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Politics and a 'tortured' belief in openness may have motivated Feinstein to reveal what had already ceased and been found within the law but radical Arabs and Muslims only understand strength, power and a willingness to employ.
We are at war and to defeat our enemies, if that is even possible, we often must resort to measures that go against our grain,and moral principles.
We have done no less in virtually every war we fought and won. When we did not we lost.
Obama believes otherwise and certainly has proved he is two-faced, hypocritical and willing to lie to suit his own nefarious purposes. His wanton use of drones, which have killed many innocents, and then his attack on Israel for defending itself are examples that quickly come to mind.
There are those who argue Truman should not have used the atomic bomb but in killing thousands he saved millions from an equal tragedy.
War is hell and winning often demands hellish actions. Winning may not be everything but in war it probably is.
Yes, there is something to be said for Sen. McCain's views.
But then why Feinstein's timing and what about the many Democrats who supported what the CIA was doing and knew what they were doing when they were doing it? Selective amnesia is a political convenience! (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
When I was in service I was sprayed with tear gas and was not allowed to wear a mask. Cruel and unusual punishment or simply a tactic to prepare me for what I might endure? My gunny sergeant was always in my face harassing me. Unusual punishment or preparing me for what I might endure? Toughness or softness? Succumbing to a bully or knocking the hell out of him/her?
Standing up to threats or kneeling? Which wins wars? You decide!
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Another rap against Israel pertaining to hypocrisy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
In today's very PC world the word ' boycott' is sexist . Therefore, there should also be a word called: ' girlcott.'
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the Ivy Leagues are hell bent on raising a world of wimps! (See 2 below.)
Have we become a coddling nation? Are we all about raising a bunch of wimpy progeny? Is more liberal philosophy about tolerance just more misguided thinking and when, if ever, will it stop?
In his desire to transform and weaken our society, Obama always blames others and now has he decided the police are his next 'pinata?' (See 2a below.)
Is Obama continuing to be deceitful? You decide. Alabama's Senator Sessions already has! Time will tell.
This was sent to me by a close friend: "... have you seen this correspondence on Obama's scheme to create a potential fall guy for his ill advised and unconstitutional implementation of his latest immigration policy. If so, what are your contacts in Washington thinking and doing?" (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure
By George Friedman
The Obama administration published a series of memoranda on torture issued under the Bush administration. The memoranda, most of which dated from the period after 9/11, authorized measures including depriving prisoners of solid food, having them stand shackled and in uncomfortable positions, leaving them in cold cells with inadequate clothing, slapping their heads and/or abdomens, and telling them that their families might be harmed if they didn't cooperate with their interrogators.
On the scale of human cruelty, these actions do not rise anywhere near the top. At the same time, anyone who thinks that being placed without food in a freezing cell subject to random mild beatings — all while being told that your family might be joining you — isn't agonizing clearly lacks imagination. The treatment of detainees could have been worse. It was terrible nonetheless.
Torture and the Intelligence Gap
But torture is meant to be terrible, and we must judge the torturer in the context of his own desperation. In the wake of 9/11, anyone who wasn't terrified was not in touch with reality. We know several people who now are quite blasé about 9/11. Unfortunately for them, we knew them in the months after, and they were not nearly as composed then as they are now.
Sept. 11 was terrifying for one main reason: We had little idea about al Qaeda's capabilities. It was a very reasonable assumption that other al Qaeda cells were operating in the United States and that any day might bring follow-on attacks. (Especially given the group's reputation for one-two attacks.) We still remember our first flight after 9/11, looking at our fellow passengers, planning what we would do if one of them moved. Every time a passenger visited the lavatory, one could see the tensions soar.
And while Sept. 11 was frightening enough, there were ample fears that al Qaeda had secured a "suitcase bomb" and that a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city could come at any moment. For individuals, such an attack was simply another possibility. We remember staying at a hotel in Washington close to the White House and realizing that we were at ground zero — and imagining what the next moment might be like. For the government, however, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuclear weapon, but not having any way of telling whether those scraps had any value. The president and vice president accordingly were continually kept at different locations, and not for any frivolous reason.
This lack of intelligence led directly to the most extreme fears, which in turn led to extreme measures. Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States. A lack of knowledge forces people to think of worst-case scenarios. In the absence of intelligence to the contrary after 9/11, the only reasonable assumption was that al Qaeda was planning more — and perhaps worse — attacks.
Collecting intelligence rapidly became the highest national priority. Given the genuine and reasonable fears, no action in pursuit of intelligence was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. This led to the authorization of torture, among other things. Torture offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence, or at least — given the time lag on other means — it was something that had to be tried.
Torture and the Moral Question
And this raises the moral question. The United States is a moral project: its Declaration of Independence and Constitution state that. The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution does not speak to the question of torture of non-citizens, but it implies an abhorrence of rights violations (at least for citizens). But the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase, "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." This indicates that world opinion matters.
At the same time, the president is sworn to protect the Constitution. In practical terms, this means protecting the physical security of the United States "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Protecting the principles of the declaration and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation.
While this all makes for an interesting seminar in political philosophy, presidents — and others who have taken the same oath — do not have the luxury of the contemplative life. They must act on their oaths, and inaction is an action. Former U.S. President George W. Bush knew that he did not know the threat, and that in order to carry out his oath, he needed very rapidly to find out the threat. He could not know that torture would work, but he clearly did not feel that he had the right to avoid it.
Consider this example. Assume you knew that a certain individual knew the location of a nuclear device planted in an American city. The device would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, but the individual refused to divulge the information. Would anyone who had sworn the oath have the right not to torture the individual? Torture might or might not work, but either way, would it be moral to protect the individual's rights while allowing hundreds of thousands to die? It would seem that in this case, torture is a moral imperative; the rights of the one with the information cannot transcend the life of a city.
Torture in the Real World
But here is the problem: You would not find yourself in this situation. Knowing a bomb had been planted, knowing who knew that the bomb had been planted, and needing only to apply torture to extract this information is not how the real world works. Post-9/11, the United States knew much less about the extent of the threat from al Qaeda. This hypothetical sort of torture was not the issue.
Discrete information was not needed, but situational awareness. The United States did not know what it needed to know, it did not know who was of value and who wasn't, and it did not know how much time it had. Torture thus was not a precise solution to a specific problem: It became an intelligence-gathering technique. The nature of the problem the United States faced forced it into indiscriminate intelligence gathering. When you don't know what you need to know, you cast a wide net. And when torture is included in the mix, it is cast wide as well. In such a case, you know you will be following many false leads — and when you carry torture with you, you will be torturing people with little to tell you. Moreover, torture applied by anyone other than well-trained, experienced personnel (who are in exceptionally short supply) will only compound these problems, and make the practice less productive.
Defenders of torture frequently seem to believe that the person in custody is known to have valuable information, and that this information must be forced out of him. His possession of the information is proof of his guilt. The problem is that unless you have excellent intelligence to begin with, you will become engaged in developing baseline intelligence, and the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all. Torture thus becomes not only a waste of time and a violation of decency, it actually undermines good intelligence. After a while, scooping up suspects in a dragnet and trying to extract intelligence becomes a substitute for competent intelligence techniques — and can potentially blind the intelligence service. This is especially true as people will tell you what they think you want to hear to make torture stop.
Critics of torture, on the other hand, seem to assume the torture was brutality for the sake of brutality instead of a desperate attempt to get some clarity on what might well have been a catastrophic outcome. The critics also cannot know the extent to which the use of torture actually prevented follow-on attacks. They assume that to the extent that torture was useful, it was not essential; that there were other ways to find out what was needed. In the long run, they might have been correct. But neither they, nor anyone else, had the right to assume in late 2001 that there was a long run. One of the things that wasn't known was how much time there was.
The U.S. Intelligence Failure
The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda's intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure.
That failure was rooted in a range of miscalculations over time. There was the public belief that the end of the Cold War meant the United States didn't need a major intelligence effort, a point made by the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan. There were the intelligence people who regarded Afghanistan as old news. There was the Torricelli amendment that made recruiting people with ties to terrorist groups illegal without special approval. There were the Middle East experts who could not understand that al Qaeda was fundamentally different from anything seen before. The list of the guilty is endless, and ultimately includes the American people, who always seem to believe that the view of the world as a dangerous place is something made up by contractors and bureaucrats.
Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. The country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles he inherited, he reacted about as well or badly as anyone else might have in the situation. He used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough.
The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator's tool kit.
At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. But the routinization of the extraordinary is the built-in danger of bureaucracy, and what began as a response to unprecedented dangers became part of the process. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn't.
If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture can be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That's not when you use torture. That's when you simply point out to the prisoner that, "for you the war is over." You lay out all you already know and how much you know about him. That is as demoralizing as freezing in a cell — and helps your interrogators keep their balance.
U.S. President Barack Obama has handled this issue in the style to which we have become accustomed, and which is as practical a solution as possible. He has published the memos authorizing torture to make this entirely a Bush administration problem while refusing to prosecute anyone associated with torture, keeping the issue from becoming overly divisive. Good politics perhaps, but not something that deals with the fundamental question.
The fundamental question remains unanswered, and may remain unanswered. When a president takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," what are the limits on his obligation? We take the oath for granted. But it should be considered carefully by anyone entering this debate, particularly for presidents.
1a)Senate Democrats and 9/11 Amnesia
Seventy-three years ago this week, on a peaceful, sunny morning in Hawaii, a Japanese armada carried out a spectacular attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403, wounding 1,178 and damaging or destroying at least 20 ships. Washington immediately declared war and mobilized a peaceful nation. In another unfortunate Washington tendency, the government launched an investigation about who to blame for letting the devastating surprise attack happen. A hastily convened political tribunal found two senior military officers guilty of dereliction of duty, publicly humiliating them, as some political leaders sought to hold anyone but themselves accountable for the catastrophe.
1b) Israel Still Doing U.S. Dirty Work in Syria
For years the U.S. has stood by and watched as the Russians have supplied arms to Assad to slaughter his own people. Even worse, as President Obama dithered about taking action to halt the killing of more than 200,000 persons, the crisis there worsened as, with the help of Iran and its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries, atrocities escalated and moderate alternatives to Assad were marginalized by radical groups including ISIS.
The result is that by the time the U.S. belatedly recognized the necessity of acting against ISIS, there were few good options left for resisting Assad and his allies. More to the point, much as was the case when I wrote about Israeli strikes on Syria in bothJanuary and May of 2013, it is Israel that has been forced to step into the vacuum created by the administration’s feckless policies.
Like those strikes, this past weekend’s attacks were primarily directed by Israel’s own security imperatives. Allowing Russia to transfer arms to terrorists, whether serving as mercenaries fighting to preserve a regime that is allied with the Shi’a group’s Iranian masters or deployed near Israel’s northern border, Hezbollah presents a dramatic and potent threat to Israel. But by acting decisively to keep Hezbollah from acquiring even more dangerous weapons than the ones it already possesses, Israel is also helping to keep the situation in Syria from becoming even more unmanageable.
The U.S. strikes on ISIS inside Syria have had some impact on the ability of the terror group to expand its control of much of that country as well as Iraq. But it is too weak a response to even begin the task of rolling back the extent of the so-called caliphate. The net effect of the administration’s effort both there and in Iraq is to expand Iran’s influence and to, in effect, allow Assad and his allied forces a free pass to go on committing atrocities.
Even as President Obama, who was once quite vocal about the necessity for Bashar Assad’s ouster, mulls sanctions against Israel while appeasing Iran and allowing it to run out the clock in nuclear talks, the Jewish state is guarding both its interests as well as those of the West by acting to restrain arms transfers in Syria. While the U.S. concentrates on an insufficient air offensive aimed at ISIS, Israel is effectively restraining any Syrian and/or Iranian adventurism in the region. Keeping Assad and Hezbollah in check is a vital American interest as the rest of the region looks on with horror as the Syrian regime and its friends continue to destabilize the region. Though it continues to be the Obama administration’s favorite whipping boy, Israel’s actions are once again proving the value of a strong U.S.-Israel alliance.
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2)Social Injustice Ate My Homework
2a) Mobs of New York
3) President Obama's immigration scheme has potentially set up one of his
cabinet members as the "fall guy" in case his plan implode
It turns out that President Obama's amnesty push, disguised as immigration
reform measures, did not come through a signed Executive Order, as
indicated would happen by the President in a Las Vegas speech. Instead, it
was executed through a memorandum issued by the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Secretary, Jeh Johnson on the same day as the President's
speech.
According to The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal, Johnson issued a
memorandum to the enforcement divisions of Homeland Security "directing
them to implement Obama's amnesty. The memorandum, 'Exercising
Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the
United States as Children and with Respect to Certain Individuals Whose
Parents are U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents,' is 'intended to reflect
new policies for the use of deferred action.'"
The ploy sets Jeh Johnson up as the fall guy for possible impeachment,
directing the heat away from the President, if congressional action
against the amnesty plan is taken.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is incensed by the Obama administration's
tactics.
WND is reporting that Sen. Sessions believes the scheme is ill-advised …
"'I guess they just whispered in the ear of (DHS Director) Jeh Johnson
over at Homeland Security, 'Just put out a memo. That way we don't have to
enforce the law.'
"The senator believes the result was 'the creation of a new, alternative
immigration system' despite the fact the president 'is not empowered to do
that.'
"He called Obama's amnesty a scheme Congress had explicitly rejected after
multiple efforts. 'The House said no, and the American people said no.
Congress said no, and the president has gone forward. We've got a
challenge, but I think the American people get it. I think they are going
to insist their voice will be heard." [emphasis added]
In my nearly three decades of work in the legal field specializing in
constitutional law, I have NEVER witnessed a more blatant and consistent
disregard for the Constitution as we have seen from this President and his
administration!
1a)Senate Democrats and 9/11 Amnesia
The Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogations fails to acknowledge the Pearl Harbor-esque emergency following the terror attack.
By Louis L. FreehSeventy-three years ago this week, on a peaceful, sunny morning in Hawaii, a Japanese armada carried out a spectacular attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403, wounding 1,178 and damaging or destroying at least 20 ships. Washington immediately declared war and mobilized a peaceful nation. In another unfortunate Washington tendency, the government launched an investigation about who to blame for letting the devastating surprise attack happen. A hastily convened political tribunal found two senior military officers guilty of dereliction of duty, publicly humiliating them, as some political leaders sought to hold anyone but themselves accountable for the catastrophe.
With the Democratic members of the SenateIntelligence Committee this week releasing a report on their investigation holding the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency accountable for the alleged “torture” of suspected terrorists after 9/11, some lessons from the Pearl Harbor history should be kept in mind.
First, let’s remember the context of the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when PresidentGeorge W. Bush and Congress put America on a war footing. While some critics in and out of government blamed the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for failing to prevent the terrorist attack, the 9/11 Commission later concluded that part of the real reason the terrorists succeeded was Washington’s failure to put America on a war footing long before the attack. Sept. 11, 2001, was the final escalation of al Qaeda’s war-making after attacking the USS Cole in 2000 and U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The Intelligence Committee’s majority report fails to acknowledge the Pearl Harbor-esque state of emergency that followed the 9/11 attack. One week after the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, President Bush signed into law a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which granted the president authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”
This joint congressional resolution, which has never been amended, was not a broad declaration of a “war on terror,” but rather a specific, targeted authorization to use force against the 9/11 terrorists and to prevent their future attacks.
Similarly, the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program, which included the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was designed and implemented as the direct result of the president and Congress putting the country on a military, law-enforcement and intelligence war footing after 9/11. The program was carefully targeted and sought to apprehend the 9/11 terrorists and prevent them from striking again.
More important, the RDI program was not some rogue operation unilaterally launched by a Langley cabal—which is the impression that the Senate Intelligence Committee report tries to convey. Rather, the program was an initiative approved by the president, the national security adviser and the U.S. attorney general, backed by a legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which functions as the president’s outside counsel in such matters. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their closest advisers at the time have confirmed that they were unified behind the RDI program; they should have been interviewed by the Democratic majority in preparing the report on the CIA interrogations.
The RDI program, including the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was fully briefed to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The Senate committee’s new report does not present any evidence that would support the notion that the CIA program was carried out for years without the concurrence of the House or Senate intelligence committees, or that any of the members were shocked to learn of the program after the fact.
Facts matter, including the fact that the Senate committee’s Democratic majority failed to interview the three CIA directors and three deputy directors, or any other CIA employee for that matter, who had briefed them about the program and carried it out.
Such a glaring investigative lapse cannot be fairly explained by the Democratic majority’s defense that it could make such crucial findings solely on the “paper record,” without interviewing the critical players. Nor does the committee’s other explanation for avoiding interviews make sense: The Democratic senators say they didn’t want to interfere with the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the RDI program, but that investigation ended in 2012 and found no basis for prosecutions. And no wonder: These public servants at the CIA had dutifully carried out mandates from the president and Congress.
CIA leaders and briefers who regularly updated this program to the Senate Intelligence Committee leadership took what investigators call “copious, contemporaneous notes.” Without a doubt, the Senate Intelligence Committee and congressional staffers at these multiple briefings also took a lot of their own notes. Will the committee now declassify and release all such notes so that Americans will know exactly what the senators were told and the practices they approved?
Did the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program develop sufficient leads to connect the dots to Osama bin Laden ’s redoubt in Abbottabad, Pakistan, or serve to fulfill the executive and congressional mandate to prevent another 9/11? That is a fair operational and analytical question for the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic majority to raise and argue. Likewise, it can and should be debated whether America should ever again use such methods to prevent terrorist attacks. What is decidedly unfair is to belatedly attack the brave and dedicated men and women and their leaders at the CIA who had the nation’s highest political and legal authorizations for this program.
Mr. Freeh, a former FBI director and federal judge, is a partner and chairman emeritus with the law firm Pepper Hamilton and chairman of Freeh Group International Solutions.
1b) Israel Still Doing U.S. Dirty Work in Syria
Over the weekend, the Syrian government reported that Israeli airplanes struck targets outside Damascus. The Assad regime condemned the attack on its territory, a stance echoed by both their Iranian and Russian allies. In particular, Moscow demanded an explanation from Israel for its “aggressive” behavior. Why were the Russians so aggrieved about a few more bombs dropped on a country that is already ravaged by four years of war? The targets hit were apparently stockpiles of Russian weapons that were about to be transferred to Hezbollah. There is nothing that unusual about Israeli military action to forestall weapons being put into the hands of terrorists but what is interesting here is that once again Israel, the ally that the Obama administration most loves to hate, is doing America’s dirty work in Syria.
For years the U.S. has stood by and watched as the Russians have supplied arms to Assad to slaughter his own people. Even worse, as President Obama dithered about taking action to halt the killing of more than 200,000 persons, the crisis there worsened as, with the help of Iran and its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries, atrocities escalated and moderate alternatives to Assad were marginalized by radical groups including ISIS.
The result is that by the time the U.S. belatedly recognized the necessity of acting against ISIS, there were few good options left for resisting Assad and his allies. More to the point, much as was the case when I wrote about Israeli strikes on Syria in bothJanuary and May of 2013, it is Israel that has been forced to step into the vacuum created by the administration’s feckless policies.
Like those strikes, this past weekend’s attacks were primarily directed by Israel’s own security imperatives. Allowing Russia to transfer arms to terrorists, whether serving as mercenaries fighting to preserve a regime that is allied with the Shi’a group’s Iranian masters or deployed near Israel’s northern border, Hezbollah presents a dramatic and potent threat to Israel. But by acting decisively to keep Hezbollah from acquiring even more dangerous weapons than the ones it already possesses, Israel is also helping to keep the situation in Syria from becoming even more unmanageable.
The U.S. strikes on ISIS inside Syria have had some impact on the ability of the terror group to expand its control of much of that country as well as Iraq. But it is too weak a response to even begin the task of rolling back the extent of the so-called caliphate. The net effect of the administration’s effort both there and in Iraq is to expand Iran’s influence and to, in effect, allow Assad and his allied forces a free pass to go on committing atrocities.
Even as President Obama, who was once quite vocal about the necessity for Bashar Assad’s ouster, mulls sanctions against Israel while appeasing Iran and allowing it to run out the clock in nuclear talks, the Jewish state is guarding both its interests as well as those of the West by acting to restrain arms transfers in Syria. While the U.S. concentrates on an insufficient air offensive aimed at ISIS, Israel is effectively restraining any Syrian and/or Iranian adventurism in the region. Keeping Assad and Hezbollah in check is a vital American interest as the rest of the region looks on with horror as the Syrian regime and its friends continue to destabilize the region. Though it continues to be the Obama administration’s favorite whipping boy, Israel’s actions are once again proving the value of a strong U.S.-Israel alliance.
2)Social Injustice Ate My Homework
Harvard law students have been taught to think like spoiled children.
Last year's Harvard Law School graduates.If there were a First Rule of our present penchant for victimhood, it would presumably be that everything unpleasant that happens in the world must, in some way, eventually be about you. Today, the National Law Journal reports that:The push to delay law school final examinations in light of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases has spread to Harvard Law School, as administrators at Georgetown University Law Center said students could seek delays on a case-by-case basis. Columbia Law School was the first to allow students to ask to postpone their exams.Those Harvard students have produced an open letter, in which they demand that their examinations be delayed. “Like many across the country,” its authors claim, students “are traumatized” and “visibly distressed” — to the extent that there is now a “palpable anguish looming over campus.” The “national crisis” that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to “stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams.” And, like their brethren at Columbia, they contend that their “being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment” amounts to their “being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation” — requests, which taken together, have led them “to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large.” The bottom line? That students must be given “the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion.”
Ugly as the Brown and Garner cases were, one can’t help but feel that what constitutes a “National Emergency” or a “personal crisis” is being rather dramatically defined down here — possibly to the vanishing point. In the course of their missive, the vexed students claim that “because this national tragedy implicates the legal system to which we have chosen to dedicate our lives, it presents us with a fundamental crisis of conscience and demands our immediate attention.” This, I’d venture, is an effectively irrefutable claim — and not in the good sense. Rather, it is the Interstate Commerce Clause of dog-ate-my-homework pretexts: an unlimited, self-serving, and infinitely malleable rationale that can be used at any time and for any reason. If our law students are to insist upon special dispensation each and every time the justice system fails to live up to its promise, our exam halls will be empty in perpetuity.
That a new batch of Ivy League lawyers is willingly handicapping itself will presumably inspire few tears in the United States. Nevertheless, we should all be alarmed to learn just how seriously our ostensible proto-elites seem to be taking themselves. Somewhat theatrically, the signatories contend that they have thus far “spent countless hours leveraging our legal educations, and utilizing our platform and privilege as students of this institution.” Really? Because it looks from the outside as if they’re claiming that they’re just too upset to turn up to class today. At best, this seems to be a case of ambitious students using any leverage they have to improve their grades; at worst, it is laziness sold as social justice. Either way, coming from self-acknowledged beneficiaries of “platform and privilege” it must look grotesque to those among us who have jobs.
Worse, perhaps, is the eager embrace of the victim’s pose. From start to finish, the letter’s tone shuttles between that of the vicarious masochist and that of the woe-is-me martyr. Harvard’s student body, we learn, is “traumatized” and “distressed,” and it is sad and disappointed that the college faculty has not agreed to engage in a day of general catharsis. What, one has to wonder, does this say about the sort of elite we are creating? We are talking here, remember, about would-be lawyers, many of whom will go on to work under substantial pressure in essential, delicate, influential areas. Even if we were to presume that the entire class of Harvard Law intends to end up representing corporations or arguing abstract constitutional principle, the news that so many felt unable to take their exams because they were upset by the news should be cause for concern. (Who would want to hire a delicate flower to be his lawyer in a time of crisis?) But, of course, they will not all restrict themselves to matters of high principle. Instead, many of those who are currently wallowing in abject self-indulgence will go on to be defenders, prosecutors, and advocates of reform — people, that is, who will be exposed daily to exactly the sort of cases that they are so vexed by today. Are we to welcome a generation of lawyers that takes a time-out each and every time the world’s blemishes are permitted to intrude upon their feelings?
All in all, the letter suggests that a significant portion of today’s students have noticed that, if they wish to get their own way, they need only to report that they are upset or outraged or traumatized, and then to sit back and wait. Ultimately, the fault here lies with the academy, which has spent the last few decades permitting “I’m offended” to become a reliable means by which debate might be summarily and forcefully shut down. Of course a good number of Harvard’s students expect that the mere mention of their “trauma” will serve as sufficient warrant for indulgence. Of course the letter’s signatories anticipate that any mention of “distress” will be met not with broad, harsh, and profound push-back but with acquiescence. As have so many people of my age, they have become thoroughly accustomed to having their sensibilities treated as if they were valuable in and of themselves. As have so many at the West’s top universities, they have realized that their feelings and opinions are received almost uncritically. To update an old maxim, we might say that to spare the skepticism is to spoil the child. Bluntly? These children are spoiled as hell.
One can only imagine how derisively previous generations would have snorted at today’s. During the Civil War — one of the bloodiest, nastiest, and most disruptive conflicts in the history of the world — a good number of American colleges not only stayed open but kept a regular schedule, too. In almost all cases, perbellum classes were filled with people whose fathers, brothers, friends, and former classmates were being killed, maimed, and, in a few cases, completely disappeared — and in astonishing and unprecedented numbers. The arguments that underpinned and motivated the physical conflict, moreover, were extraordinarily contentious and wildly distracting. How easy do we imagine it was for students to focus when their country was embroiled in a brawl whose outcome would settle the practical meaning of the Declaration of Independence, the future of the American experiment, and the fate of human slavery on the continent?
And yet, despite these hardships, the only thing that proved consistently capable of closing the colleges was the war itself — the vast majority of institutions shuttering their doors because too many of their students had enrolled in the military, because their facilities stood in the line of fire, or because the government had requisitioned their buildings. The same stoic attitude was on display in England during the Blitz, which unpredictable abomination was unable to close Oxford, Cambridge, or any of the other schools that were deemed unlikely to be blown to pieces. (Most of London’s colleges closed, but not all of them. Birkbeck College stayed open even after a German bomber scored a direct hit on the library!)
While at Harvard in 1945, the satirist Tom Lehrer issued a semi-parodic anthem of encouragement for the student body.
Having noticed that the university’s existing refrains “had a tendency to be somewhat uncouth, and even violent,” Lehrer thought that it might “be refreshing, to say the least, to find one that was a bit more genteel.” And so, being an enterprising sort, he wrote one himself, offering up a ditty that combined the more traditional enjoinders to “Fight fiercely, Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight!” with salutary reminders to “invite the whole team up for tea” and to “try not to injure” one’s opponents. A modern Lehrer might take a look at the school’s current crop of self-pitying students and conclude, alas, that the opposite correction was in order.
2a) Mobs of New York
The idea that we are all complicit in the Eric Garner grand-jury decision is false.
How did we get to the point in the United States where street protesters are treated as sainted figures, no matter what they do? How did it happen that important public leaders—the American president, the mayor of New York, college presidents—feel obliged to legitimize these protests, no matter what they do to a city, its citizens or owners of private property? Why is it that the leaders of America’s most important institutions are no longer capable of recognizing a mob when they see one?
But no. One sensed where this was headed on seeing photos in the morning papers of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, stoically accepting that his face and suit were covered with red paint—“blood” tossed by a professional anarchist. The protesters decided that immobilizing city streets wasn’t enough to make their point.
They marched into the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. They did it at the huge, crowdedMacy’s on Herald Square. They entered an H&M store and blocked the escalators. Inside a Forever 21 store in Times Square, they surrounded a display taxi cab and covered it with a sign: “The system is guilty. Burn it down.”
Where is it written that a city has to put up with this?
In Berkeley, Calif., a mob protesting the grand jury decisions in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases broke the window of a Trader Joe ’s supermarket. They wrecked aRadioShack store and smashed ATM machines.
That still wasn’t enough.
This Monday, some two dozen New York City Council members went into the street in front of city hall and disrupted traffic. For the people gridlocked in their cars, taxis and delivery trucks, Councilman Andy King explained: “We have a responsibility to wake you up, and the only way people get woken up is if you disrupt their everyday normalcy.”
That evening, President Obama in an interview gave his approval. Calling violence “counterproductive,” the president nonetheless said, “Power concedes nothing without a fight, that’s true, but it’s also true that a country’s conscience has to be triggered by some inconvenience.” This, he said, was “the value of peaceful protests, activism.”
Let me rephrase that: The president of the United States is holding the door open for politics by mob rule, the invasion of private property and economic damage to store owners.
What an irony. At the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, two groups—the Yippies (formally, the Youth International Party) and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam did the same thing. New York’s theatrical protest groups are the progeny of the Yippies and the Mobilization. But now, they are the Democrats’ base.
A city is a fragile exercise in normal daily life. The idea that we are all complicit if we don’t metaphorically “burn down” this normalcy for some cause is false.
The need to protect civilized urban life from the poison of disorder is the reason George Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson formulated the “broken windows” theory of policing. Some, notably Al Sharpton , are now arguing that “broken windows” is a mistake, that we should absorb minor disorders and police only major violations.
But disordered city life has already caused one of the greatest social upheavals of our time. The charter-schools and voucher movements exist largely because minority parents in rough neighborhoods wanted to get their children out of chaotic, dangerous public schools, where daily disorder made learning too difficult. That has been a productive protest.
President Obama created a task force on policing techniques. Good. Maybe we will learn something. But perhaps this task force should extend its writ and have a real “dialogue” with the residents of these neighborhoods about the quality of their daily lives beyond the police. Where is an objective social documentarian when you need one?
If we have learned anything in the past century, it is that when politically approved mobs start invading shopkeepers and smashing their windows in the name of politics, it is a sign that a society is veering off the rails.
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On Wednesday last week, the day of the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case on Staten Island, hundreds of people marched through New York City’s main streets and highways, blocked bridges, invaded the crowds of parents and kids gathered for the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, and spread themselves on the floor as “die-ins” amid commuters in Grand Central Terminal.
Despite the massive inconvenience, many New Yorkers, who like to think they live in a tolerant city, more or less accepted this venting. Message sent and absorbed. Whatever political course the controversial Garner case would take next, it was time for everyone to resume their lives on Thursday.
But no. One sensed where this was headed on seeing photos in the morning papers of New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, stoically accepting that his face and suit were covered with red paint—“blood” tossed by a professional anarchist. The protesters decided that immobilizing city streets wasn’t enough to make their point.
They marched into the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. They did it at the huge, crowdedMacy’s on Herald Square. They entered an H&M store and blocked the escalators. Inside a Forever 21 store in Times Square, they surrounded a display taxi cab and covered it with a sign: “The system is guilty. Burn it down.”
Where is it written that a city has to put up with this?
It got worse.
In Berkeley, Calif., a mob protesting the grand jury decisions in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases broke the window of a Trader Joe ’s supermarket. They wrecked aRadioShack store and smashed ATM machines.
That still wasn’t enough.
This Monday, some two dozen New York City Council members went into the street in front of city hall and disrupted traffic. For the people gridlocked in their cars, taxis and delivery trucks, Councilman Andy King explained: “We have a responsibility to wake you up, and the only way people get woken up is if you disrupt their everyday normalcy.”
That evening, President Obama in an interview gave his approval. Calling violence “counterproductive,” the president nonetheless said, “Power concedes nothing without a fight, that’s true, but it’s also true that a country’s conscience has to be triggered by some inconvenience.” This, he said, was “the value of peaceful protests, activism.”
Let me rephrase that: The president of the United States is holding the door open for politics by mob rule, the invasion of private property and economic damage to store owners.
Police Commissioner Bratton said he was giving the protesters “breathing room.” New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio , said the effect of the demonstrations was “minimal.”
What an irony. At the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, two groups—the Yippies (formally, the Youth International Party) and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam did the same thing. New York’s theatrical protest groups are the progeny of the Yippies and the Mobilization. But now, they are the Democrats’ base.
A city is a fragile exercise in normal daily life. The idea that we are all complicit if we don’t metaphorically “burn down” this normalcy for some cause is false.
The need to protect civilized urban life from the poison of disorder is the reason George Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson formulated the “broken windows” theory of policing. Some, notably Al Sharpton , are now arguing that “broken windows” is a mistake, that we should absorb minor disorders and police only major violations.
But disordered city life has already caused one of the greatest social upheavals of our time. The charter-schools and voucher movements exist largely because minority parents in rough neighborhoods wanted to get their children out of chaotic, dangerous public schools, where daily disorder made learning too difficult. That has been a productive protest.
President Obama created a task force on policing techniques. Good. Maybe we will learn something. But perhaps this task force should extend its writ and have a real “dialogue” with the residents of these neighborhoods about the quality of their daily lives beyond the police. Where is an objective social documentarian when you need one?
If we have learned anything in the past century, it is that when politically approved mobs start invading shopkeepers and smashing their windows in the name of politics, it is a sign that a society is veering off the rails.
3) President Obama's immigration scheme has potentially set up one of his
It turns out that President Obama's amnesty push, disguised as immigration
speech.
According to The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal, Johnson issued a
new policies for the use of deferred action.'"
The ploy sets Jeh Johnson up as the fall guy for possible impeachment,
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is incensed by the Obama administration's
WND is reporting that Sen. Sessions believes the scheme is ill-advised …
"The senator believes the result was 'the creation of a new, alternative
"He called Obama's amnesty a scheme Congress had explicitly rejected after
constitutional law, I have NEVER witnessed a more blatant and consistent
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