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A very long article dealing with Myths and Facts regarding: "The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict reveals 24 major junctures when compromise was offered since the 1920s, dating from pre-state, League of Nations Mandate to the present time. Plan after plan, including patently pro-Arab proposals, were put on the table. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, 15 agreements and memorandums have been signed. This chapter examines those agreements and Arab response or compliance in each case. By Eli E. Hertz
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John Wohlstetter knows more about nuclear negotiations than Obama ever will and he concludes Obama's negotiations are quite likely to lead to a future nuclear war.
So much for our Nobel Peace President. (See 2 below.)
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Rep. Gowdy has been told by Clinton's lawyer she wiped her server clean.
When you lust to be president let nothing, including laws, ethics, decency, stand in your way. W
What different does it make since winning is everything! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
John Wohlstetter knows more about nuclear negotiations than Obama ever will and he concludes Obama's negotiations are quite likely to lead to a future nuclear war.
So much for our Nobel Peace President. (See 2 below.)
===
Rep. Gowdy has been told by Clinton's lawyer she wiped her server clean.
When you lust to be president let nothing, including laws, ethics, decency, stand in your way. W
What different does it make since winning is everything! (See 3 below.)
===
Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Reid Backs Schumer to Lead Senate Democrats
By Melanie Batley
By Melanie Batley
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's announcement Friday that he would not seek re-election next year after 30 years in the Senate has already sparked off speculation about who might fill his shoes.
He quickly gave Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who holds the No. 3 leadership spot, a huge boost by endorsing him in an interview with The Washington Post soon after revealing his retirement plans.
"I think Schumer should be able to succeed me," Reid told the Post.
Two other top contenders who might seek to replace the 75-year-old as their party leader are Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a close confidant of Reid.
For months since his exercise accident on New Year's Day, Reid has been working closely with all three lawmakers, bringing them to his weekly press conference, Roll Call said. All are known for being skilled legislators.
Schumer is already widely seen as the early favorite and frontrunner, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to his leadership role in the Senate, he is the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee responsible for Democratic messaging.
"It's Schumer, no question about it," one former aide said, according to The Washington Examiner.
He quickly gave Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who holds the No. 3 leadership spot, a huge boost by endorsing him in an interview with The Washington Post soon after revealing his retirement plans.
"I think Schumer should be able to succeed me," Reid told the Post.
Two other top contenders who might seek to replace the 75-year-old as their party leader are Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a close confidant of Reid.
For months since his exercise accident on New Year's Day, Reid has been working closely with all three lawmakers, bringing them to his weekly press conference, Roll Call said. All are known for being skilled legislators.
Schumer is already widely seen as the early favorite and frontrunner, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to his leadership role in the Senate, he is the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee responsible for Democratic messaging.
"It's Schumer, no question about it," one former aide said, according to The Washington Examiner.
"Harry is one of the best human beings I've ever met. His character and fundamental decency are at the core of why he's been such a successful and beloved leader," Schumer said in a statement, according to Roll Call.
"He's so respected by our caucus for his strength, his legislative acumen, his honesty and his determination. He has left a major mark on this body, this country, and on so many who have met him, gotten to know him, and love him."
Durbin is also a strong contender given he is in constant contact with the caucus in his status as whip, and he is respected for his policy expertise and legislative record, USA Today said.
Murray, meanwhile, is the highest ranking woman in the Senate Democratic leadership, the Journal noted. The former chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee won respect for forging the bipartisan budget deal with her House counterpart, Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, and she has twice run the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Murray also issued a statement, according to Roll Call.
"I owe so much to Harry for everything he has done, and for everything he continues to do, to help me fight for my constituents and for families across the country," Murray said.
"He has asked me to take on some tough jobs over the years, but I have always appreciated the trust he placed in me, the work he did to make sure I had the space I needed to get the job done, and the knowledge that, no matter what, Harry had my back and was going to fight for what was right."
Party insiders said, however, that Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts could be a favorite of activists looking to shake up the party hierarchy, USA Today said, and satisfy those who want to see a woman in a leadership position.
"There will likely not be a coronation to replace Harry Reid as Senate Democratic Leader, and Elizabeth Warren is right up there with others as someone who would be taken very seriously," the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal advocacy group, said in a statement, according to the USA Today.
Other possibilities for promotions include Jon Tester of Montana, who currently heads the DSCC, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Mark Warner of Virginia, all of whom currently hold leadership positions that could change in the next Congress, the National Journal reported.
Reid became majority leader in 2007. He served as the main point person in the Senate for President Barack Obama, helping to secure the passage of Obamacare in the face of fierce Republican opposition. His rivalry with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is well documented.
Reid told The New York Times his decision had nothing to do with his accident or his demotion to minority leader after Democrats lost the majority in November's midterm elections.
"I want to be able to go out at the top of my game," Reid told the Times. "I don't want to be a 42-year-old trying to become a designated hitter."
1a) Good Riddance, Dirty Harry
by CHARLES C. W. COOKE
Harry Reid is retiring. Whatever happens to his Senate seat in 2016, this is good news for Republicans and it is good news for America. Good riddance, Harry. Good bloody riddance.
Today we will hear a lot about Reid’s “service” to the Senate and to the American people. Ha! “Service” indeed. The truth of the matter is that Harry Reid is a stone-cold killer who has damaged Washington considerably, who has elevated his own political preferences above the institution he was elected to protect, and who has made worse the partisan rancor that our self-described enlightened class claims to abhor. The greatest service he can do America is to go away.
From a purely Machiavellian perspective, there is a strong case to be made that Reid has been the most effective federal politician in the United States over the last decade or so. In order to protect the president and to advance his movements’ goals, Reid has been willing to diminish the influence, power, and effectiveness of his own institution; in order to thwart his opponents, he has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to play dirty — a capacity that sets him apart even from other harsh players such as Chuck Schumer, Ted Cruz, and Dick Durbin; and, in order to satisfy his own need to feel powerful, he has perfected the scorched earth approach that has kept Obama’s presidency on life support since November of 2010 (in my estimation, the Democratic party’s success during the 2013 shutdown was the product of Reid’s obstinacy and resolve, not Obama’s).
Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey notes just how much chaos Reid has wrought: By any objective measure, Reid has been a blight on the Senate and on Congress. He declared the Iraq war “lost” while Americans were still fighting there, and he derailed a budget process that had worked well before his ascent into leadership. He stripped the Senate of one of its debate functions after sabotaging the amendment process, and nearly destroyed regular order. On top of that, Reid used his post to commit McCarthyite character assassination of Mitt Romney, claiming to have inside knowledge that Romney hadn’t paid taxes in ten years, a smear that turned out to be utterly false. He has been a malevolent force for years in American politics, and nothing he did in Washington will improve the place as much as his leaving it.
I can only imagine that the consequentialists among us will consider these tactics to have “worked.” Certainly, progressivism is in better shape today because of Harry Reid. But for those of us who care about process, who do not believe that the ends justify the means, and who are concerned primarily about the integrity of the American constitutional and political order, Reid has been little more than a dangerous menace. I have not been one to take any delight in the terrible injuries that Reid sustained after his accident. Indeed, I wish him nothing short of a full recovery and a long life. I am just glad that the remainder of that life will be lived outside of the United States Senate and away from the political process that he has done so much to maim.
1b The 10 Real Reasons Harry Reid Quit the Senate
By Jim Meyers
Sen. Harry Reid announced on Friday that he will not seek re-election next year and will retire after serving for 30 years — including eight years as Senate Majority Leader.
The Nevada Democrat's announcement took some observers by surprise, but there are several compelling reasons behind the veteran politician's decision. Here are the 10 real reasons Harry Reid quit the Senate:
1. Reid faced a difficult re-election battle next year. According to a "Crystal Ball" report from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, "We identified Reid as probably the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in this Senate cycle." Retirement allows Reid to avoid a humiliating defeat.
2. Reid feared that another campaign in Nevada would take away money and attention from Democratic candidates in other states. "We have to make sure that the Democrats take control of the Senate again," he said in a statement he posted online. "And I feel it is inappropriate for me to soak up all those resources on me when I could be devoting those resources to the caucus."
3. He has been held responsible for the Democrats' net loss of nine Senate seats in November. Republican Mitch McConnell, Reid's successor as Majority Leader, attributed the GOP surge partly as a rejection of Reid.
4. He was chastened by his difficult re-election fight in 2010. At one point he was down by 11 percentage points in a poll against Republican Sharon Angle, considered a weak and controversial candidate. Angle helped out Reid by, among other things, claiming that Dearborn, Michigan, was under Sharia law and saying the 9/11 hijackers had entered the U.S. from Canada. Angle still won 14 of Nevada's 17 counties.
5. Reid is battling back from injuries he suffered in a fall on New Year's Day, which left him with broken ribs and impaired vision in his right eye. He still wears darkened glasses to protect the damaged eye.
6. He's reacting to fallout from this week's inspector general findings. Reid's retirement announcement came just days after an inspector general said he used his influence to lobby a Homeland Security Department official for special treatment regarding visas for investors in a casino property in Nevada. Back in 2005, Reid earmarked a spending bill to provide funds for a bridge that would make land he owned more valuable. A year later, it was reported that Reid used campaign funds to pay for $3,300 in Christmas gifts to the staff at his condominium.
7. His age. Reid is 75. If he ran for re-election next year he would be 83 years old when his sixth term expired.
8. His hometown newspaper had come out against him. The Las Vegas Review-Journal last year castigated Reid for his comment that "five white men" on the Supreme Court ruled that businesses don't have to provide birth control if doing so would violate the employer's religious beliefs. One of the five was Clarence Thomas, who is black. The newspaper accused Reid of "race-baiting" and using "outrageous rhetoric."
9. Despite Democrats' losses in November, Reid could retire with a feeling of accomplishment. He succeeded in protecting President Barack Obama's deportation amnesty policy from Republicans who tried to end it through the spending process, and more recently he blocked an anti-human trafficking bill because it contained language barring federal funds from being spent on abortion.
10. He wants to spend more time with his family. Reid, a father of five, last year sold his home in Searchlight, Nevada, and bought a condo near Las Vegas so he and his wife — who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 — could be closer to their grandchildren. Retirement enables Reid to spend more time with his family in Nevada instead of splitting his time between Washington and his home state.
Some Republicans cheered Reid's retirement announcement as aiding the GOP's success next year.
"On the verge of losing his own election and after losing the majority, Senator Harry Reid has decided to hang up his rusty spurs," said Ward Baker, executive director of Senate Republicans' campaign committee. "His retirement signals that there is no hope for the Democrats to regain control of the Senate."
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2) Obama's Iran Deal: The SALT Precedents
President Obama’s decision to avoid congressional scrutiny of his emerging nuclear deal with Iran led 47 GOP senators to write a letter warning Iran – and the president – that the Senate expects to be consulted. A subsequent bipartisan letter signed by 367 members of the House of Representatives also urged the president to consult Congress. A look at major 20th-century strategic arms accords lends decisive weight to the position taken by Congress.
It is apparent that if President Obama inks a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, it will be in the form of an executive agreement, to escape the inconvenience of submitting it to the Senate as a treaty. Given the two-thirds supermajority treaty consent requirement of Article II of the U.S. Constitution – formal legal ratification occurs only if the president signs – the president’s giveaway deal with Iran, if reached, would face a brick wall in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Consider the experience with the SALT I, SALT II and START accords. They illustrate when executive agreements should be used and when formal treaties should be submitted. Informing that debate was the 1961 statute establishing the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA), which then governed arms treaties (emphasis added):
POLICY FORMULATION
SEC. 33. The Director is authorized and directed to prepare for the President, the Secretary of State, and the heads of such other Government agencies, as the President may determine, recommendations concerning United States arms control and disarmament policy: Provided however. That no action shall be taken under this or any other law that will obligate the United States to disarm or to reduce or to limit the Armed Forces or armaments of the United States, except pursuant to the treaty making power of the President under the Constitution or unless authorized by further affirmative legislation by the Congress of the United States.
So, executive agreements were expressly disfavored in the nuclear arms arena. The exception that evolved is for interim accords. But major interim accords received congressional scrutiny, most notably with the 1972 SALT I executive agreement on offensive systems.
In May 1972, President Nixon signed two accords in Moscow. The ABM Treaty sharply limited superpower deployment of missile defense systems. Ratified 88-2, it lapsed when in 2002 President George W. Bush exercised the treaty’s unilateral right-to-exit clause, and after a six-month waiting period, the U.S. exited. Moscow, already under Vladimir Putin’s rule, could not – and did not – protest. Had it done so, it would have been solely of political significance, raising the political cost of exiting a treaty the U.S. had a clear legal right to exit without Moscow’s formal consent.
Also executed in Moscow was an interim five-year agreement on deployment of offensive strategic nuclear systems. It was submitted as an executive agreement, hence not subject to treaty ratification. However, senators insisted that they have a say regarding the executive agreement as part of the Senate’s treaty consent process. They accomplished this via the Jackson Amendment, named for legendary defense hawk Democrat Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, and aimed squarely at the executive agreement. Passed by a 56-35 majority, it provided that any accord would allow equal levels of force quantity and quality – what became known in strategic parlance as “essential equivalence.” In pertinent part, Jackson’s amendment stated that the Senate
… urges and requests the President to seek a future treaty that, inter alia, would not limit the United States to levels of intercontinental strategic forces inferior to the limits provided for the Soviet Union; and the Congress considers that the success of these agreements and the attainment of more permanent and comprehensive agreements are dependent upon the maintenance under present world conditions of a vigorous research and development and modernization program as required by a prudent strategic posture.
The parties signed a third document in Moscow: a general statement of principles governing U.S.-Soviet relations. This was not submitted to Congress.
In December 1974, the Ford administration negotiated a further interim accord at Vladivostok, to go into effect in October 1977 and expire December 1985. In the face of strong rising domestic opposition, the accord never was formally submitted.
In June 1979, President Carter signed the SALT II Treaty in Vienna, which formalized limits on offensive systems. It was to expire in December 1985, but when submitted to the Senate in September 1979, it stalled. Moscow’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan sealed the treaty’s fate. Though SALT II was never ratified, the Reagan administration adhered to its U.S. limits, if only because a Democratic House of Representatives would not appropriate funds for systems beyond the SALT II number. SALT II duly passed its intended expiration date at the end of 1985. Yet subsequent Congresses still refused to appropriate funds to enable the U.S. to exceed any treaty limits.
With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the George H.W. Bush administration began the era of deep cuts in superpower arsenals via the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START): START I (1991); START II (1997, never ratified by the Russian parliament); and START III – the so-called Moscow Treaty (2002). President Obama won 2010 ratification of the New START, but the vast share of strategic nuclear arms reductions had taken place in the earlier post-Cold War treaties, in the three preceding administrations.
Thus we see that final accords were submitted as formal treaties seeking advice and consent of the Senate. Executive agreements were used for interim accords only. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Congress played a central role in arms control, using its power of the purse to curb growth of American strategic nuclear forces. ACDA was abolished in 1999, its functions folded into the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. By then, three decades of active congressional participation in arms control accords had established well-grounded historical precedent.
Nonetheless, President Obama’s apparent intention to style the Iran accord an executive agreement –as a final settlement between the parties – clearly runs counter to the precedent set in earlier strategic nuclear arms agreements. And his emerging option to submit a final nuclear arms control deal to the United Nations Security Council rather than to the Senate is wholly unprecedented.
The deal would give Iran a “right to enrich” never given to any nation since the Nonproliferation Treaty went into effect in 1970. Iran has been offered a “sunset” provision, believed to be ten years, after which all nuclear activities of Iran will be legitimized, including weapons-related development and deployment. Yet Iran has stated that it will reject even this minimal limit on its nuclear ambitions.
Adam J. White offers a further note in The Weekly Standard, as to Vice President Biden’s position taken while in the Senate, which insisted that the Senate play a major role in arms accords:
"The essence of the treaty power," Biden concluded, "is that the president and the Senate are partners in the process by which the United States enters into, and adheres to, international obligations."
Back then, Senator Biden was taking a victory lap for having convinced the Senate to limit its approval of President Reagan's treaty with the Soviet Union on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, by attaching a "condition" that would require the executive branch to defer to the Senate's interpretation of the treaty's terms.
But the condition – which, with characteristic modesty, Bidencalled "the Biden Condition" – did even more than that. As Senator Biden put it in 1989, the Senate's move did nothing less than "repudiate decisively" the Reagan administration's theory of the president's diplomatic authority under the Constitution.
While questions pertaining to executive agreements were not before the Senate as to the INF Treaty, it is inconceivable that then-senator Biden would have generously interpreted the scope of executive branch discretionary authority to bypass such accords. Rather, as a longtime ardent proponent of capacious senatorial prerogative – and especially as to arms control, then his prime national security concern – he surely would have sought an active role in concluding any presidential arms accord, regardless of the form it took.
In the event, given adamant senatorial opposition to the president’s proposed Iran deal, the president will gamble that the courts declare the matter a “political question” and hence decline to intervene. The president takes the position, in domestic matters as well as foreign policy and national security, that if Congress declines to do his bidding, he has a constitutional right to bypass the legislature entirely.
But the extent of power accorded the legislative, executive, and judicial branches is the same, regardless of whether they act prudently, and regardless of whether they act out of benevolent or malevolent motive. Whether a GOP Congress opposes a presidential initiative out of political expediency, personal animus toward the president, or sheer lassitude matters not one whit in determining the constitutional powers of Congress. No president has a constitutional entitlement to have any presidential proposal passed. And no prior president has claimed such a power in the face of legislative opposition. Even Ronald Reagan, who won twice by landslides, regularly negotiated with an often hostile Democratic House of Representatives throughout his two terms in office.
In stark contrast, President Obama takes a “my way or the highway” approach, with his fallback being circumventing congressional opposition by executive fiat. If the courts uphold such exercise as constitutional, or even if the courts simply stand aside by hiding behind the “political question” doctrine, the result will be to leave in ruins the venerable constitutional doctrine of separation of powers among co-equal branches.
And in the policy context of allowing the president to evade the Senate’s “advise and consent” power, the result will leave the global nuclear nonproliferation regime in ruins, with regional nuclear arms races and, eventually, one or more nuclear wars likely to follow.
John C. Wohlstetter is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and London Center for Policy Research, author of Sleepwalking With the Bomb, and founder of the issues blog Letter From the Capitol.
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3)
Benghazi chairman: Clinton wiped private email server ‘clean’
By Martin Matishak
The head of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has erased all information from the personal email server she used while serving as the nation’s top diplomat.
“We learned today, from her attorney, Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement Friday.
He said while it’s “not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department.”
Gowdy said "it is clear Congress will need to speak with the former Secretary about her email arrangement and the decision to permanently delete those emails."
“Not only was the Secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server, ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest,” Gowdy said.
Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel's top Democrat, said the letter the select committee received from Clinton's attorney detailing what happened the server proves she has nothing to hide.
"This confirms what we all knew — that Secretary Clinton already produced her official records to the State Department, that she did not keep her personal emails, and that the Select Committee has already obtained her emails relating to the attacks in Benghazi," he said in a statement.
"It is time for the Committee to stop this political charade and instead make these documents public and schedule Secretary Clinton's public testimony now."
Clinton has maintained that the messages were personal in nature, but Gowdy and other Republicans have raised questions over whether she might have deleted messages that could damage her expected White House run in the process.
“I have absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department," Clinton said during a press conference in New York earlier this month.
She said she had culled through more than 60,000 emails from her time at State and determined that roughly 30,000 of them were public records that should have been maintained.
Clinton said the rest were messages related to private matters, such as her daughter’s wedding or her yoga class schedule, and didn't need to be kept.
Gowdy said given Clinton’s “unprecedented email arrangement with herself and her decision nearly two years after she left office to permanently delete” information, his panel would work with House leadership as it “considers next steps.”
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Gowdy and other members of the Benghazi panel in the past have hinted that the full House could issues a subpoena for Clinton’s server.
There were reports earlier this month that Boehner would announce an investigation into Clinton's use of a private email account, but that has yet to materialize.
Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has suggested his panel could hold hearings over Clinton's use of private email, emphasizing his panel's jurisdiction over violations of the Federal Records Act.
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