Just back from Pittsburgh and Stella's first birthday party. She was dressed as a princess but frankly did not like her attire.
Wednesday we leave again for the reception honoring my father and others by the Birmingham Bar Association and others. See video clip:
https://vimeo.com/64402214
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I am going to do, as I have before, when I am gone a long time. I will post what I have read and been sent to me by others. Before doing so I will make some observations in support of some of the posted material below.
Because Obama has chosen to downplay even the word terrorist and eliminated it from Federal guidelines for those responsible for our safety and security, it is no wonder the FBI and CIA have some undeserved egg on their face.
Ft. Hood was deemed work place violence. I guess Obama sees Boston as an act of civil disobedience and disruptive activity.
That said I am going to show some very graphic photos ( be warned) from Boston, Syria and then I am posting the message Obama, America's version of Chamberlain, has given to Israel.
What a pathetic leader and he has chosen to surround himself with his equal in both the Sec's. of State and Defense.
Boston:
http://cryptome.org/2013-info/04/boston-bombs/boston-bombs.htm
Syria: http://www.themysteryworld.com/2013/04/a-stunning-set-of-photos-from-syria.html
U.S. delivers strong warning to Israel
Aaron Klein
TEL AVIV – According to informed Middle Eastern security officials, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a strongly worded message to Israel – do not attack Iran.
The officials told WND that Hagel informed the Israeli government the Obama administration will not accept any unilateral Israeli attack against Iran and that Israel must not strike Tehran without coordination with the U.S.
Hagel further told Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot decide alone whether Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold, or the so-called Red Line previously outlined by the Israeli leader.
In a speech at the United Nations in September, Netanyahu drew a red line on a drawing of a bomb, depicting the point where he said Iran will have enough medium-enriched uranium to move rapidly toward building a nuclear bomb.
Netanyahu said at the U.N. that Iran could reach that point this spring or summer. By contrast, Obama has resisted setting any such deadlines.
Last week, Israel’s former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, said, “If Iran continues to enrich uranium at its current rate, toward the end of the year it will cross the red line in a clear manner.”
The information comes after a former International Atomic Energy Agency senior nuclear inspector warned that Iran has discovered a way to circumvent Israel’s red line and that the red line may have already been passed.
Last fall, an IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program showed a dip in the amount of 20 percent enriched uranium. Commenting on the report, the former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA and senior nuclear inspector Olli Heinonen explained in a recent opinion article how this decrease is likely a gimmick.
He wrote that Iran has the capability to reconvert the uranium material back to the gas needed for its nuclear program. The converted 20 percent enriched uranium, now in a less worrisome oxide form, can “be converted back into centrifuge feedstock within a week.”
Heinonen warned that Iran may be able to convert the uranium without risk of detection.
If, through this process, Iran can disguise the quantity of enriched uranium it actually possesses, then Israel’s so-called red line may be artificial.
Heinonen further argued Iran has already passed Netanyahu’s red line of 250 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium, estimating Tehran possess as much as 280 kilograms, excluding any material that has already gone through the conversion process.
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But why stop here? There is more despicable actions and intrigue emanating from the White House:
Miranda rights or public safety?
The FBI and the rest of a crack U.S. interrogation team wanted to question the remaining marathon bombing suspect in his Boston hospital room without his lawyer because of what they fear: undiscovered explosive devices that could still kill and possible accomplices who might decide to carry out more terror.
But how do you get around the U.S. Supreme Court's Miranda requirements for a lawyer and the right to remain silent, the constitutional guarantee against forced self-incrimination?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is an ethnic Chechen but a naturalized U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil.
He was Mirandized by a federal magistrate only 60 hours after being taken into custody. He reportedly told investigators quickly, before being Mirandized -- writing on a tablet because of a neck wound -- there were no more explosive devices and he and his brother acted alone. He apparently went silent after being read his rights.
A Supreme Court ruling in 1984, far less famous than the Miranda ruling in 1966, allows law enforcement to question a suspect without a Miranda warning when "concern for public safety" is involved.
Whether this exception applies to Tsarnaev the courts and ultimately the Supreme Court may have to decide.
Tsarnaev was formally charged last week with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and "malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death."
Tsarnaev had his initial court appearance from his hospital room, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The statutes under which Tsarnaev was charged allow for life in prison or the death penalty upon conviction.
The two Boston Marathon bombings killed three people and injured more than 260. After the brothers were identified from surveillance cameras, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was injured during a confrontation with police that left his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, dead. The younger Tsarnaev was injured a second time as police closed in on him later in the day. Officials suggested he may have shot himself in the throat but later said he had no weapon when he was arrested.
Officials also said the older brother may have been killed because the younger brother ran over him in an attempt to get away in a stolen sport-utility vehicle.
During the hunt for the suspects, the brothers were suspected in the shooting death of Sean Collier, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, in his patrol car.
The younger Tsarnaev was captured after hiding for hours in a boat stored in a backyard in Watertown, a Boston suburb.
But what about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Miranda rights?
The 6-3 Miranda ruling in 1966, written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, said the prosecution "may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way, unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination."
Warren said the "atmosphere and environment of incommunicado interrogation as it exists today is inherently intimidating and works to undermine the privilege against self-incrimination. Unless adequate preventive measures are taken to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice."
Warren summed up what has come to be referred to as the Miranda rights: "The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him."
If a suspect indicates he wishes to remain silent, Warren said, the interrogation must stop. If he says he wants a lawyer, the interrogation must stop until a lawyer is present.
Justice John Harlan, joined by Justices Potter Stewart and Byron White, dissented.
"I believe the decision of the [Supreme] Court represents poor constitutional law and entails harmful consequences for the country at large," Harlan said. "How serious these consequences may prove to be only time can tell."
Conservatives immediately condemned the ruling, and in 1968 that opposition led Congress to enact a statute that purported to overturn Miranda, at least in federal cases. The statute said statements could be used, even without a Miranda warning, if they were made voluntarily.
However, in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 vote, struck down the statute.
The majority opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist said "Miranda and its progeny" was a "constitutional decision by the court" and as such could not be overturned by Congress.
"We hold that Miranda, being a constitutional decision of this [Supreme] Court, may not be in effect overruled by an act of Congress," Rehnquist said, "and we decline to overrule Miranda ourselves. We therefore hold that Miranda and its progeny in this court govern the admissibility of statements made during custodial interrogation in both state and federal courts."
The majority opinion evoked a bitter dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, who was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
"Those to whom judicial decisions are an unconnected series of judgments that produce either favored or disfavored results will doubtless greet today's decision as a paragon of moderation, since it declines to overrule Miranda vs. Arizona," Scalia wrote. "Those who understand the judicial process will appreciate that today's decision is not a reaffirmation of Miranda, but a radical revision of the most significant element of Miranda [as of all cases]: the rationale that gives it a permanent place in our jurisprudence."
To "justify today's agreed-upon result, the court must adopt a significant new, if not entirely comprehensible, principle of constitutional law," Scalia said. "As the court chooses to describe that principle, statutes of Congress can be disregarded, not only when what they prescribe violates the Constitution, but when what they prescribe contradicts a decision of this court that 'announced a constitutional rule.' ... The only thing that can possibly mean in the context of this case is that this court has the power, not merely to apply the Constitution but to expand it, imposing what it regards as useful 'prophylactic' restrictions upon Congress and the states. That is an immense and frightening anti-democratic power, and it does not exist."
Which brings us back to 2013 and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, mutely writing answers to interrogators' questions on a pad in his hospital room.
The Supreme Court has said the right to a Miranda warning, and the right to having a lawyer present during questioning, is not absolute.
In 1984's New York vs. Quarles, two police officers on road patrol in Queens were approached by a young woman who told them she had just been raped. She gave them a description: black, about 6 feet tall, wearing a black jacket with "Big Ben" in yellow letters on the back. She told the officers the man was carrying a gun and had just entered a nearby supermarket.
One officer confronted Benjamin Quarles in the supermarket and arrested him after a chase. The officer frisked him, found an empty holster and asked him where he had put his gun. Quarles "nodded in the direction of some empty cartons and responded, 'The gun is over there.'" The officer retrieved a loaded .38-caliber revolver from one of the cartons, formally placed Quarles under arrest and read him his Miranda rights from a printed card.
Court records said Quarles indicated he would answer questions without an attorney present and told the officer he had bought the gun in Miami.
Quarles was charged with criminal possession of a weapon A judge excluded Quarles' initial statement and the gun because he had not yet been given the Miranda warnings, and said his other statements were excluded because they were tainted by the Miranda violation. New York appeals courts upheld the judge.
But on review, Rehnquist said in the Supreme Court's majority opinion: "This case presents a situation where concern for public safety must be paramount to adherence to the literal language of the prophylactic rules enunciated in Miranda."
Rehnquist said the "doctrinal underpinnings of Miranda do not require that it be applied in all its rigor to a situation in which police officers ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety. In this case, so long as the gun was concealed somewhere in the supermarket, it posed more than one danger to the public safety: an accomplice might make use of it, or a customer or employee might later come upon it."
If Miranda warnings had deterred responses to the officer's question "about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting [Quarles]. An answer was needed to insure that future danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area."
The ruling reversed the New York courts and sent the case back down for a new hearing to conform with the majority opinion.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, joined by Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens, dissented.
"Once the suspect was in custody and found to be unarmed, the arresting officer initiated an interrogation," Marshall said. "Without being advised of his right not to respond, the suspect incriminated himself by locating the gun. The [Supreme Court] majority concludes that the state may rely on this incriminating statement to convict the suspect of possessing a weapon. I disagree. The arresting officers had no legitimate reason to interrogate the suspect without advising him of his rights to remain silent and to obtain assistance of counsel. By finding on these facts justification for unconsented interrogation, the majority abandons the clear guidelines enunciated in Miranda vs. Arizona, ... and condemns the American judiciary to a new era of post hoc inquiry into the propriety of custodial interrogations. More significantly and in direct conflict with this court's longstanding interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, the majority has endorsed the introduction of coerced self-incriminating statements in criminal prosecutions."
The Obama administration is citing the Quarles exemption in the initial Dzhokhar Tsarnaev interrogation.
Not everyone is happy with the approach.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, issued a statement that said: "The Miranda warnings were put in place because police officers were beating and torturing 'confessions' out of people who hadn't even been formally accused of a crime. We cannot afford to repeat our mistakes. If officials require suspects to incriminate themselves, they are making fair trials and due process merely an option and not a requirement. To venture down that road again will make law enforcement accountable to no one.
"Like [President] Obama's expanded killing program and his perpetuation of indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo," he added, "this is yet another erosion of the Constitution to lay directly at the president's feet. Obama's Justice Department unilaterally expanded the 'public safety exception' to Miranda in 2010 beyond anything the Supreme Court ever authorized. Each time the administration uses this exception, it stretches wider and longer. However horrific the crime, continuing to erode constitutional rights invites continued abuse by law enforcement, and walks us down a dangerous path that becomes nearly impossible to reverse."
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers issued a statement saying it "supports the use of America's civilian criminal justice system. NACDL also opposes any expansion whatsoever of the 'public safety exception' to Miranda vs. Arizona."
NACDL President Steven D. Benjamin said last week: "The 'public safety exception' is precisely that -- an emergency exception. It cannot become the rule for any category of alleged criminal conduct without undermining the Constitution. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, has been in custody for nearly three days and the government will have a heavy burden to show that any further questioning without a reading of his Miranda rights is justified. In addition, the suggestion that Tsarnaev be treated as an enemy combatant or diverted out of the civilian criminal justice system" -- something opposed by Obama -- "would amount to a radical suspension of due process and NACDL opposes it. All crime is by definition an attack on civil society and the civilian population. Distinctions in degree, breadth or inhumanity do not distinguish these crimes from the conduct that our criminal justice system is designed to prevent and punish."
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Caroline Glick is fed up with Obama, as well she should be! (See 1 below.)
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Dick
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| Colums One: Time to confront Obama |
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| To a degree, all of Netanyahu’s seemingly unjustifiable actions can be justified when weighed against the need to avoid a confrontation with America. |
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| The time has come for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to confront US |
President Barack Obama.
A short summary of events from the past three days: On Tuesday morning, the |
head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Analysis Division Brig. Gen.
Itay Brun revealed that the Syrian government has already used “lethal chemical |
| weapons,” against Syrian civilians and opposition forces. Brun described footage |
of people visibly suffering the impact of chemical agents, apparently sarin gas.
Hours later, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Netanyahu had told him on |
the telephone that “he was not in a position to confirm” Brun’s statement.
It is hard to imagine the US was taken by surprise by Brun’s statement. Just the |
| day before, Brun briefed visiting US Defense secretary Chuck Hagel on Syria. It |
is not possible he failed to mention the same information.
And of course it isn’t just the IDF saying that Syrian President Bashar Assad is |
using chemical weapons. The British and the French are also saying this.
But as a European source told Ma’ariv, the Americans don’t want to know the |
| facts. The facts will make them do something about Syria’s chemical weapons. |
And they don’t want to do anything about Syria’s chemical weapons.
So they force Netanyahu to disown his own intelligence.
Thursday afternoon, in a speech in Abu Dhabi, Hagel confirmed, “with some |
| degree of varying confidence,” that Syria used chemical weapons, at least on a |
“small scale.”
What the administration means by “some degree of varying confidence,” is of |
course, unknowable with any degree of varying confidence.
Then there is Iran.
Also on Tuesday, the former head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. (res.) |
| Amos Yadlin, said that Iran has already crossed the red line Israel set last year. It |
| has already stockpiled 170 kg. of medium-enriched uranium, and can quickly |
| produce the other 80 kg. necessary to reach the 250 kg. threshold Netanyahu said |
| will mark Iran’s achievement of breakout capability where it can build a nuclear |
arsenal whenever it wants.
Yadlin made a half-hearted effort Wednesday to walk back his pronouncements. |
But his basic message remained the same: The die has been cast.
Due to American pressure on Israel not to act, and due to the White House’s |
| rejection of clearcut reports about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, Iran has |
| crossed the threshold. Iran will be a nuclear power unless its uranium enrichment |
installations and other nuclear sites are destroyed or crippled. Now.
True, the Americans set a different red line for Iran than Israel. They say they will |
| not allow Iran to assemble a nuclear bomb. But to believe that the US has the |
| capacity and the will to prevent Iran from climbing the top rung on the nuclear |
ladder is to believe in the tooth fairy – (see, for instance, North Korea).
Iran has threatened to use it nuclear arsenal to destroy Israel. Have we now |
| placed our survival in the hands of Tinkerbell? And yet, rather than acknowledge |
| what Iran has done, Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister |
| Moshe Ya’alon carry on with the tired act of talking about the need for a credible |
| military option but saying that there is still time for sanctions and other non-military |
means to block Iran’s quest for the bomb.
Perhaps our leaders are repeating these lies because they want to present a |
unified US-Israel front to the world. But the effect is just the opposite.
What their statements really demonstrate is that Israel has been brought to its |
| knees by its superpower patron that has implemented a policy that has enabled |
Iran to become a nuclear power.
Indeed, the US has allowed Iran to cross the nuclear threshold while requiring |
Israel to pretend the course the US has followed is a responsible one.
The announcement that the US has agreed to sell Israel advanced weapons |
| specifically geared towards attacking Iran should also be seen in this light. Israel |
| reportedly spent a year negotiating this deal. But immediately after its details were |
| published, the US started backing away from its supposed commitment to supply |
them. The US will not provide Israel with bunker-buster bombs.
It will not provide Israel with the bombers necessary to use the bombs Israel isn’t |
| getting. And anyway, by the time Israel gets the items the US is selling – like |
mid-air refuelers – it will be too late.
When, after overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the US failed to find |
| chemical weapons in the country, then-president George W. Bush’s Democratic |
| opponents accused Bush of having politicized intelligence to justify his decision to |
| topple Saddam. In truth, there is no evidence that Bush purposely distorted |
| intelligence reports. Israel’s intelligence agencies, and perhaps French ones |
| were the only allied intelligence arms that had concluded Saddam’s chemical |
weapons – to the extent he had them – did not represent a threat.
The fact that Bush preferred US and British intelligence estimates over Israeli |
ones doesn’t mean that he politicized intelligence.
In contrast, what Obama and his advisers are doing represents the worst case of |
| politicizing intelligence since Stalin arrested his senior security brass rather than |
| heed their warnings of the coming German invasion of the Soviet Union in June |
1941.
Never in US history has there been a greater misuse and abuse of US intelligence |
agencies than there is today, under the Obama administration.
Take the Boston Marathon bombings. Each day more and more reports come out |
| about the information US agencies had – for years – regarding the threat posed |
by the Boston Marathon bombers.
But how could the FBI have possibly acted on those threats? Obama has outlawed all discussion or study of jihad, Islamism, radical Islam and the Koran by US federal government agencies. |
| The only law enforcement agency that monitors Islamic websites is the New York |
Police Department.
And its chief Ray Kelly has bravely maintained his policy despite massive |
pressure from the media and the political class to end his surveillance operations.
Everywhere else, from the Boston Police Department to the FBI and CIA, US |
| officials are barred from discussing the threat posed by jihadists or even |
| acknowledging they exist. People were impressed that Obama referred to the |
| terrorist attack in Boston as a terrorist attack, because according to the |
| administration-dictated federal lexicon, use of the word terrorism is forbidden, |
particularly when the act in question was perpetrated by Muslims.
Then there are the Palestinians. On Thursday, it was reported that in the midst of |
| everything happening in the Middle East, Obama is planning to host a peace |
| conference in Washington in June to reinstate negotiations between Israel and the |
Palestinians.
The terms of reference for the conference are reportedly the 2002 Arab League |
“peace plan.”
Among other things, that plan requires Israel to accept millions of hostile |
| foreign-born Arabs to whatever rump state it retains following a “peace” |
| agreement with the PLO. In exchange for Israel agreeing to destroy itself, the |
| Arab peace plan says the Arabs will agree to have “regular” relations with Israel. |
| (“Regular” by the way, is a term devoid of meaning.) During his visit here last |
| week, Kerry announced that the new US policy towards the Palestinians is to pour |
| billions of dollars into the Palestinian economy. Among other things, the |
| administration is going to convince US companies like Coca-Cola to open huge |
plants in Judea and Samaria.
Sounds fine. But as usual, there is a catch. The administration wants US firms to |
| build their factories in Area C, the area of Judea and Samaria over which, in |
| accordance with the agreements they signed with Israel, the Palestinians agreed |
Israel should hold sole control.
In essence, the policy Kerry announced is simply an American version of the EU’s |
policy of seeking to force Israel to give up control over Area C.
Area C, of course, is where all the Israeli communities are, and almost no |
Palestinians live.
Those Israeli communities and the 350,000 Jews who live in them are the |
| strongest assertion of Israeli sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria. So the EU – |
| and now the Americans – are doing everything they can to force Israel to destroy |
| them. The campaign to coerce Israel into surrendering its sole control over Area |
C is a central component of that plan.
It cannot be said often enough: The administration’s focus on the Palestinian |
| conflict with Israel in the midst of the violent disintegration of the Arab state |
| system and the rise of jihadist forces throughout the region, coupled with Iran’s |
| steady emergence as a regional power, is only understandable in the framework |
of a psychiatric – rather than policy – analysis.
For the past five years, perhaps Netanyahu’s greatest achievement in office has |
| been his adroit avoidance of confrontations with Obama. With no one other than |
| the US willing to stand with Israel in public, it is an important national interest for |
| Jerusalem not to have any confrontations with Washington if they can possibly be |
avoided.
This attempt to avoid confrontations is what made Netanyahu agree to Obama’s |
| anti-Jewish demand to deny Jews their property rights in Judea and Samaria in |
| 2010. This is undoubtedly what stood behind Netanyahu’s decision to apologize |
| to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan during Obama’s visit to Israel last |
| month. That apology constituted a moral abandonment of the IDF naval |
| commandos who Netanyahu’s government sent – virtually unarmed – to face |
| Turkish terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida and Hamas aboard the Mavi Marmara |
terror ship.
To a degree, all of Netanyahu’s seemingly unjustifiable actions can be justified |
when weighed against the need to avoid a confrontation with America.
But by now, after five years, with Iran having passed Israel’s red line, and with |
chemical weapons already in play in Syria, the jig is up.
Obama does not have Israel’s back.
Contrary to the constant, grinding rhetorical prattle of American and Israeli |
| politicos, Obama will not lift a finger to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. |
| He will not lift a finger to prevent chemical weapons from being transferred to the |
likes of al-Qaida and Hezbollah, and their colleagues in Syria, or used by the Syrian regime.
From Benghazi to Boston, from Tehran to Damascus, Obama’s policy is to not |
| fight forces of jihad, whether they are individuals, organizations or states. And his |
| obsession with Palestinian statehood shows that he would rather coerce Israel to |
| make concessions to Palestinian Jew-haters and terrorists than devote his time |
| and energy into preventing Iran from becoming the jihadist North Korea or from |
| keeping sarin, VX and mustard gas out of the hands of Iran’s terrorist underlings |
and their Sunni competitors.
No, Israel doesn’t want a confrontation with Washington. But we don’t have any |
choice anymore.
The time has come to take matters into our own hands on Syria and Iran. In Syria, |
| either Israel takes care of the chemical weapons, or if we can’t, Netanyahu must |
| go before the cameras and tell the world everything we know about Syria’s |
| chemical weapons and pointedly demand world – that is US – action to secure |
them.
As for Iran, either Israel must launch an attack without delay, or if we can’t, then |
| Netanyahu has to publicly state that the time for diplomacy is over. Either Iran is |
| attacked or it gets the bomb. |
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