not controlled by NATO but by US military teams, both of which, including the Turkish-based radar, are integrated and coordinated with Israeli radar and missile interceptors.

4a)Containing Israel on Iran
General Dempsey sends a message of U.S. weakness to Tehran.

Is the Obama Administration more concerned that Iran may get a nuclear weapon, or that Israel may use military force to prevent Iran from doing so? The answer is the latter, judging from comments on Sunday by Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.

Appearing on CNN, General Dempsey sent precisely the wrong message if the main U.S. strategic goal is convincing Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. He said the U.S. is urging Israel not to attack Iran—because Iran hasn't decided to build a bomb, because an Israeli attack probably wouldn't set back Iran by more than a couple of years, and because it would invite retaliation and be "destabilizing" throughout the Middle East.

"That's the question with which we all wrestle. And the reason we think that it's not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran," the General said, referring to a possible Iranian response to an attack. "That's been our counsel to our allies, the Israelis. And we also know or believe we know that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the capability—or the effort to weaponize their nuclear capability."

In a single sound bite, General Dempsey managed to tell the Iranians they can breathe easier because Israel's main ally is opposed to an attack on Iran, such attack isn't likely to work in any case, and the U.S. fears Iran's retaliation. It's as if General Dempsey wanted to ratify Iran's rhetoric that the regime is a fearsome global military threat.

If the U.S. really wanted its diplomacy to work in lieu of force, it would say and do whatever it can to increase Iran's fear of an attack. It would say publicly that Israel must be able to protect itself and that it has the means to do so. America's top military officer in particular should say that if Iran escalates in response to an Israeli attack, the U.S. would have no choice but to intervene on behalf of its ally. The point of coercive diplomacy is to make an adversary understand that the costs of its bad behavior will be very, very high.

The general is not a free-lancer, so his message was almost certainly guided by the White House. His remarks only make strategic sense if President Obama's real priority is to contain Israel first—especially before the November election.

This might also explain General Dempsey's comments that the U.S. doesn't believe Iran's regime has decided to build an atomic bomb and that it is a "rational" actor, like, say, the Dutch. This would be the same rational Iran that refuses to compromise on its nuclear plans despite increasingly damaging global sanctions, and the same prudent actor that has sent agents around the world to bomb Israeli and Saudi targets, allegedly including in a Washington, D.C. restaurant.

Iran doesn't need to explode a bomb, or even declare that it has one, to win its nuclear standoff. All it needs to do is get to the brink and make everyone believe it can build a bomb when it wants to. Then the costs of deterring Iran go up exponentially, and the regime's leverage multiplies in the Middle East and against American interests. General Dempsey's assurances obscure that military and political reality.

Like most of Mr. Obama's Iran policy, General Dempsey's comments will have the effect of making war more likely, not less. They will increase Israel's anxiety about U.S. support, especially if Mr. Obama is re-elected and he has a freer political hand. This may drive Israel's leadership to strike sooner. Weakness invites war, and General Dempsey has helped the Administration send a message of weakness to Israel and Iran.

4b)Negotiations With Snakes.....Here Are The Details.....

If Barak Ravid's report is accurate, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
proposed Israel maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley for
a limited period of time.

Why term this "reckless"?

#1. How long is long enough time?

Five years? Ten years? A quarter of a century?

Hint: We have had an agreement with Egypt since March 26, 1979. That's 33
years.

A little bit more than a year ago most of the experts in Israel projected
that the Mubarak regime would last basically forever and the cold peace
pay-off for withdrawing from the Sinai in the agreement was taken as an
incontrovertible truth.

#2. Is it reasonable to expect a military presence in the Jordan Valley to
be viable?

Hint: Israel has ultimately retreated from pretty much every location in
which it had only a military presence. In the absence of civilians the
temptation to pull up the stakes when things heat up is just too great for
the decision makers to handle. And our neighbors know this...]

Netanyahu's border proposal: Israel to annex settlement blocs, but not
Jordan Valley

The proposal that came up during the Israeli-Palestinian talks in Amman
effectively means a withdrawal from 90% of the West Bank, and is very
similar to the one proposed by Tzipi Livni during the 2008 Annapolis
Conference.

Three weeks after the end of the talks that took place between Israel and
the Palestinians in Amman which took place under the patronage of the King
of Jordan, Israeli officials revealed their version of the events, laying
the blame on the failure of the talks on Palestinian Authority leader
Mahmoud Abbas. Despite the mutual “blame game,” according to positions
presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the topic of borders, it
is clear that it is not much different than the positions presented by Tzipi
Livni during the Annapolis Conference.

The five rounds of talks in Amman were the result of international pressure
placed on Abbas immediately after his speech to the UN General Assembly in
September 23 2011. On that same day, the members of the Quartet – the United
States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – declared a new
outline for talks and called on both sides to respond positively.

After a few weeks, both Israel and the Palestinians responded to the request
with a “yes, but…” with both sides presenting a list of reservations. A
month after the assembly, delegations from the Quartet arrived for
first-round talks with Israeli and Palestinian representatives.

According to a top Israeli official, on the day of the meeting, the prime
minister’s envoy, Isaac Molho, arrived at the hotel and entered the meeting
room only to discover that his Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, did not
make it to the meeting. Mohammad Shtayyeh, a of Fatah’s central committee
was sent in his stead. The Palestinian side did not agree to sit with Molho
in the same room, and the envoys were resigned to hopping between different
rooms in the hotel in order to hold discussions between the two sides.

After a week, the Quarter envoys arrived in Jerusalem, although the
Palestinians refused once more to sit in the same room as Molho. “There is
an empty chair in the room,” said Molho to the envoys at the meeting. “Where
is Saeb Erekat?”

For over a month, the Quarter envoys attempted to bring the Palestinians to
the negotiation room, but only when King Abdullah II began to apply pressure
did things begin to move. The king came to Ramallah on a rare trip and
pressured Mahmoud Abbas. Finally, on January 3, the Jordanians were able to
bring together Erekat and Molho in Jordan’s Foreign Ministry in Amman.

First meeting: The blame game

A senior Israeli official said that the January 3 meeting began in a wider
forum where Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian officials were present, as
well representatives of all the Quarter members. While speaking in front of
no less than 20 people, Saeb Erekat pulled out two documents: one on the
Palestinian position regarding borders, and one on the Palestinian position
regarding security.

The Palestinian documents were not surprising. On the topic of borders, the
Palestinians called for a return to 1967 borders with an acceptance of
land-swaps of 1.9% of the West Bank. On the topic of security, the
Palestinians agreed to a demilitarized state (devoid of heavy weaponry), and
the stationing of an international force on the border between Israel and
Jordan, with no presence of Israeli soldiers.

After the meeting in the general forum, the sides moved to a smaller meeting
with only Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian representatives alone.
According to the Israeli official, the Palestinians immediately demanded a
freeze on settlement building, freeing prisoners and emphasized that from
their point of view, the talks would end on January 26 as that was the date
that the Quartet set for negotiations on the subject of borders and
security.

The Israeli delegation was surprised by the announcement. “We had just begun
and you are already threatening to end the talks,” said Molho to Erekat. The
Israeli side emphasized to the Palestinians that the talks are only in their
beginning stages and that with such a short timeframe it is impossible to
hold serious negotiations. At that same meeting, Molho presented a 21-point
document that included all the topics Israel is interested in discussing
during the talks, including borders, Jerusalem, settlements, security
arrangements, Palestinian incitement and more. And although the document
included all the points, it did not include any of the Israeli positions.
The meeting produced very little progress, except for the fact that the two
sides agreed to decide on another two meetings that would take place during
January.

Second Meeting: Molho asks for clarification

On January 9, a second meeting took place between Molho and Erekat, this
time in a smaller forum. Present alongside the Israeli and Palestinian
negotiating teams was Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and his top
adviser. Molho, who went over the documents presented by the Palestinians
during the previous meeting, passed along a document with 19 requests for
clarification regarding the Palestinians' positions.

One of Molho's questions was about the future of the settlements in the
Palestinian state. Would they be evacuated or would they be allowed to
remain? From the question it is clear that Netanyahu's position on the issue
of borders is that at least some of the settlements will remain where they
are in a Palestinian state and will not be evacuated. "Erekat told us that
he prefers not to respond to the question, and until this day we have not
received an answer," said a top Israeli official.

Another question brought up by Molho to Erekat had to do with the PA's
relationship to Hamas and the situation in the Gaza Strip. Erekat responded
that the Palestinian state will be "a strong democracy," and blamed Israel
for Hamas' takeover of Gaza.

Molho further asked whether the position on borders was final. The top
Israeli official claimed that among the Palestinian delegation there were
contradictory positions on the issue. "On the one hand, Erekat told us that
the documents are not the Quran and are not holy. On the other hand,
Mohammad Shatyyeh told us that the Palestinians had already made their
compromise and that a land swap of 1.9% is the maximum they are willing to
give," he said. "In the end, the Palestinian proposals were a step backward
from the more progressive positions that they presented in Annapolis."

Fourth meeting: Israeli general sits outside the room

A third meeting between the two sides took place on January 14, but did not
produce any results. During a meeting on January 18, the Israeli delegation
brought with it the Head of the Strategic Planning Division in the IDF
Planning Directorate, Brigadier-General Assaf Orion in order to summarize
Israel’s position on security arrangements. The Palestinians refused to
allow him to speak. “We came to the meeting place and were delayed for an
hour and a half because the Palestinians were not willing to hear the
Israeli general. They said that they are not willing to hear a military
person speak,” said the Israeli official.

When both sides finally entered the room, Erekat handed Molho a letter that
demanded the release of Hamas member and Speaker of the Palestinian
Legislative Council Aziz Duwaik, who was arrested a few days earlier. A few
hours later, the contents of the letter were leaked to the Palestinian
media.

The Israeli side also presented documents to the Palestinians, including one
on incitement against Israel in the Palestinian media. The document
contained quotes from the Mufti of Jerusalem that called for the killing of
Jews. Erekat rejected the claims. “The accusations are wrong, and in the end
you will have to apologize for this slander,” said Erekat to Molho.

In the meeting that took place afterwards, the Palestinians had understood
that they had a problem on their hands, and suggested organizing a joint
committee that would deal with the issue of incitement. Head of Israel’s
National Information Directorate Yoaz Hendel, who participated in the
meeting, told Erekat that instead of organizing a committee, they themselves
can take care of the issue of incitement.

Fifth meeting: Molho presents Netanyahu’s proposal on borders

On January 25, a day before the date which the Palestinians threatened to
walk out on the talks, the final round of talks took place between the
sides. During the discussions, Molho presented Netanyahu’s proposal on the
borders of the Palestinian state.

Molho presented several principles:

1. The border will be drawn in a way that will include the maximum amount of
Israelis living in the West Bank, and the minimum amount of Palestinians.

2. Israel will annex the large settlement blocs, without defining what
exactly is considered a ‘bloc,’ nor defining its size.

3. It is necessary to first solve the problem of borders and security in
relation to Judea and Samaria, and only afterwards move to discuss the topic
of Jerusalem which is far more complicated.

4. Israel will maintain a presence in the Jordan Valley for a period of
time. Molho did not mention how long nor what kind of presence.

During the meeting, Erekat asked for clarification regarding the Jordan
Valley. Molho referred him to Netanyahu’s speech’s to the opening session of
the Knesset, as well as to that in front of Congress in May 2011. In both
speeches, Netanyahu spoke of a “military presence along the Jordan River,”
yet he did not demand that Israel maintain sovereignty over the valley. “And
if we refuse?” Erekat asked. Molho responded: You would prefer that we annex
the valley?”

Molho did not mention how size of the territory from which Israel will
withdraw, but according to the principles he presented, it seems that it is
similar, if not identical to that which was presented by Tzipi Livni during
the negotiations that took place in 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. And
although Netanyahu does not admit it, the meaning behind the principles
Molho presented is a withdrawal that will cause Israel to give up 90% of its
sovereignty. “The possibility of leaving the settlements in a Palestinian
state also came up in Annapolis,” said a source that participated in the
2008 talks.

Erekat, who understood the principles, asked at the end of the meetings for
a series of clarifications: whether Israel accepts the 1967 borders as a
basic tenet upon which the two sides can negotiation, whether Israel accepts
the principle of territory swaps, how many percentages of the West Bank is
Israel interested in annexing, whether Israel has a map with border
proposals, whether Israel is willing to evacuate settlements, etc.

“I’d be happy to answer all these questions in the next meeting,” said Molho
to Erekat. But the next meeting never took place. A day later, the
Palestinians said that they will not resume talks unless Israel freezes
settlement building and accepts the principle of 1967 borders.

Israeli officials: Abbas ran away once again

Israelis are now admitting that the talks have come to an end and their
renewal is not expected anytime soon, especially in light of the recent
reconciliation meeting between Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Doha.
Up until two weeks ago, Netanyahu had discussed a series of goodwill
gestures toward the Palestinians with Tony Blair and the Americans, in order
to enable the renewal of the talks. However, the meeting between Abbas and
Meshal caused the Israelis to take of the offer off the table.

In a briefing to journalists on Sunday in Jerusalem, Israeli officials
blamed the freeze in the talks on Abbas. “For the past three weeks, Abbas
has run away from negotiations, and has done the same regarding the talks in
Amman,” said a top Israeli official. “We had the willingness to make
gestures and we presented a full package, but the Palestinians simply did
not want it. More and more international bodies understand that we were not
the ones that thwarted the talks. You can see it from the silence on the
part of the Jordanians. They did not blame Israel in any way.”

It must be noted that Netanyahu’s goodwill gesture package was much more
modest han what the Palestinians and the international community had hoped
for. Netanyahu proposed releasing 25 prisoners, establishing 10 new stations
for the Palestinian police in Area B (where Israel is in charge of
security), as well as a series of economic projects in Area C (where Israel
has full control).

What now? Officials in Jerusalem are waiting to see which path Abbas will
take: reconciliation with Hamas in a meeting set to take place in a week, a
return to the United Nations or in a more optimistic scenario – a
willingness to return to talks with Israel. “It is unclear what the
Palestinians will choose, but we believe they will return to their campaign
in the United Nations within a few weeks,” said the Israeli official.

The assessment in Israel is that the attempt to establish a unitary
government with Hamas will not succeed. However, if the reconciliation does
take shape, the Israelis clarify that it will have consequences. “We will
not enter negotiations with any government that Hamas takes part in, or that
its members are appointed by Hamas,” said the official. He hinted that
Israel may once more freeze Palestinian taxes. “We will see what happens at
the meeting in Cairo at the end of the month. The political leaders will
decide what to do,” he said.

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5)Harvard, Jew haters, motherhood and Israel
By Caroline Glick


This morning I received an e-mail alert from CAMERA that my alma mater, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government is hosting a two-day conference which essentially begins with the proposition that Israel has no right to exist. This isn't surprising. After all, the Kennedy School is home to my old professor Steve Walt. No one there batted a lash when he co-published his updated version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with University of Chicago's John Mearshimer.

Not only did Walt suffer no recrimination from his colleagues at Harvard when he first emerged a professional Jew basher. He suffered no recrimination when he used the controversy surrounding his book into a means of transforming himself into a celebrity Israel basher.

As I wrote in my recent column about mainstreaming Jew hatred, Walt and Mearshimer's book has enabled anti-Semites to emerge from under the rocks where they had been hiding and proudly announce that it is reasonable to discriminate against the Jewish people and side either actively or passively with those like the Iranian regime and the Sunni jihadists from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood who openly call for the annihilation of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Two thoughts on the Harvard conference.

Consider the long list of "professors" who will be speaking at the conference.

My sense is that the reason the Holocaust was more successful in killing Jews on a genocidal scale than say the Russian czars' pogroms is because the Holocaust was fuelled from above - from elitist anti-Semitism and elitist xenophobia. It wasn't the feudal lords who organized the murder machine. Those lords just let their Cossacks murder couple hundred Jews to get their bloodlust satisfied for the year. Most of the surviving Jews were permitted to pack their suitcases and run away.

The Holocaust was different. It wasn't the peasant class or their landed gentry lords that instigated the crime. And the Holocaust wasn't perpetrated principally to satisfy their taste for Jewish blood.

In the decades before the Holocaust, an evil wind blew through academia and other elite quarters throughout the Western world. The doctrines of race and eugenics became all the rage of the anointed intellectuals. Even an otherwise liberal thinker like Oliver Wendell Holmes was drawn to the fashionable concept of killing mentally disabled in the name of eugenics.

These doctrines gave the German intellectuals the philosophical underpinning for their so-called "anti-Semitism." That itself was a pseudo-scientific term for regular old Jew hating just like "anti-Zionism" is a progressive, politically correct term for regular old Jew hating today. That is, anti-Semitism was an elitist way of masking intolerance, even genocidal intolerance for Jews and making it socially acceptable to seek our annihilation. And this is the precise function that the term anti-Zionism serves today.

The worker bees of Europe in the mid-20th century had been marinated in Christian Jew hatred for centuries. But they were mere commoners. They would never have made an Auschwitz or held a Wanssee Conference, but they were more than willing to fill Jewish babies with lead when given a chance. And the German intellectuals and their counterparts from Boston to Paris to London gave them the intellectual foundation of racism to kill Jews on a scale they could never have dreamed possible.

Likewise, today's crop of corrupt intellectuals of the Walt and Mearshimer variety with all their allies in academia and the media and the blogosphere and politics are seeking to delegitimize Israel - the collective Jew -- intellectually. Like the work of the eugenics champions of the late 19th and early 20th century, their work will provide Muslim Jew haters with the political leeway to murder Jews on a scale they could never have dreamed possible. Hence you'll never find a so-called "anti-Zionist" like Walt lose sleep over the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, but rather over the prospect of Israel preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

And this brings me to the second point. I read the CAMERA alert on my Iphone as I was feeding my newborn son. I looked out the window at Jerusalem and all I could feel was thankful to be living in the independent, free Jewish state of Israel. I am thankful that these pseudo intellectuals no longer can determine the future of my people, as they could in the 1930s. I am thankful that my children will in all likelihood not study in US universities but in Israeli ones that are not as demented as their American counterparts.

And here's a couple of disturbing thoughts for all the parents in the US who are about to put themselves in the poor house to pay for their children's university education.

The embrace of the cause of Israel's destruction by so many celebrity professors today is part and parcel of the destruction of the US higher education system.

At the Harvard conference, not a drop of truth will be spoken by any of the eminent Jew hating participants. Students who attend will be presented with lies dripping with moralistic gobbledygook and be told that they are enlightened for embracing this sewage.

The absence of truth from academic discourses is not limited to discussion of Israel. Rather, the ability of professors like Walt and his pals to prosper with their lies is a function of the general deterioration and corruption of academic institutions.

This general decline and indeed failure was highlighted last week by Prof. Peter Berkowitz in an article he published in the Wall Street Journal about Yale's totalitarian system of "informal justice" that allows the university to effectively destroy young male students' future by blackening their reputations on the basis of unsubstantiated and even anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct. The policies in place deny young male Yalies due process and enable witch hunts.

In his conclusion Berkowitz wrote that the abandonment of even the semblance of due process for male students on campuses is in line with the general deterioration or even disappearance of educational standards. As he put it:

At its best, university education has deteriorated into little more than random forays into the sciences, social sciences and humanities. But traditionally, and for good reason in a democracy, liberal education at its heart involved instruction in the principles of freedom.
If Yale and other institutions across the country were fulfilling their promise to educate students, then their faculties would teach that riding roughshod over due process shows ignorance of or contempt for the rule of law. Professors would be teaching that the presumption of innocence is rooted in a commitment to treating individuals as ends in themselves and not as a means to advancing some social goal or another, even if that goal is given the name of equality or justice. And students would be learning that our established and legitimate justice system does not presume guilt, because to do so is to fail to appreciate the limits of human knowledge and the propensity of those who wield power to abuse it.

Let's not forget that this is the same Yale University that saw fit to close its interdisciplinary center for the study of anti-Semitism last year because YIISA had the unmitigated gall to highlight contemporary "progressive" Jew hatred and its unwashed cousin Islamic Jew hatred.

CAMERA has launched an email campaign to try to fight Harvard's descent into Jew hating insanity. I think that it is good for what it's worth. But I have no expectations from that institution. The madness that has taken control of America's elite educational institutions is a threat to the US because it is robbing a generation of young people of the ability to think freely and critically about the world.

For me, the message is clear enough, as a Jew, a Jewish mother and a person who clings to my freedom, guns and religion, my job is to do everything I can to ensure that Israel remains strong and gets stronger so that today's corrupted elites can't touch us.
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6)Prudence Is Key to Reversing Obama's 'Soft Despotism'
By Michael Barone


Many Republican House members, and the bloggers and tea partiers who cheered their victory in gaining a majority in November 2010, seem to be seething with discontent and eager for confrontation.

They believe, reasonably, that that victory represented a repudiation of the vast expansion of government by the Obama Democrats. They want to see those policies reversed, and pronto. And if the dilatory Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the all-campaign-no-governance President Obama want a confrontation, so much the better.

Such impatience is unbecoming in those who call themselves "constitutional conservatives." It is James Madison's Constitution that prevents the winners of one election from directing the course of public policy as unilaterally as, to take one example, the British Labor Party marched Britain into a socialist welfare state on the basis of one election victory in 1945.

We have a House of Representatives 100 percent of whose members were elected in a historic Republican year, a president elected in a historic Democratic year, and a Senate two-thirds of whose members were elected in historic Democratic years and one-third in a historic Republican year.

It should not be surprising that they cannot agree on policy. Most of the high-minded folk who decry "gridlock" would like the Republican House to say uncle. The Republicans bemoaning their leaders' lack of boldness imagine that if they force confrontation they can somehow prevail.

Neither can succeed in the framework the Framers gave us—not until another election.

The Republicans who seek changes in policy need to exercise prudence in framing issues in order to gain a favorable verdict from voters in the election coming up this fall.

Speaker John Boehner—who started off as a rebel himself and served as a leader when Newt Gingrich sometimes adroitly, sometimes maladroitly, moved policy in a Republican direction—is as well positioned as anyone could be to make judgments on when prudence should override principle.

But say this for the impatient Republicans: They have a worthy goal.

They want to turn back the Obama Democrats' advance into what Alexis de Tocqueville, the author (according to Harvard's Harvey Mansfield) of "the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America," characterized as soft despotism.

Tocqueville, after describing in "Democracy in America" how Americans avoided the perils of equality by forming voluntary associations, engaging in local government and believing in religions that disciplined their pursuit of self-interest into a pursuit of virtue, painted the picture of a darker future.

Above a democratic populace, he writes, "an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, rigid, far-seeing and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that."

Thus Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, foresees Obamacare and the crony capitalism that produces a Super Bowl commercial from a government- and union-controlled company that seeks Obama's re-election.

It is worth quoting more from a political thinker as far elevated above almost any other as Mozart was above almost all other composers.

"Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd."

That is what House Republicans are fighting to reverse. With their presidential candidates at odds, with mainstream media disparaging them at every turn, they need to exercise prudence and not give in to passion that could defeat their purpose.
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