Archives for January 2013

An ugly and confusing terrorist attack at an Algerian gas facility is getting even more troubling as the Islamic radicals now demand the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and another prominent terrorist in exchange for the remaining American hostages.

Abdel Rahman is the blind sheikh now serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 attack against the World Trade Center.  Terrorists are also demanding the release of Aafia Saddiqui, who is imprisoned on her conviction for attempted murder.

And the captors in Algeria are not the only ones who want to  see Abdel Rahman released.  The new leaders in Egypt are also urging the U.S. to free him.  But why is Abdel Rahman so revered?

“He is the most iconic symbol to Islamic supremacists the world over of not only their struggle against the West but their deep-seeded conviction that they will win that battle,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead federal prosecutor in the case that put Rahman and 11 others behind bars.  “He is thought of internationally as somebody whois virtually without equal in facing down the United States in particular.  That’s not just because of the 1993 Trade Center bombing and the plots that occurred right after that to try to take out New York City landmarks but the fact that Osama Bin Laden, someone else that was thought very highly of as an iconic figure in the international jihad, attributed to Abdel Rahman the credit for issuing the fatwa that approved the 9/11 attacks.  So he’s a singular figure in this global movement and that’s why really since we imprisoned him in the summer of 1993 they’ve been agitating for his release.”

Despite the adoration that Islamic radicals have for Abdel Rahman, the assumption of most is that the Obama administration will obviously reject the demands.  McCarthy isn’t so sure.  He says the odd response from the administration following Egyptian efforts to free Abdel Rahman leads him to believe there is some chance this could happen down the road.

“I think (the terrorists) may be rebuffed in the here and now, but we had very good reason to think that based on the reporting from the Egyptian press and from the strange silence of the Obama administration in the face of some of these demands for the blind sheikh that the State Department was already broaching the possibility in negotiations with Egypt on returning the blind sheikh on some cockamamie humanitarian grounds,” said McCarthy.  “So I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility.  I think if Obama had been defeated, the blind sheikh would have been returned to Egypt sometime in the 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and I’m still not convinced that it won’t happen.  I doubt it will happen right now simply because you don’t want to appear to just surrender to these terrorists.”

Over the past two years, radical elements have achieved great success in North Africa, ranging from the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels in Libya to the more recent uprisings in Mali that have spilled over into Algeria.  McCarthy says this surge in radical power should come as no surprise.

“Since 9/11 and actually even before 9/11, we talked about this as a global movement which is precisely what it is.  We’ve even seen it have inspirational and animating effect in our country, in our own borders,” said McCarthy.  “This is exactly what we’ve always said it was.  Al Qaeda is an international movement with tentacles that operate globally and cooperatively with a lot of affiliated Islamist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood from time to time.  So I don’t know why anyone should be surprised that what we’ve always regarded as a global movement turns out to be a global movement.”

McCarthy says the U.S. expedited chaos in Africa by deciding to topple Moammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011.  He says in addition to removing someone who was largely cooperating in the fight against terrorism, Gaddafi’s weapons arsenal was left vulnerable to radical elements and many of those weapons are now being used to fight the French and others in Mali.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online debate whether Paul Ryan is smart to push a short-term debt ceiling extension and a lowering of GOP expectations or whether it’s just a Republican cave.  They also react to Islamic terrorists demanding the release of the blind sheikh from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in exchange for American hostages.  And they excoriate Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer for suggesting that taking on the gun lobby is akin to fighting Nazis and 1960s racism.

Events in the African nation of Mali are very rarely on the front burner for most Americans or even the American government, but the rise of several Islamic groups there and a related crisis in neighboring Algeria now have our attention.

The most alarming events played out this week in Algeria as terrorists seized over 40 hostages, with anywhere from three to seven of them being American.  A subsequent rescue attempt by Algerian troops resulted in multiple deaths and the fate of the Americans remains unclear.  The abductions came in response to French officials sending troops to Mali in an effort to defeat the radical elements there.

Answering the question of who is on the rise in Mali is more than a little complicated, but experts see multiple groups working together to take control.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where he is also director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization.  He says not all elements of the rebels are radical Islamists but they are certainly part of the mix.

“You have several different groups and these include groups that are a bit more secular and with their own aims,” said Gartenstein-Ross.  “Secondly, (are) Islamist groups who aren’t necessarily global jihadists, and third is Islamist groups that are global jihadists.

“So there’s a mix of groups which has contributed to a lot of inaccuracy within public discussion of northern Mali.  But sum it up concisely and simplifying a bit, it’s a place where, although Al Qaeda hasn’t formed a seat of its own, as some people have described it, Al Qaeda’s north African contingent was able to find great space to operate.  Meanwhile, some of the very darkest, most hard-lined versions of Islamic law were being put into effect,” he said.

Gartenstein-Ross says all of those developments were of concern to the French, but the very real threat of a terrorist attack on the European continent ultimately triggered its military involvement.

So now that Americans have been caught up in all this, will American policy or level of involvement in the region change much?  Gartenstein-Ross doesn’t believe it will.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is going to play more of a role.  What the U.S. is going to do has also been a subject of contentious debate.  You initially had the Pentagon say that it would provide assistance to the French, surveillance helicopters and the like,” said Gartenstein-Ross.  “According to the latest reports, the White House is now backing down so you may end up having the Pentagon’s view that it should provide support but not boots on the ground winning out over the White House’s view.  I do think what happened in Algeria may prod us a little bit more to provide non-lethal support to the French to make sure that we come through in that regard.”

He also points out that the U.S. is still feeling over-extended militarily, so while Mali is seen as a threat, the Obama administration is not at all eager to play a leading role in this ordeal.

President Obama wants a clean hike in the debt ceiling and insists he is doing substantial work to reduce our debt and deficits.  But both of those ideas are pure fantasy according to one of the top Republicans on the House Budget Committee.

Georgia Rep. Tom Price is vice-chairman of the House Budget Committee and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.  He says while Obama is correct that a debt ceiling hike is in response to existing expenses, but there’s no reason our massive deficits have to continue.

“Just because there are programs that continue spending under current law forever and ever, that doesn’t mean they have to continue forever and ever,” said Price.  “In fact, if we stay on the current course they will go bankrupt.  Medicare is on the road to bankruptcy under this president.  Medicaid is on the road to bankruptcy under this president.  Social Security is on the road to bankruptcy under this president.  So we absolutely must reform these programs so we save them and strengthen them and secure them for those who need them in our society and for this generation and for future generations.”

Price also categorically rejects Obama’s assertion that his administration has taken great strides in cutting spending over the past four years.

“All you’ve got to do is look at the numbers and appreciate that that is not the case,” laughed Price.  “This is an administration that has been in charge when we’ve had the largest increase in absolute debt to our nation in a four-year period of time ever, four trillion dollar-plus deficits for each of the four years that he’s been in office.  And his budget continues that process.”

“There are wonderful, positive solutions.  That’s what we’ll be putting forward in our budget.  That’s what we’ll be embracing.  We hope that the president and his people recognize there are positive reforms that need to be put into place to get this economy rolling again,” said Price.

According to Price, there are all sorts of accounting gimmicks involved in Obama’s claims of responsible spending.

“Some of it is reductions in the slope of growth.  Some of it is actually fictitious or double counting,” said Price.  “For example, the Budget Control Act of 2011 had $1.2 trillion in spending reductions through the sequester.  He wants to count that $1.2 trillion again.  That’s not the way this works.”

On Monday, President Obama asserted that Social Security payments and veterans benefits would not be sent out if Congress fails to lift the debt ceiling.  Price says that is also patently false.

“We won’t allow that to happen but we also believe there is an appropriate prioritization of spending in this country that ought to occur,” said Price, who says the House GOP will pass a prioritization plan should the debt ceiling not be raised.  He says military pay, avoiding default by paying interest on the debt and benefits for seniors will be at the top of that list.

Price also echoed other GOP lawmakers in saying there is much greater resolve among Republicans to demand real reforms and spending cuts for any hike in the debt ceiling.

Obama has also once again failed to present his proposed budget to Congress by the deadline required by law.  Price says this is no small detail.

“The law requires that the Congress pass a budget by April 15.  In order for that to happen, the law also requires that the president submit his budget by a date certain at the end of January,” said Price.  “In this case the president is not going to meet that deadline once again.  Now the reason that’s important is that the Congress doesn’t work their budget off the assumptions that the president uses.  We move through the Congressional Budget Office and it takes time.  So the further the president backs that up, the more difficult it is for Congress to meet it’s budgetary deadline, understanding that we are very hopeful that the Senate will actually adopt a budget this year which they haven’t done for the past four year.”

“On the House side, we’ve adopted a budget the last two years that has gotten on a path to balance and actually paying off the debt.  We will do that again.  We challenge our Senate colleagues to do the same,” said Price.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Sen. Rand Paul for promising to block President Obama’s executive actions on guns that smack of legislative action.  They also condemn the rise of Islamic radicals in Mali and the taking of hostages in Algeria – including multiple Americans.  And they call out President Obama for vowing to crack down on those who sell guns to known criminals after his Justice Department ran the Fast & Furious operation that put thousands of guns in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

President Obama outlined several major legislative initiatives that he claims will reduce gun-related violence, but officials at Gun Owners of America say the proposals will assault Americans’ right to keep and bear arms and do nothing to prevent senseless killings.

The Obama legislative agenda includes several controversial items, starting with universal background checks to make sure guns are not purchased by felons or “someone legally prohibited from buying” a firearm.

Mike Hammond is served in the offices of three U.S. senators and is now general counsel at Gun Owners of America.  He says this provision should be opposed on two grounds.  His first concern centers around the people Obama thinks should be prohibited from buying guns.

“In about 150,000 cases, we’re talking about veterans who came back from Baghdad or Kabul, perhaps sought counseling for a traumatic experience and as a result the Veterans Administration appointed a fiduciary to supervise their financial affairs and then sent their names to this secret list in West Virginia that prohibits people from owning guns,” said Hammond.  “These people didn’t do anything wrong.  They served their country honorably and there’s no reason they should lose their constitutional rights because they sought someone to counsel them.”

While Hammond fears law-abiding Americans could easily be blocked from exercising their Second Amendment rights, he also claims involving the government in each firearm transaction sets the stage for more heavy-handed actions from Uncle Sam.

“It’s increasingly clear to us that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are using these secret lists to begin to compile the beginnings of a national gun registry,” said Hammond.  “I personally drafted the Smith Amendment, which would prohibit them from using the Brady Check in order to create a national gun registry.  But when senators have recently asked the FBI, ‘How are you complying with the Smith Amendment and how long are you keeping the names?’ they’re told to go take a long walk on a short pier.  There is a danger that the Obama administration wants to create this gun registry using this universal check.  There is no way in heaven’s name that we are going to consider anything like that.”

Hammond says a national gun registry is a slippery slope to government confiscation of weapons once the government knows where they are.  He uses recent events in New York state as an example, since Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed new gun control legislation and then alluded to confiscating firearms that are now deemed illegal.

In pushing for the background check, Obama contended that 40 percent of gun sales have no background checks.  Hammond says that statistic is pure fiction.

“They asked the FBI about that and basically the FBI said that the gun control advocates, for lack of a better term, just pulled that statistic out of their ear.  I mean they just made that statistic up,” said Hammond.

The biggest Congressional fight will likely center around Obama’s call for a ban on assault weapons and his demand that magazines carry a limit of 10 bullets.  The president says weapons used in a theater of war should not be brought into a movie theater.

“That is a lie.  When I was in the military I had a weapon that was designed for the theater of war.  It was called an M-16 rifle,” said Hammond.  “It was a fully automatic rifle.  Unless you get a special license from the FBI, you can’t own one of those guns in America.  That is an absolute lie.”

“What the AR-15 is is a gun that is designed cosmetically to look like a full automatic but operates nothing like it,” said Hammond.

Hammond also rejects the proposed limit on bullets in a magazine, saying shooters like the ones in Connecticut and Colorado could just as easily have brought multiple guns and multiple magazines and achieved the same horrific response.

Looking at the big picture of the debate, Hammond believes that Obama reached too far in this agenda.

“Obama, in this case, has dramatically overshot and I think he has overshot in a way that is going to destroy his entire gun control package,” said Hammond, who said that Obama initially leaned toward restoring the ban on semi-automatic weapons that was in effect between 1994-2004.  He says that ban didn’t address some of the more recent cosmetic features on guns like the one used in the Sandy Hook massacre so the scope of this legislation got much bigger.

“So he began adding more guns and more guns and more guns,” said Hammond.  “The people who know what guns are out there tell us that the resulting legislation now will ban probably about 50 percent of the long guns currently in circulation and about 80 percent of the handguns in current circulation.  Let me state that again.  Barack Obama and his proposals would ban most guns currently in circulation.”

Hammond also rejected the president’s 23 executive actions, particularly the ones that encourage doctors to ask patients about guns and share that information with the government.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer the countless Americans for cherishing their Constitutional rights and buying guns before President Obama starts his gun control agenda.  They also groan as Chuck Schumer predictably ends his skepticism over Chuck Hagel and back President Obama on the nomination.  And they recoil as President Obama so shamelessly uses children to push his gun control agenda.

Ron Paul may have retired from Congress but his dream for the Federal Reserve to be audited and ultimately abolished is alive and well.

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun was a staunch ally of Rep. Paul’s legislation to audit the Fed and is now the lead sponsor of a bill identical to the one that easily passed the House in the 112th Congress.

“I’m an original intent constitutionalist, as was Ron Paul while he was here” said Broun.  “We should audit the Fed.  Hopefully we get rid of the Fed, and I introduced a bill to do that also.”

Broun says it’s incredible that the public knows virtually nothing about an institution with so much power over our economy.

“Congress has basically abdicated its duty to control money and the monetary supply and control of our money supply as a nation over to this semi-governmental agency that’s not really governmental,” said Broun.  “In reality, we have had no auditing.  We have absolutely no idea what they’re doing over there.  We’ve had this quantitative easing now into the third time, which has been totally unproductive in trying to get our economy going.  The Fed housing policy was part of the reason we had the housing bubble and crash.  They’re still managing our monetary supply.  They’re creating more and more dollars that have no or very little value behind them.  Our dollars are becoming worth less and less.  As time goes on, they’re going to be worthless.”

“It’s absolutely critical that we audit the Fed so the American people can see what’s going on over there,” said Broun.  “Do it from top to bottom so that we can have transparency in this entity called the Federal Reserve.  Hopefully, the American people will see that we need to go back to the gold standard, which I’ve introduced, and get rid of the Fed.”

The congressman says it’s ridiculous that the only clues we get on Fed actions are in the periodic comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

“We see what he says, but we really have no clue how they’re managing our money across the board, how they are dealing with big banks or small community banks.  We have no idea what they’re doing in creating monetary policy,” said Broun, who says lawmakers don’t even know how much Bernanke and other Fed officials earn in salary or have in the way of benefits.

The GOP-led House easily approved the bill to audit the Fed in the previous Congress, but Broun says it died on the other side of Capitol Hill.

“The problem is Mr. Obstructionist, Harry Reid, threw it in the trash can over on the Senate side.  So hopefully we can get the Senate moving on it by getting the American people demanding that we audit the Fed,” said Broun.

Broun reiterated that his ultimate goal is to abolish the Federal Reserve and return control over monetary policy to Congress.  He admits people don’t have much confidence in Congress either, but Broun contends putting Congress in that role at least offers the chance of that power and money ultimately returning to the the states.

“I’m a Marine and I’m fighting for liberty, and everything I do up here is fighting for the future of our nation,” said Broun.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Charles Cooke of National Review cheer the House GOP for reading the Constitution on the House floor and urge politicians of all stripes to obey it.  They also refute President Obama’s supposedly flawless and reasonable approach to the debt ceiling and gun control.  And they denounce an apparent group of Sandy Hook truthers, who claim the government perpetrated the massacre of schoolkids and are even harassing people connected to the tragedy.

Over the weekend, Treasury Department officials announced the Obama administration would not pursue the minting of a trillion dollar platinum coin as a way of reducing our debt or deficits.

But many on the political left are still pushing the idea as legitimate and urging the president to reconsider his position.

Most Republicans were watching this movement with a combination of amusement and bewilderment, but the traction behind the coin idea is now leading to legislative efforts to prevent the government from ever pursuing such an idea.

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden is also chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.  He says Democrats are toying with this idea only through gross misuse of a law passed in the 1990s aimed at platinum coins for collectors.  Walden’s new bill would block an economically reckless move in the future.

“It would basically take away this authority by limiting the value of the coins to a very small limit and prevent this from happening,” said Walden.  “You could still mint a platinum coin but it would be for the purpose it was intended for, a coin collector’s coin.”

Walden says it doesn’t take an economic genius to figure out why creating a trillion dollar coin would be a huge mistake.

“When you’re adding false value to the supply, you diminish the value of the money people are holding.  It just can’t work any other way,” said Walden.  “They can spin it here or spin it there but if the government’s creating money from where there is no value then they’re devaluing the money that we have.  History’s littered with countries that have attempted to go down this path.”

It’s unclear how urgently Walden’s legislation will be pursued now that the Obama administration has rejected the idea of the coin.  But Walden says the liberal embrace of this idea illustrates how hard it is to achieve common sense solutions across the aisle on the bigger fiscal challenges to the nation.

“This is the kind of lunacy that is rampant today in Washington.  You have a president who says we don’t have a spending problem.  How can you say that when the Congressional Budget Office just told us that we’re already $293 billion in the red this fiscal year that started October 1 and will go over a trillion dollars in the red once again, five years in a row all under this president by the end of the fiscal year,” said Walden.  “We have a spending problem.  It’s like an addict who doesn’t believe he has an addiction.  Eventually, you’ve got to admit you have a problem.  Then you’ve got to get on a recovery plan so that you can get over your addiction.  We have an addiction on deficit spending.  People think there’s an easy way out and there isn’t.  We’ve got to make the difficult but important choices to get America on the right track.”

So do those tough choices include House GOP leaders being willing to allow a temporary partial government shutdown during the debt ceiling debate to demand spending cuts and entitlement reforms?  Walden, a member of leadership, indicated the party is prepared to take that step.

“I think that we have to get these reforms and at some point you have to draw the line in the sand or in the concrete and just stop this runaway spending,” said Walden.  “I hope it doesn’t get to that.  I was a small business owner for 22 years.  You didn’t want to default loans.  You didn’t want to do these things, but you did have to face up to reality and the reality is we’ve got to get spending under control.  Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but it may well.  It’s time to have this fight.”