Will they all fly on the same plane this time ?

olitics Obama creates panel to recommend state election law changes

6:45 PM 03/28/2013

The White House announced Thursday the formation of a nine-seat Presidential Commission on Election Administration tasked with recommending changes to states’ election laws by the end of September.

“The Commission shall identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay, and to improve the experience of voters facing other obstacles,” said Obama’s executive order, issued March 28.

State elections are conducted by states, usually under state laws. However, the federal Congress has the constitutional authority to “any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Obama’s panel does not have the legal ability to rewrite state election laws, but its recommendations could help Obama’s appointees at the Department of Justice ask friendly judges to impose changes on states.

Democratic activists have repeatedly called for changes to increase voter registration, to extend voting periods, to curb voter-identification rules and to help apparently non-political groups boost turnout by voters.

The executive order said the panel should consider changes to almost all portions of the state’s voting system.

The changes could include “the number, location, management, operation, and design of polling places … the training, recruitment, and number of poll workers … the efficient management of voter rolls and poll books … voting machine capacity and technology … voter education … processing provisional ballots in the polling place on Election Day … the administration of absentee ballot programs … [and] other issues related to the efficient administration of elections that the Co-Chairs agree are necessary and appropriate to the Commission’s work.”

A bipartisan abdication

By George F. Will, Published: MARCH 27, 7:06 PM ET

“President Obama has arguably established the authority of the president to intervene militarily virtually anywhere without the consent or the approval of Congress,at his own discretion and for as long as he wishes.”

—Jim Webb

As America tiptoes toward a fourth intervention in an opaque and uncontrollable conflict —now Syria, after Iraq,Afghanistan and Libya —Webb’s words require two minor modifications: Obama has demonstrated a power,not an authority;only the Constitution authorizes. And,as Webb understands,Obama has been able to do so only because Congress,over many years,has become too supine to wield its constitutional powers.

GALLERY Tom Toles draws Congress:A collection of cartoons about Capitol Hill.

Webb,a Virginia Democrat who declined to seek a second Senate term,vents his dismay in the essay “Congressional Abdication” (in the current issue of the magazine the National Interest),a trenchant indictment of the irrelevance of an institution to which the Constitution gives “certain powers over the structure and use of the military.” The president,Webb says,is commander in chief but only in “executing policies shepherded within the boundaries of legislative powers.” Those powers have, however,atrophied from a disuse amounting to institutional malfeasance as Congress has forfeited its role in national-security policymaking.

Webb,who was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam and Navy secretary for Ronald Reagan, remembers when Congress was “fiercely protective of its powers.” Webb vigorously opposed the invasion of Iraq before he entered the Senate,which he departed disgusted by Congress’s self-made irrelevance.

In December 2008,in its final hours, George W. Bush’s administration signed with Iraq a Strategic Framework Agreement that was, Webb says,“not quite a treaty,” which would require two-thirds approval by the Senate,but neither was it merely implementing current policy and law. It outlined the U.S. role in defending Iraq from internal and external threats,in promoting reconciliation and combating terrorist groups.

For more than a year the agreement was negotiated and finalized,but there was no meaningful consultation with Congress,no congressional debate on its merits and none sought by congressional leaders. In contrast to Congress’s passivity regarding policy toward what Webb calls “an unstable regime in an unstable region,” Iraq’s parliament voted on the agreement —twice.

Last May,Obama visited Afghanistan to sign what the White House called “a legally binding executive agreement” concerning the structure of future U.S.-Afghan relations,U.S. commitments to Afghan security and an anticipated U.S. presence beyond 2014. The agreement calls Afghanistan a “Major Non-NATO Ally.” Congress was not formally consulted about this,but Afghanistan’s parliament voted on it.

Noting that,in foreign as well as domestic policy,Obama is “acutely fond of executive orders designed to circumvent the legislative process,” Webb recalls that in 2009 the administration said it would return from the United Nations’s Copenhagen conference on climate change with a “binding” commitment for an emission-reduction program. So Webb wrote to remind the president that “only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress,or a treaty ratified by the Senate,could actually create such a commitment.”

Webb notes that presidents now act as though they have become de facto prime ministers,unconstrained by the separation of powers. This transformation was dramatized in the Libya intervention:

“Was our country under attack,or under the threat of imminent attack? No. ... Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the U.N. Charter?No. Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally?No. Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere,as we did in the 1986 raids in Libya after American soldiers had been killed in a Berlin disco?No. Were we rescuing Americans in distress,as we did in Grenada in 1983?No.”

Instead,“we took military action against a regime that we continued to recognize diplomatically,on behalf of disparate groups of opposing forces whose only real point of agreement was that they wished to rid Libya of [Moammar] Gaddafi. This was not even a civil war” because there was “no cohesive opposition facing a regime.” The result?“Rampant lawlessness” perhaps related to the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans,and “the regionwide dispersion of thousands of weapons from Gaddafi’s armories.”

The question,Webb says,is whether in “a world filled with cruelty,” presidents should be allowed to “pick and choose when and where to use military force” by merely citing the “undefinable rubric of ‘humanitarian intervention.’”

Imperial presidents and invertebrate legislators of both parties have produced what Webb correctly calls “a breakdown of our constitutional process.” Syria may be the next such bipartisan episode.

Even if you're a heartbeat away from being the actual President...wella wella wells....lookie here....


Biden to Take Third Vacation of the Year

Vice President Biden today is enjoying his third vacation of the year, a five day sojourn on South Carolina’s luxurious Kiawah Island, where he will no doubt partake of his favorite pastime, golf.

Biden and his wife Jill arrived on the island – known as a golf mecca – Thursday night and are not scheduled to depart before Monday.

Biden’s trip is the latest episode in a bout of rampant vacationing by the First and Second Families, who have been roaring out of Washington this year on taxpayer-funded excursions even as the deficit mounts and the sequester axes jobs and critical spending on other priorities.

While both President Obama and Biden pick up some of the tab for their recreational travel, the bulk of the costs – including flights aboard Air Force One and Air Force Two and security and staff needs – are billed to taxpayers.

Biden should feel especially refreshed when he returns given that he just had a vacation last month in Snowmass, Colorado, where he spent several days over President’s Day weekend. Close by in a neighboring section of Colorado’s ski country was First Lady Michelle Obama, who was taking her second vacation of the year in Aspen.

Over the same President’s Day weekend, President Obama was roving the fairways at an exclusive golf resort in Florida where he got pointers both from Tiger Woods and Tiger’s famous former coach. He and Mrs. Obama had already spent part of late December and early January in Hawaii.

Biden’s first trip this year was a sun worshiping exercise in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he stayed with his family from Friday, January 4 until Tuesday, January 8.

South Carolina is also a crucial presidential primary state that Biden – believed to be strongly considering a run in 2016 – no doubt has his eye on. Biden reportedly will be back in the state in May when he headlines the annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner, a Democratic fundraising event in the state’s capital, Columbia.

But while his presence in South Carolina over the next few days will generate some local publicity, Biden is sticking to rest and relaxation and has no public events scheduled.


http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/03/29/biden-vacation-year/ 

WHITE HOUSE SCRUBS FIRST DAUGHTERS SKI TRIP REPORT


A local news affiliate in Idaho reported that the First Daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama, are on a Spring Break ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho. The story quickly spread across the Internet when picked up by the highly trafficked Drudge Report website. But hours later, the story disappeared from the KMVT website without an update or correction. Breitbart News confirmed that the White House requested that the post be removed.





In March of last year, the White House requested media outlets remove accurate reports that Malia Obama was on a trip in Mexico with over two dozen Secret Service agents.

The First Family has been criticized in recent days for taking frequent vacations. Earlier this week, Breitbart News broke the story that the Obama daughters spent part of Spring Break at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Michelle Obama and the First Daughters took a separate ski trip last month to Aspen, Colorado.
While each of these trips require a significant Secret Service presence, the White House canceled public tours this month citing Secret Service staffing costs.


UPDATE: The White House has confirmed the report was removed on their request. From Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady: From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/29/idaho-ski-story-removed 

What the hell...who doesn't deserve to be on vacation? YOU! The American taxpayer. There's no vacation from the theft.

By John Titus,Creator of Bailout.

---

Article is the first of two parts.

Obama and the Criminal International Banking Cartel

In Bailout,we showed over and over how criminal frauds perpetrated by huge banks victimized Main Street on a colossal scale. One theme throughout the movie is that bailouts are,in their essence,a perversion of the Rule of Law that can only grow like a cancer.

It now appears that the bailout cancer has metastasized with the renunciation of the Rule of Law by the United States Attorney General,without objection or much of a ruckus,before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute,if you do bring a criminal charge,it will have a negative impact on the national economy,perhaps even the world economy. –Eric Holder,March 6,2013.

As an initial observation,is that not a strange way for any law enforcer,much less the top cop in the world's powerful nation,to speak—in the passive voice,of being “hit,” in an effort to rationalize his own failure to enforce the law? And who’s issuing “indications” that make the head of the DOJ shrink in fear of discharging his duties anyhow? We’ll answer the latter question with a list of names in Part Two.

For now,let’s be clear about what’s on the table when the U.S. Attorney General comes before Congress to testify: it includes the status of the U.S. as a sovereign nation. And that’s simply because the enforcement of criminal law falls within the exclusive province of a state’s authority.

“Sovereignty is the power of a state to govern itself,such as making, executing, and applying laws;imposing and collecting taxes;making war and peace;and forming treaties or engaging in commerce with foreign nations.”

Private citizens cannot bring criminal actions. States bring them,often even when private victims do not wish to press charges,as retribution for harms to the public. That perogative is inherent in a state's sovereign power to protect itself from criminals. In the U.S.,executing federal criminal law is the duty of the U.S. Attorney General,“the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government.” Above him in the executive branch org chart,there is but one entry: President Barack Obama.

Execution of the law was squarely in the crosshairs when Eric Holder testified before the Senate. Specifically at issue was the DOJ’s wholesale failure to prosecute any large banks or any of their executives despite seemingly endless waves of uncontested evidence of criminal behavior (not to mention the disappearance of at least $13 trillion in a financial crisis driven by fraud).

We’re not talking about a few slip-ups here and there by the DOJ, or a couple of favors done with a nudge and a wink. We’re talking about what looks very much like a green light for big banks to commit crimes with wild abandon while pretending that fines levied in lieu of prosecution (a) are something other than a small tax paid by the banks doing business as criminal enterprises, (b) cannot simply be paid for from the fruit of additional crimes in the future, and thus (c) do not guarantee more crime.

Eric Holder did not materialize before the Senate out of the blue. Rather,his testimony followed an unbroken pattern of prosecutorial inaction and deference by the DOJ towards big bailed out banks,a sample of which includes:

In April 2010,Richard Bowen,a former Citigroup risk officer,told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission,among other things,that Citi sold MBS products despite knowing—based on information that Bowen provided to the top ranks of the company,including ex-CEO Robert Rubin—that huge swaths of mortgages owned by Citi were defective to the tune of between 60 and 80%. Citi continued its multi-billion-dollar sales of defective MBS products that it knew to be falsely rated. The DOJ filed no criminal referrals and prosecuted no one at Citigroup. In June 2010,it emerged that Wells Fargo (nee: Wachovia) “had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co.,which bought Wachovia in 2008,has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.” The DOJ filed no criminal referrals and prosecuted no one at either Wells Fargo or Wachovia. In September 2012,Lanny Breuer,then the head of criminal enforcement at the DOJ,traveled from Washington,D.C. to give a speech to the New York City Bar Association. Breuer's house call to the corporate defense bar included statements that he would “not always” be convinced not to prosecute large institutions that made “compelling presentations” to Breuer,in “his conference room,” concerning the negative economic ramifications of such prosecutions. In December 2012,Lanny Breuer admitted that HSBC “permit[ted] narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries." What is more,“senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity" and indeed one HSBC executive “argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank,which has supported Al Qaeda." The DOJ filed no criminal referrals and prosecuted no one at HSBC—despite the fact that “most of HSBC's senior management has been replaced since the conduct at issue,which stretched from the mid-1990s to 2010.” On January 22,2013,Lanny Breuer appeared in PBS Frontline’s “The Untouchables,” which investigated fraudulent mortgages originated and sold by Bank of America (nee: Countrywide). Breuer stated that for large financial institutions,“pursuing justice… in any given case” meant that he “should speak to experts,because if I bring a case against institution A,and as a result of bringing that case,there’s some huge economic effect —if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly,counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly —it’s a factor we need to know and understand.”

As a result of the latter,“[l]ess than 24 hours after 'The Untouchables' aired on PBS, its main target,Justice Department criminal-division head Lanny Breuer,abruptly resigned.”

Breuer’s disclosure—made with no hint of irony or shame,nor with any legal authority for support—that the DOJ was deferring to unnamed experts whenever large financial institutions were involved was not the only such admission by the Justice Department.

In yet another criminal case that saw no prosecutions,namely,Libor manipulation by UBS,a Swiss Bank,Eric Holder used language essentially identical to that which led to Breuer’s resignation: “We reach out to experts outside of the Justice Department to talk about what are the consequences of actions that we might take, what would be the impact of those actions if we want to make particular prosecutive decisions or determinations with regard to a particular institution.”

Finally,on January 29 of this year,Congress seemed to connect this untrammeled crime spree with the DOJ's docility when Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Charles Grassley (R-IA,the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee) fired off a letter to Eric Holder. Among other things,they demanded “the names of all outside experts consulted by the Justice Department in making prosecutorial decisions regarding financial institutions with over $1 billion in assets.” They also demanded to know how the “DOJ ensure[d] that these experts provided unconflicted and unbiased advice to DOJ.”

The importance of the latter point is impossible to overstate given the DOJ's responsibility for bringing criminal cases at the federal level. By demanding to know what measures the Justice Department was taking to insure against self-dealing by experts,the senators touch on something far deeper than a garden variety conflict of interest.

The real question they are posing is whether the DOJ’s “outside experts” are in reality the large financial institutions themselves,because if they are,their “opinion” that prosecution should be foregone—which the DOJ has followed without exception—is a bald assertion of sovereign immunity: huge banks are claiming their own exemption from criminal prosecution based on their identities as huge banks, and Eric Holder's DOJ has never disagreed.

And here we run up against that word again: sovereign.

Before considering the IMPLICATIONS should it turn out that the international cartel of bailed out banks is exempting itself from the reach of the law by "advising" the DOJ on prosecutions of its members,it is worth examining the claim,articulated by Holder,that "negative economic consequences" would attend the criminal prosecution of any cartel members.

In different contexts and guises,we have heard that claim of "systemic failure" before,and its public failure on the merits is so impressively robust that to see the DOJ so much as entertain the discredited claim at this point--much less fall for it hook,line,and sinker--is so breathtaking that it begs the question: what's really behind the DOJ's capitulation to the banks?

(1) In September 2008,Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress that the nation would descend into martial law unless TARP was passed. Paulson's urgency was driven by toxic assets on the banks' books. Unless $700 billion of these toxic assets were removed immediately through a massive Treasury purchase,Paulson said,Armageddon would quickly follow.

Immediately after Congress passed TARP,however,Paulson changed his mind without batting an eye and used the $700 billion to directly recapitalize the bailed out banking cartel,toxic assets be damned. Whether Paulson intentionally deceived the public when he made his initial claim is beside the point. What matters is that his threat--buy the toxic assets or plunge into Depression--proved toothless as a matter of fact: none of the TARP money was used to purchase toxic assets,and yet the country avoided the cliff dive Paulson had sworn would result.

Did Eric Holder simply sleep through this episode?

(2) Less than a year later,the cartel floated a miniature version of its Armageddon claim in federal district court.

In Bloomberg v. the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,the Federal Reserve argued that disclosing,in response to FOIA requests,the names of (and amounts borrowed by) bailed out banks using the Fed’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) would result in “competitive harm” to the institutions involved. In support,the Fed submitted a rash of expert affidavits from bankers explaining how competitive harm would come to the banks that used the Fed's PDCF facility if the FOIA disclosures were made.

The Chief Judge of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, Loretta Preska,dismissed the bankers' argument:

At best, the proffered affidavits suggest that the borrowers' competitors may use the knowledge that a borrower participated in a Federal Reserve lending program in order to determine when the borrower is “in a weakened condition" and spread that information to the borrowers' shareholders or the market in general. But the risk of looking weak to competitors and shareholders is an inherent risk of market participation; information tending to increase that risk does not make the information privileged or confidential under Exemption 4.

In other words,tough ****: bankers must cope with the real world just like the rest of us no matter how big or important they think they are. Know what happened next?The FOIA disclosures went forward without so much as a ripple in the financial markets.

More fundamentally,though,if the cartel's narrow argument that mere competitive harm would afflict a group of banks is legally flawed,then its far broader claim that Armageddon would befall the earth if a single bank (or banker,for that matter) were prosecuted is dead on arrival as a matter of law.

So why does Eric Holder accept the absurdly overbroad claim at face value as a legal proposition each and every time it is made?

(3) From 2008-11,Neil Barofsky was the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP),in charge of ensuring that TARP funds were distributed to the bailed out banks with a minimum of fraud. He wrote about his day-to-day battles with banking apologists,including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,in Bailout,published last year. At the end of the book,Barofsky relays a stunning admission by Geithner: the claim that an insitution is "systemic" is in all actuality a conclusory label rather than a meaningful analytical tool for assessing what might happen in the future. Says Geithner: “You won’t be able to make a judgment about what’s systemic and what’s not until you know the nature of the shock.” (See p. 222)

If Tim "Bailouter-in-Chief" Geithner,a man with no formal education in either law or economics,is able to see that claims of systemic importance are intellectually bankrupt,why can't the U.S. Attorney General?

This brings up another clue about who the anonymous DOJ experts are through the process of elimination: they aren't from the U.S. Treasury,which we know from the Senate Banking Committee hearing in February 2013. There we learned that “Treasury told the Department of Justice it was not in a position to assess whether HSBC should be prosecuted.”

IMPLICATIONS

If the DOJ's anonymous experts turn out to be the international cartel of bailed out banks,the implications are grave for at least three reasons.

First,the entire legal doctrine of sovereign immunity is very likely unconstitutional in the first place,premised as it is on the notion that "the King can do no wrong." Duke Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky,the author of a leading treatise on constitutional law,makes this very point when he demonstrates,in his Stanford Law Review article “Against Sovereign Immunity,” that “sovereign immunity is inconsistent with three fundamental constitutional principles: the supremacy of the Constitution and federal laws;the accountability of government;and due process of law.” (p. 1210).

Second,the doctrine of systemic importance,even aside from being thoroughly meritless for the reasons explained above,is impossibly vague in scope. That became clear in the HSBC case. There,the bank had "already sacked all the senior staff involved in the scandal,and agreed to stringent monitoring –the first time a foreign bank has agreed to such oversight." Thus,even fully crediting the theory that prosecuting HSBC would have posed systemic risk,that same theory does not and cannot explain why prosecuting criminals outside of the bank would have posed any risk at all,much less "systemic" risk. Lanny Breuer must have been grateful for the mainstream media's failure to ask him why systemic immunity extends to ex-employees outside the system,or where such immunity ends.

It sure looks as if the international bailed out banking cartel claims immunity for individual bankers based on a calculation that extends protection to anyone in a position to name names. Whatever the case,it is the whim of a cartel,and not any Rule of Law,that determines who is prosecuted and who isn't--a system that democracies have sought to avoid since the Magna Carta was signed 800 years ago. How's that for regressive?

Third,and most seriously,criminal sovereign immunity is legally limited to the President of the United States. That should tell you something about where the international cartel of bailed out banks stands if it turns out to be the entity asserting governmental immunity from the consquences of its own crimes.

While sovereign immunity is considered a civil law doctrine,that's merely a practical reality rather than a legal limitation. Criminal cases are brought in the names of sovereign authorities themselves,either by the United States or by individual states,and sovereign immunity is a doctrine asserted as a defense. A case in which a sovereign asserted a sovereign immunity defense in response to criminal charges brought by a sovereign would be a rarity indeed.

Nevertheless,there is legal authority that directly addresses the scope of criminal sovereign immunity. The issue arose and was addressed during Watergate: “the Office of Legal Counsel ('OLC') prepared a comprehensive memorandum in the fall of 1973 that analyzed whether all federal civil officers are immune from indictment or criminal prosecution while in office,and,if not,whether the President and Vice President in particular are immune from indictment or criminal prosecution while in office.”

Criminal immunity was found to extend only to the President: “The OLC memorandum concluded that all federal civil officers except the President are subject to indictment and criminal prosecution while still in office;the President is uniquely immune from such process.”

That same year,in a different case (the grand jury investigation of Vice President Spiro Agnew),Robert Bork,then the Solicitor General of the U.S.,reached precisely the same conclusion as the OLC: “the President, unlike the Vice President, could not constitutionally be subject to such criminal process while in office."

That ought to make the dead seriousness of criminal immunity for the cartel of bailed out banks crystal clear. If these financial institutions and the anonymous experts relied on by the DOJ are one and the same,then they have arrogated to themselves sovereign legal power that's available under the law to the Chief Executive of the United States and no one else. As things stand now,people who've been fired from a bank in Hong Kong are on the same legal footing as the President of the United States.

But let's get down to brass tacks. Since there can't be two kings in a kingdom,it’s the international criminal banking cartel—not President Obama—who’s the real sovereign authority here. Obama's top law enforcer,Eric Holder,admits--fully in practice and nearly so in his own words--to being trumped. Obama's announcement that bailed out banks have not committed any crimes,in the face of overwhelming and undisputed evidence to the contrary,quite accurately summarizes the system of sovereign immunity that is in effect: the real King--banks--can do no wrong. The President is merely their messenger.

In Part Two,we’ll present compelling evidence that the anonymous “experts” are indeed the so-called systemically important financial institutions,and that the U.S. government is functioning not only as the agent of the criminal banking enterprise, but as its weapon.

If that sounds like a control fraud after a few hundred steroid-and-bromo-mescaline cocktails,you've got an inkling of what's headed our way if we don't right the ship forthwith.

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

The president's partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize

Barack Obama Photograph: Reuters

Glenn Greenwald

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.

Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".

When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.

Last night, NBC News' Michael Isikoff released a 16-page "white paper" prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama's power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama's kill list -that is still concealed - but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.

This new memo is entitled: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force". It claims its conclusion is "reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a US citizen". Yet it is every bit as chilling as the Bush OLC torture memos in how its clinical, legalistic tone completely sanitizes the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.

I've written many times at length about why the Obama assassination program is such an extreme and radical threat - see here for one of the most comprehensive discussions, with documentation of how completely all of this violates Obama and Holder's statements before obtaining power - and won't repeat those arguments here. Instead, there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo:

1. Equating government accusations with guilt

The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears US government defenders referring to "terrorists" when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. This entire memo is grounded in this deceit.

Time and again, it emphasizes that the authorized assassinations are carried out "against a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States." Undoubtedly fearing that this document would one day be public, Obama lawyers made certain to incorporate this deceit into the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."

This ensures that huge numbers of citizens - those who spend little time thinking about such things and/or authoritarians who assume all government claims are true - will instinctively justify what is being done here on the ground that we must kill the Terrorists or joining al-Qaida means you should be killed. That's the "reasoning" process that has driven the War on Terror since it commenced: if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such - with indefinite imprisonment or death.

But of course, when this memo refers to "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida", what it actually means is this: someone whom the President -in total secrecy and with no due process - has accused of being that. Indeed, the memo itself makes this clear, as it baldly states that presidential assassinations are justified when "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US".

This is the crucial point: the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.

Those who justify all of this by arguing that Obama can and should kill al-Qaida leaders who are trying to kill Americans are engaged in supreme question-begging. Without any due process, transparency or oversight, there is no way to know who is a "senior al-Qaida leader" and who is posing an "imminent threat" to Americans. All that can be known is who Obama, in total secrecy, accuses of this.

(Indeed, membership in al-Qaida is not even required to be assassinated, as one can be a member of a group deemed to be an "associated force" of al-Qaida, whatever that might mean: a formulation so broad and ill-defined that, as Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller argues, it means the memo "authorizes the use of lethal force against individuals whose targeting is, without more, prohibited by international law".)

The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. This memo - and the entire theory justifying Obama's kill list - centrally relies on this authoritarian conflation of government accusations and valid proof of guilt.

They are not the same and never have been. Political leaders who decree guilt in secret and with no oversight inevitably succumb to error and/or abuse of power. Such unchecked accusatory decrees are inherently untrustworthy (indeed, Yemen experts have vehemently contested the claim that Awlaki himself was a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat to the US). That's why due process is guaranteed in the Constitution and why judicial review of government accusations has been a staple of western justice since the Magna Carta: because leaders can't be trusted to decree guilt and punish citizens without evidence and an adversarial process. That is the age-old basic right on which this memo, and the Obama presidency, is waging war.

2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor

The most vital fact to note about this memorandum is that it is not purporting to impose requirements on the president's power to assassinate US citizens. When it concludes that the president has the authority to assassinate "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida" who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US" where capture is "infeasible", it is not concluding that assassinations are permissible only in those circumstances.

To the contrary, the memo expressly makes clear that presidential assassinations may be permitted even when none of those circumstances prevail: "This paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful." Instead, as the last line of the memo states: "it concludes only that the stated conditions would be sufficient to make lawful a lethal operation" -not that such conditions are necessary to find these assassinations legal. The memo explicitly leaves open the possibility that presidential assassinations of US citizens may be permissible even when the target is not a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat and/or when capture is feasible.

Critically, the rationale of the memo -that the US is engaged in a global war against al-Qaida and "associated forces" - can be easily used to justify presidential assassinations of US citizens in circumstances far beyond the ones described in this memo. If you believe the president has the power to execute US citizens based on the accusation that the citizen has joined al-Qaida, what possible limiting principle can you cite as to why that shouldn't apply to a low-level al-Qaida member, including ones found in places where capture may be feasible (including US soil)? The purported limitations on this power set forth in this memo, aside from being incredibly vague, can be easily discarded once the central theory of presidential power is embraced.

3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield

The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the "battlefield" is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited "battlefield". That theory is both radical and dangerous because a president's powers are basically omnipotent on a "battlefield". There, state power is shielded from law, from courts, from constitutional guarantees, from all forms of accountability: anyone on a battlefield can be killed or imprisoned without charges. Thus, to posit the world as a battlefield is, by definition, to create an imperial, omnipotent presidency. That is the radical theory that unleashed all the rest of the controversial and lawless Bush/Cheney policies.

This "world-is-a-battlefield" theory was once highly controversial among Democrats. John Kerry famously denounced it when running for president, arguing instead that the effort against terrorism is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world".

But this global-war theory is exactly what lies at heart of the Obama approach to Terrorism generally and this memo specifically. It is impossible to defend Obama's assassination powers without embracing it (which is why key Obama officials have consistently done so). That's because these assassinations are taking place in countries far from any war zone, such as Yemen and Somalia. You can't defend the application of "war powers" in these countries without embracing the once-very-controversial Bush/Cheney view that the whole is now a "battlefield" and the president's war powers thus exist without geographic limits.

This new memo makes clear that this Bush/Cheney worldview is at the heart of the Obama presidency. The president, it claims, "retains authority to use force against al-Qaida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities". In other words: there are, subject to the entirely optional "feasibility of capture" element, no geographic limits to the president's authority to kill anyone he wants. This power applies not only to war zones, but everywhere in the world that he claims a member of al-Qaida is found. This memo embraces and institutionalizes the core Bush/Cheney theory that justified the entire panoply of policies Democrats back then pretended to find so objectionable.

4. Expanding the concept of "imminence" beyond recognition

The memo claims that the president's assassination power applies to a senior al-Qaida member who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States". That is designed to convince citizens to accept this power by leading them to believe it's similar to common and familiar domestic uses of lethal force on US soil: if, for instance, an armed criminal is in the process of robbing a bank or is about to shoot hostages, then the "imminence" of the threat he poses justifies the use of lethal force against him by the police.

But this rhetorical tactic is totally misleading. The memo is authorizing assassinations against citizens in circumstances far beyond this understanding of "imminence". Indeed, the memo expressly states that it is inventing "a broader concept of imminence" than is typically used in domestic law. Specifically, the president's assassination power "does not require that the US have clear evidence that a specific attack . . . will take place in the immediate future". The US routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.

Many of the early objections to this new memo have focused on this warped and incredibly broad definition of "imminence". The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer told Isikoff that the memo "redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning". Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller called Jaffer's objection "an understatement", noting that the memo's understanding of "imminence" is "wildly overbroad" under international law.

Crucially, Heller points out what I noted above: once you accept the memo's reasoning - that the US is engaged in a global war, that the world is a battlefield, and the president has the power to assassinate any member of al-Qaida or associated forces - then there is no way coherent way to limit this power to places where capture is infeasible or to persons posing an "imminent" threat. The legal framework adopted by the memo means the president can kill anyone he claims is a member of al-Qaida regardless of where they are found or what they are doing.

The only reason to add these limitations of "imminence" and "feasibility of capture" is, as Heller said, purely political: to make the theories more politically palatable. But the definitions for these terms are so vague and broad that they provide no real limits on the president's assassination power. As the ACLU's Jaffer says: "This is a chilling document" because "it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen" and the purported limits "are elastic and vaguely defined, and it's easy to see how they could be manipulated."

5. Converting Obama underlings into objective courts

This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one's lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.

Indeed, recall the primary excuse used to shield Bush officials from prosecution for their crimes of torture and illegal eavesdropping: namely, they got Bush-appointed lawyers in the DOJ to say that their conduct was legal, and therefore, it should be treated as such. This tactic - getting partisan lawyers and underlings of the president to say that the president's conduct is legal - was appropriately treated with scorn when invoked by Bush officials to justify their radical programs. As Digby wrote about Bush officials who pointed to the OLC memos it got its lawyers to issue about torture and eavesdropping, such a practice amounts to:

"validating the idea that obscure Justice Department officials can be granted the authority to essentially immunize officials at all levels of the government, from the president down to the lowest field officer, by issuing a secret memo. This is a very important new development in western jurisprudence and one that surely requires more study and consideration. If Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had known about this, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble."

Life-long Democratic Party lawyers are not going to oppose the terrorism policies of the president who appointed them. A president can always find underlings and political appointees to endorse whatever he wants to do. That's all this memo is: the by-product of obsequious lawyers telling their Party's leader that he is (of course) free to do exactly that which he wants to do, in exactly the same way that Bush got John Yoo to tell him that torture was not torture, and that even it if were, it was legal.

That's why courts, not the president's partisan lawyers, should be making these determinations. But when the ACLU tried to obtain a judicial determination as to whether Obama is actually authorized to assassinate US citizens, the Obama DOJ went to extreme lengths to block the court from ruling on that question. They didn't want independent judges to determine the law. They wanted their own lawyers to do so.

That's all this memo is: Obama-loyal appointees telling their leader that he has the authority to do what he wants. But in the warped world of US politics, this - secret memos from partisan lackeys - has replaced judicial review as the means to determine the legality of the president's conduct.

6. Making a mockery of "due process"

The core freedom most under attack by the War on Terror is the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process. It provides that "no person shall be . . . deprived of life . . . without due process of law". Like putting people in cages for life on island prisons with no trial, claiming that the president has the right to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield without any charges or trial is the supreme evisceration of this right.

The memo pays lip service to the right it is destroying: "Under the traditional due process balancing analysis . . . . we recognize that there is no private interest more weighty than a person's interest in his life." But it nonetheless argues that a "balancing test" is necessary to determine the extent of the process that is due before the president can deprive someone of their life, and further argues that, as the New York Times put it when this theory was first unveiled: "while the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch."

Stephen Colbert perfectly mocked this theory when Eric Holder first unveiled it to defend the president's assassination program. At the time, Holder actually said: "due process and judicial process are not one and the same." Colbert interpreted that claim as follows:

"Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them."

It is fitting indeed that the memo expressly embraces two core Bush/Cheney theories to justify this view of what "due process" requires. First, it cites the Bush DOJ's core view, as enunciated by John Yoo, that courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror because judicial review constitutes "judicial encroachment" on the "judgments by the President and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force". And then it cites the Bush DOJ's mostly successful arguments in the 2004 Hamdi case that the president has the authority even to imprison US citizens without trial provided that he accuses them of being a terrorist.

The reason this is so fitting is because, as I've detailed many times, it was these same early Bush/Cheney theories that made me want to begin writing about politics, all driven by my perception that the US government was becoming extremist and dangerous. During the early Bush years, the very idea that the US government asserted the power to imprison US citizens without charges and due process (or to eavesdrop on them) was so radical that, at the time, I could hardly believe they were being asserted out in the open.

Yet here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

DOJ white paper

Obama's $2.5M Hotel and 'Vehicle Rental' Tab on Last Mexico Trip



As the White House first announced in March, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico and Costa Rica later this week. The trip is billed as "an important opportunity to reinforce the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties that so many Americans share with Mexico and Central America." And at yesterday’s White House press conference, the president stated that he is "very much looking forward to taking the trip down to Mexico" this week.

But the trip won’t exactly be cheap for taxpayers, assuming the costs mirror those incurred by the American taxpayers for President Obama's last trip to Mexico, for the G-20 summit in June 2012. According to recently discovered documents relating to the costs of that trip, taxpayers paid nearly $2.5 million for hotel and “vehicle rental.”

The first government document is a contract with a travel agent for the hotels required for the president's delegation and entourage for the conference:

The accompanying Justification and Approval (J&A) document estimates the total cost at $1,889,388.60, with a maximum payout of $2,078,327.46. The document does not give details concerning the number of rooms or other special requirements. It notes the usual security concerns and time constraints that apply to such VIP trips, but also lists this additional restriction imposed by the Mexican government:

The second document relates to transportation needs for the presidential delegation for the G-20 visit. The J&A accompanying this contract estimates the cost of transportation-vehicle rental at $630,760.00 with a maximum of $693,836.00, and also notes that the same company, Operadora Transtur, which had been contracted for an earlier visit to Los Cabos by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was the best value:

Both contracts were approved in late May 2012, a few weeks before the trip, but were not posted on the fbo.gov website until more recently. Although members of the president's travel party arrived in advance of the president and departed later, President Obama himself stayed in Mexico two nights.

Regarding the president's upcoming trip, the Washington Examiner reported that there has been some speculation that the true motives for the trip may revolve more around the president's push for immigration reform. And at a White House meeting on Monday with Latino leaders, President Obama discussed his upcoming trip to Mexico and Costa Rica. The readout of the meeting provided by the White House concluded with, "At the meeting, the President made clear that immigration reform continues to be a top legislative priority this year."



http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-25m-hotel-and-vehicle-rental-tab-last-mexico-trip_720427.html 

Obama Serves 14-State Governors With Warnings of Arrest: And why is this not front page news?

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 11:57

(Before It's News)

by Ken Larive Defense

Barack Hussein Obama had served 14-State Governors in the United States, National Security Letters (NSLs) warning that the Governor’s actions in attempting to form “State Defense Forces” needs to be halted “immediately” or they will face arrest for the crime of treason. The employment of NSLs was authorized by the Patriot Act introduced by George W. Bush. Contained within the section related to these letters, it is forbidden for anyone receiving a NSL warning to even acknowledge the existence of said communication.

Obama is angered by the several State Governors who have reestablished “State Defense Forces.” These forces are described as: “State Defense Forces (also known as State Guards, State Military Reserves, State Militias) in the United States are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government; they are not regulated by the National Guard Bureau nor are they part of the Army National Guard of the United States. State Defense Forces are authorized by state and federal law and are under the command of the governor of each state. State Defense Forces are distinct from their state’s National Guard in that they cannot become federal entities.”

Mr. Obama is fearful of these State Defense Forces, in that he does not have control of said forces, and with the U.S. Military stretched to near breaking from multiple deployments and theatre actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, these State military forces would be under the direct command and authority of the Governors in which states have said forces. In essence, the Governors would have “de facto control” of the United States.

The two Governors leading this move are: Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota; and Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. Both of these State Governors stated they have: “…deep fear the President is destroying their Nation.” Governor Pawlenty’s fear of Obama is that since Obama took office he has appeased America’s enemies and has shunned some of America’s strongest allies, especially Israel. Governor Perry has declared that Obama is punishing his State of Texas by dumping tens-of-thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants into the cities and small towns of Texas. Governor Perry further recently stated: “If Barack Obama’s Washington doesn’t stop being so oppressive, Texans might feel compelled to renounce their American citizenry and secede from the union.”

Obama fearing a revolution against him by the states, has moved swiftly by nationalizing nearly all National Guard Forces in multiple states; Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina – to name a few. The Governors of the Great States of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia still have under their Command-and-Control the State Defense Forces to go against U.S. Federal forces should the need arise. Also important to note: There are NO U.S. laws prohibiting National Guard troops from also joining their State’s Defense Forces. This dilemma occurred during the Civil War with many “citizen soldiers” choosing to serve their states instead of the Federal Government.

This is a fluid and still developing situation that warrants close attention.

Oh those pesky pee on governors, how dare they!!!

Is this even real ?

Because when you're a liberal (read Democrat)...things are always different. Had a conservative (read Republican) president pulled this hypothetical stunt, the talking point shrieks of outrage from the main stream media would have been immediate and deafening.

This is supposedly an urban legend though...not that it doesn't fit the current administration's attitude concerning state's rights perfectly.

Open up the camps! Release the hounds!

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44256 


Please note "WRITTEN OFF 35 (B)"

We're only going to lose 21 billion from TARP?!

That is extremely good news. 🇨🇮

Oh......oops.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/31/former-irs-commissioner-shulmans-wife-works-for-liberal-group-fighting-open-campaign-spending/ 



^ that too.

Fighting Terrorism by Arming Terrorists The Syrian intervention John McCain and the Clintons want would be a war for Islamism, not democracy.

By W. JAMES ANTLE III • June 17, 2013

Oleg Zabielin / Shutterstock.com

The Obama administration appears to be moving toward arming rebels in Syria, though the White House has only publicly confirmed an increase in the “scope and scale” of its military support.

By one estimate, seven of nine key rebel combatant groups are Islamist. “As the civil war has dragged on, the rebels have become more Islamist and extreme,” the Economist reports. Thus the administration’s decision to arm only the non-Islamist rebels may soon resemble O.J. Simpson’s search for the “real killers.”

Arms shipments approved by the Obama administration have already ended up in the hands of jihadists in Libya. “The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya,” reported the New York Times, “allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.”

Operation Fast and Furious meets American foreign policy.

In his apparent Syria about-face, the president has been egged on by the Clintons. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already proposed arming the Syrian rebels, only to see cooler heads prevail. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has also clamored for greater U.S. involvement.

Upon reports that President Obama was reconsidering his position, Bill Clinton patted his successor on the head. “It looks to me like this thing is trending in the right direction,” he told MSNBC. He urged Obama to ignore opinion polls showing massive public opposition to any Syria intervention beyond humanitarian assistance.

“What the American people are saying when they tell you not to do these things, they’re not telling you not to do these things,” Clinton said, according to Politico. “They hire you to win … to look around the corner and see down the road.”

The Clintons’ foreign-policy views are aligned with those of Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Hawks of a feather flocked together in support of the bipartisan Mendendez-Corker bill, which contains a provision for arming Syrian rebels and easily passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The only Republican to vote against the bill rebuked his colleagues. “This is an important moment,” Rand Paul said. “You will be funding, today, the allies of al-Qaeda. It’s an irony you cannot overcome.”

Yet the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may be the only place where Paul stands alone among Republicans on this issue. “We have entire Christian villages slaughtered, women and children, by the Syrian rebels,” Laura Ingraham said on Fox News. “The idea that were going to send arms to these people who are slaughtering Christians, and have one goal, which is to establish an Islamic caliphate throughout the Middle East—and, if they get their way, throughout Africa as well—is ludicrous.”

The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein argues, “It’s hard to believe that the same administration that brought us Benghazi would have such perfect information about which rebel groups in a bloody war-torn country are completely free of Islamist links, let alone have the logistical ability to ensure the weapons don’t end up in the hands of bad actors.”

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that only 11 percent of Republicans favored arming Syrian rebels while just 15 percent backed U.S. military involvement. Republicans and independents were more likely than Democrats to want to take no action at all. A Gallup poll found that Democrats, Republicans, and independents were all opposed to the United States entering Syria’s civil war by majorities greater than 60 percent.

For years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, conservatives who spoke out against U.S. wars in the Middle East were smeared as apologists for Islamic terror. But the evidence is mounting that these wars and “kinetic military actions” have done much to unleash the very forces they were launched to combat, leaving militant Islamists on the march from Iraq to Mali.

Foreign aid dollars are being spent where Americans are reviled. U.S. troops are dying in countries that don’t seem to be trending toward liberal democracy.

Syria may be the clearest case yet of how an intervention against an indisputably brutal dictator could cut against American national interests. Even with promises of no boots on the ground, it may be the Clinton-McCain contingent’s toughest sell.

Perhaps they have already closed the deal with Obama. But the perpetual hawks are losing the American people, left, right, and center.

W. James Antle III is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?