Archives for December 2014

Former CIA official Herb Meyer calls Tuesday’s report by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee nothing more than “intellectual junk food” that could get agents killed and says he wonders what activities are actually permissible for the intelligence community in the eyes of Democrats.

In the wake of the report spearheaded by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-California), supporters hailed it as an example of America admitting its faults and serving as an example of transparency to the world.  Critics say it was a partisan exercise that could damage intelligence gathering operations and put the lives of American operatives in danger.  Meyer says it probably both, but leaves little doubt which consequence is of greater importance.

“On the one hand, good.  We’re Americans.  We put things out.  On the other hand, it’s crazy to put this out.  It’s going to get people killed.  There’s absolutely no point to doing this,” he said.

Meyer served as special assistant to Reagan administration CIA Director William Casey.  He was also vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.  Many experts credit Meyer as the first person to foresee the near-term collapse of the Soviet Union at that time.  He contends the purpose of this report was to severely damage the intelligence community.

“They wished to disarm the CIA.  That was their objective and they probably accomplished a good deal of it.  That was their point.  That’s what they wished to do before they lose power in the Senate,” said Meyer.

He says the fallout from this report will be hugely negative for intelligence professionals.

“It’s very destructive.  Why should any CIA officer risk his or her life or his or her career to do something like this?  It’s a disaster,” said Meyer, predicting negative effects among current personnel and to efforts to bring new people.

“What CIA official in his or right mind would do something that a few years from now can destroy their career?  You’d have to be crazy,” he said.  “Why would the kind of people who have the skill and talent and courage to defend our country, go to work for the CIA right now?  Do you realize what this does for recruitment?  It kills it.”

The damage to recruitment, he says, will never be fully known.

“These are the kind of damages that get done that you can’t measure statistically.  You can’t prove something didn’t happen.  But the kind of people who say, ‘You know, I’d like to join the CIA and defend the United States,’ they’re not going to do that anymore,” said Meyer

Tuesday’s report from Senate Democrats, and dubbed the “Torture Report” by most media outlets, chronicles the actions taken by CIA personnel and others in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.  Although much of the content had been released over the past several years, much attention is paid to tactics like keeping detainees in stress positions, depriving them of sleep, rectal feedings and three cases of waterboarding men suspected of withholding critical operational intelligence.

Meyer says the report succeeded in creating sensational headlines but the report as a whole is an embarrassment to those who drafted it.

“It’s intellectual junk food.  It’s not very credible.  It isn’t a good piece of writing.  If anybody submitted that as a National Intelligence Estimate, we’d have fired them.  It reaches the conclusions before it gives you the evidence.  In fact, they didn’t even speak with the people who knew the facts,” said Meyer.

For Meyer, watching the criticism of the CIA in recent years, particularly by Democrats, raises an unanswered question.

“For years now, Senator Feinstein and the others have been saying what they don’t want the CIA to do, but they never say what they do want the CIA to do,” he said, painting a very personal scenario for Feinstein to consider.

“Let’s say that the CIA finds out that a nuclear bomb has been planted in one of our cities.  Just for fun, let’s pick San Francisco, Senator Feinstein’s hometown.  We find out that there’s a nuclear bomb planted.  Our CIA agents over in Yemen capture one of the terrorists and say, ‘Where’s the bomb and when is it going to go off?’  He won’s say anything.  So we ask him again and he says,’Allah be praised, Americans will die.’  At this point, what does Senator Feinstein want the CIA to do?” asked Meyer.

“I’d like her to answer that question, not to tell us what they don’t want the CIA to do.  What do they want us to do?  And if the answer is nothing, then San Francisco is a pile of radioactive rubble,” said Meyer.

Another major debate resuming in the wake of this report is over whether enhanced interrogation techniques successfully elicited actionable intelligence or not.  The report concludes the tactics were not effective but CIA leaders past and present insist they did.

“I don’t have any evidence other than that, but the people who did it have not only said they were effective, they’ve given us the details of what they’ve learned.  They’ve made much of that public.  All of that is completely ignored in the report without any evidence to the contrary.  That’s why it’s just intellectual junk food,” said Meyer.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Patrick Brennan of National Review cheer Rep. Trey Gowdy’s grilling of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber.  They also discuss the deep flaws with the CIA report from Senate Democrats.  And they react to former ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton admitting President Obama has gone on profanity-laced tirades to the media – off the record of course.

More than a dozen years after leading a drastic reduction in Virginia’s “car tax”, former Gov. Jim Gilmore is fighting to protect the cuts and kill the tax altogether while members of both parties seek to raise it again to fund an ever-expanding budget.

Despite Republicans narrowly control Virginia’s Senate and hold a commanding edge in the House of Delegates, tax increases are being discussed in the Old Dominion.  Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is currently governor.  Gilmore expects this push for a tax increase to fail but Republicans need to be much stronger than they have been to this point.

“We certainly believe the House of Delegates will stand fast.  We certainly hope that they do.  In the State Senate, we’ve always had a problem that moderate to liberal senators in the Virginia State Senate want to continue to increase taxes and they never really liked the car tax cut, even though many of them were elected on it.  That’s a real problem,” said Gilmore.

In fact, this debate is flaring up again because of pressure from a Republican member of the senate.

“This issue has been raised because an outgoing Republican state senator has said we ought to reach back in and get this money,” said Gilmore.

Gilmore was elected governor in 1997 and made elimination of the personal property tax, or car tax, his number one priority.  The vast majority of states don’t have such a tax, which annually charges vehicle owners a percentage of the blue book value.  Gilmore says it was a major burden on Virginia families.

“The car tax is charged by localities to individual people living in the cities and counties.  The individual citizens get a bill every year in the mail, in which they’re asked to pay a very substantial amount of money for the privilege of owning their automobile.  This was a hated tax,” he said.

“Some people couldn’t afford it.  People who were in desperate straits were using their car to get to and from work.  All of a sudden they were having to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for the privilege of owning their car.  Young people were not able to pay it suddenly because of lower wages and were having to put it on credit cards,” said Gilmore.

Upon taking office in 1998, Gilmore successfully pushed a plan through the legislature to phase out the car tax over the next few years.  Seventy percent of the burden had been wiped out when circumstances forced Gilmore and lawmakers to hold rates in place.

“We stopped it because of the (2001) recession but we also built in a plan to make sure that the phaseout would continue and that the car tax would be completely eliminated.  Sadly enough, Gov. (Mark) Warner, who came after me, never fulfilled his promise, never proceeded to finish the phaseout and there was no leadership in the legislature to do it either.  So unfortunately, a remnant of that car tax exists today,” said Gilmore.

Far from making good on his vow to phase out the car tax, Warner froze the car tax in place while raising taxes elsewhere.

“After I left office, Gov. Warner raised taxes on the people of Virginia, whining that the car tax cut was depriving the commonwealth of revenue.  So they’ve been paid once for this car tax cut, sadly enough, and now they want to get paid again,” said Gilmore.

Some localities in Virginia did see a car tax rate increase as part of the 2012 transportation package, which critics describe as the largest tax increase in commonwealth history.  That legislation was championed by a Republican governor (Bob McDonnell), a Democratic senate and a heavily Republican House of Delegates.

Gilmore says the constant thirst for more tax dollars in Richmond comes despite an explosion in tax revenues over the past decade.  He says as state coffers swell with tax payments, the government just wants to spend more and more.  The proof, he says, is an annual budget today that is over 260 percent higher than it was when he left office in 2002.

“The budget of Virginia has gone up dramatically in the last number of years.  A little bit of money going into (car tax relief) regularly could have eliminated it totally and not one penny  of additional money has gone into tax relief, even though the budget has grown from $18 billion to $47 billion dollars,” said Gilmore.

One of the key sticking points in eliminating the car tax is the money committed to cities and counties based on the original car tax rate.  Virginia is still on the hook for reimbursing those localities for the difference in revenues lost as a result of the car tax cuts.  Commonwealth officials now keep funds in reserve to reimburse the cities and counties, but that pile of money can often be irresistible to politicians.

“That body of money is a very attractive target for members of the legislature who want to reach in there and get new money,” said Gilmore.

Gilmore says killing the rest of the car tax should be an easy decision for Virginia lawmakers and would set the stage for meaningful reform.

“The car tax should completely go away.  Then we could do a legitimate tax reform, where we do some revenue sharing with the localities and make sure education and law enforcement are well taken care of but the car tax goes away.  That’s what I believe the correct objective ought to be,” he said.

Frustration with Virginia Republicans flirting with a tax increase comes as conservatives watch the actions of Republicans in Washington with some uncertainty on issues from spending to confronting President Obama for his changing of immigration law.

Gilmore says the GOP should not be condemned before they assume control of Capitol Hill next month.  However, he does see one area of concern.

“Let’s see exactly what they do in January when they actually get their majority sworn in.  I think the real danger here is that there will be so many different ideas and priorities that there’s no unifying theme.  That may be the danger,” said Gilmore.

The former governor says our current economic health gives the GOP a golden opportunity to create conditions for significant economic growth.  Citing 92 million Americans still looking for work and monthly jobs reports stuffed mostly with part-time job creation, Gilmore says Republicans have their unifying theme staring them in the face.

“Cut taxes appropriately, grow the economy and then really get this country moving again and add to a unified conservative Republican approach to government we can all agree on,” said Gilmore.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review give credit to Secretary of State John Kerry for demanding the Senate report on CIA interrogations be postponed until security at foreign installations were in place.  They rip Democrats for going down ground already covered in previous reports.  And they react to reports of a drone at TGI Fridays injuring a photographer.

Seventy years ago this month, American heroes successfully held the small crossroads town of Bastogne, repelling Nazi Germany’s last chance at a settled peace and making total victory in Europe all but guaranteed.

Acclaimed author and reporter Dr. Jerome Corsi lays out the incredible sacrifice of America’s men in uniform and carefully explores the question of whether divine intervention is responsible for the Allies prevailing against seemingly insurmountable odds and in horrific conditions.  His new book is entitled “No Greater Valor: The Siege of Bastogne, and the Miracle that Sealed Allied Victory.”

Corsi says the question has lingered in his mind since he was a young boy listening to his father and others discuss the seemingly miraculous events at Bastogne.

“His friends, some of whom had fought at Bastogne, felt like there were a series of events that were almost like a miracle, that God’s intervention had permitted them to stay alive.  Otherwise, the expection was they would be overwhelmed by the Nazis.  It was very unexpected that this small group held out long enough to delay Hitler’s advance and actually turn the tide in the Battle of the Bulge,” said Corsi.

By early December 1944, the Allies thought total victory in Europe could be achieved by Christmas.  Since the Normandy invasion six months earlier, they had slogged their way out of northern France and then steamrolled across the country and were about to plow into the heart of Germany. Knowing he had to make one more push to have a chance for a settled peace, Adolf Hitler ordered a massive tank assault on allied positions in eastern France and in Belgium in the Ardennes.

The Allies hastily arranged defenses around the strategically important town of Bastogne.

“It had eight roads crossing through it.  It was a critical town to hold because if you wanted to move west from the Ardennes toward the Meuse River, going through Bastogne was the only efficient way to do it,” said Corsi, who noted the Allies were completely taken by surprise.

“Winter was setting in and we kind of stalled the offensive moving into Germany.  We felt that Hitler had been pretty well worn down.  The idea that he had all these tank divisions and could put this together was a completely surprise to Allied intelligence,” said Corsi

The German assault began on December 16.  The ferocity required the call up of new forces without any notice, most notably those in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, which was resting in France after participating in the brutal and unsuccessful mission to cross the Rhine River, known as Operation Market Garden.

“They went into action that night, driven all night long in these open trucks to Bastogne in the cold.  They didn’t even have winter equipment.  They weren’t adequately resupplied.  They hardly had weapons or ammunition,” said Corsi.

Needless to say, the original defense posture around Bastogne was thrown together quickly and left something to be desired.  Many of the arriving troops got weapons and protection from the cold from stunned service members in retreat.

“They said, ‘If you’re not using that M-1, would you mind handing it to me’ or, ‘If you’re not using that overcoat, how about giving it to me.’  They resupplied themselves bravely on the run.  When they got to Bastogne, they were the last troops to arrive, put in the line at exactly the right place with the 10th Armored (Division) to just stall the German advance until the defense of Bastogne could be organized,” said Corsi.

Regardless of the strategy, the sheer numbers suggested the Germans would be virtually impossible to stop.

“It was about 15,000 Americans total that defended Bastogne and the Nazis had up to 50,000-60,000 in Panzer divisions trying to take Bastogne,” said Corsi.

If the disparity in men and weapons wasn’t daunting enough, the brutally cold conditions presented as much of a challenge for U.S. forces as the Nazis did.

“For eight days they held out, freezing, no food.   They were down to taking their Life Savers and K rations and melting them with Sterno cans in order to make a little soup.  That’s all they had to eat,” said Corsi.

It’s precisely because of overwhelmingly bad odds, little protection from the cold and lack of food that Corsi and others believe only God could have turned those circumstances into an Allied success.  Corsi said it started with General George Patton turning to God as he raced his Third Army north to the Bulge.

“Patton called the chaplain into his headquarters and said, ‘I need a prayer for good weather.’  The chaplain wrote a prayer.  Patton printed it and handed it out to all of the troops in the Third Army and, remarkably, on the 23rd of December, the weather at Bastogne lifted enough that the C-47s could get in and do an air drop on Bastogne,” said Corsi, who believes without that air drop, the Allies could not have held Bastogne.

“They were down to one or two shells per artillery gun.  This is one of the parts that was considered a miracle.  The weather changed.  No one expected it.  Meteorologists had not predicted it.  They just woke up on the 23rd and the skies were clear and they put the C-47s in the air,” said Corsi.

“If they had not resupplied Bastogne by air on December 23, I’m confident the Nazis would have overrun the American position at Bastogne.  The 101st and the 10th Armored would have been killed or taken prisoner as POWs,” he said.

The clearing of the skies over Bastogne at precisely the right moment is one aspect of the story that many chalk up to God’s intervention, but it’s hardly the only one.  Corsi says other seeming coincidences worked perfectly for the Allied advantage as well.

“General (Anthony) McAuliffe, when he set out to Bastogne, originally thought he was going to Verbermont.  That’s where the original orders were, a different town in Belgium.  But he made a side tour because he thought, Well, General Middleton, the corps commander’s in Bastogne.  I’ll see him in person.  When he arrived, about 5:30 that night, Middleton said, ‘General McAuliffe, I’m sure glad to see you because your orders were changed and your unit is coming here.’  Well, he didn’t know that.  He just made the right decision,” said Corsi.

The remarkable events continued from there, as the general set up an ad hoc assembly area for troops who were lost in the way to support the defense of Bastogne.

“(McAuliffe) picked the perfect location from which to deploy the troops and the right order in which for them to arrive, even though he had no advanced knowledge,” said Corsi.  “And on and on and on his decisions went, which units to put where.  It turned out to always be the exact right unit to meet the German attack that day.  For eight days they held out.”

In the end, the Allies held at Bastogne and the Germans never punched through the bulge in the western front.  By failing, Hitler lost his last chance at avoiding an unconditional surrender and World War II was essentially over in Europe.  The courage and endurance of American forces, particularly the 101st Airborne Division, is a portrait in heroism.  But for Corsi, the evidence adds up to God truly saving the day for the Allies.

“All these acts of courage came together in a way that the men felt was exceptional.  This was beyond what they’d expect from just good military planning or good fighting,” said Corsi.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review revel not only in Bill Cassidy’s sound defeat of Mary Landrieu in Louisiana but in Democrats immediately writing it off because of racism and religion in the South.  They also applaud the U.S. military for trying to rescue an American hostage in Yemen but regret that Al Qaeda killed the hostage and one other.  And they react to Van Jones offering to kiss National Review Editor Rich Lowry after Lowry pointed campus sexual assault statistics include things like forced kissing.

Come August of next year, high school students in Minnesota will be permitted to play sports on teams with whatever gender they “identify” with, rather than what their biological gender would dictate, and a leading Christian family group believes this is a recipe for disaster.

On Thursday, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) officially adopted new policies that would require all public, private and even some religious high schools to accommodate transgender students, effective August 1, 2015.  The decision came in the face of fierce opposition that delayed the decision by months.

“They passed a policy that will allow students who identify as transgender to play on teams opposite their birth sex, which will almost certainly lead to them also accessing the locker rooms, bathrooms, even hotel rooms of the opposite biological sex.  This is very problematic for many students, parents and even schools around the state,” said Autumn Leva, director of policy and communications at the Minnesota Family Council.

The Minnesota Family Council is one of the leading public voices against this change in policy by the MSHSL.  Officials say there will be criteria to determine which students can qualify to play for teams of different biological genders.  Leva and her allies offered one of their own prior to Thursday’s vote.

“We brought forward our alternative proposal that is in place in three other states.  It would simply clarify that for the purpose of high school athletics, a student’s sex is their birth sex and that they play on teams that match their birth sex, with the exception that already exists in state law that allows girls to try out for boys’ teams (such as football or wrestling).  Even though this is a valid and completely legal policy that’s in place in other states, the High School League gave no attention to that proposal,” said Leva.

She says the clear public opinion on the matter didn’t sway the league either.

“Even though we brought forward a petition with close to 7,000 Minnesotans who prefer our solution to what the league is doing.  Even public and private schools have signed on, saying this is what they wanted and the league didn’t even give it any air time.  So it’s really been a pretty one-sided discussion,” said Leva.

Minnesota is the 33rd state to grant some sort of high school sports accommodation to transgender students.  Leva says this wave happened very recently so it’s too soon to chronicle the impact of the policies from around the country.  She contends this is a major focal point of the gay rights agenda.  Leva says state high school athletic associations are under pressure to conform from the The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), which is heavily influenced by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).  

She points to guidance language from the NFHS that quotes GLSEN as proof that individual state groups like the MSHSL are being forced to fall in line.

A bulletin from NFHS entitled “Developing Policies for Transgender Students on High School Teams” and dated November 21, 2014 reads:  “Transgender students are those whose gender they were assigned at birth does not match how they identify their gender. A student might have been identified as a boy at birth, but now identifies as a girl, or vice-versa. Transgender students often report experiencing harassment and bullying from their classmates, as well as inaction from their teachers or coaches when they report being taunted or physically assaulted (GLSEN, 2011).”

The MSHSL did adopt an exemption for religiously affiliated high schools, but Leva says that provides far less protection for those schools than the league would have Minnesotans believe.

“The league actually narrowed the exemption, so now if a private Christian school is not directly affiliated with a particular denomination or a specific church, they are not protected under this policy.  So they will have to comply.  That’s all of our independent Christian schools,” said Leva.

Even the schools that make that cut, says Leva, could very easily feel the consequences of noncompliance.

“If a private religious school claims their exemption will they lose some standing in the league?  Will they be forced to forfeit certain games?  Will they be forced to allow visiting schools on their facilities to allow their students use facilities of the opposite sex.  None of those effects of the exemption were clarified in any way,” she said.

Leva says the practical effects of this policy are both obvious and subtle.

“Again, that will almost certainly lead to (transgender athletes) using the locker rooms of the opposite sex.  So we’ve got students’ privacy right implicated, putting students of opposite sex in very private settings, changing and using the restroom together.  Obviously that’s a huge concern to students and parents,” said Leva.

“We’ve got Title IX implications and discrimination against female athletes, since our state statutes make very clear that we separate female teams for a reason, to ensure that they have an equal and fair opportunity to compete.  This policy really flies in the face of that provision,” she added.

There’s also a health and safety component to criticism of this policy.  Leva says the physical differences between the genders are undeniable.

“The statutes have always recognized, and federal law as well, that there is inherent physical characteristics that are different between males and females.  We need to take that into account for the fairness and safety of these girls.  So what this new policy will do is say that actually doesn’t matter and that biological boys can now play on girls teams so long as they say that they identify as a girl,” said Leva.

But what about the precedent that already exists allowing girls to play on boys’ teams in sports like football and wrestling?  Is that evidence this is not as big of a deal as Leva and others fear?  Leva says the two situations are not comparable.

“It goes beyond just having a girl complete as a girl on the wrestling team or the football team, since there’s not a girls’ football team.  It goes into saying,’This girl is actually a boy and is competing as a boy on the football and wrestling team and should therefore have access to the boys’ locker rooms, the boys’ hotel rooms on away games.  The implications of this are very real and very serious,” said Leva.

With the debate over policy over for the moment, Leva says it’s now families and school leaders who have to make tough decisions.

“It rests in the hands of parents, student athletes and schools to decide what they’re going to do.  The high school league is a volunteer association, though schools need to be a part of it in order to compete in state athletics.  But they have a choice here to whether they’re going to comply with this policy.  The league has made it mandatory but the schools ultimately have a choice.  Parents and student athletes also have a choice,” said Leva.

Fox News Channel Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano is unimpressed by states suing the federal government over President Obama unilaterally changing immigration laws or by House Republicans pushing legislation to forbid Obama from moving forward in implementing his policies.

Napolitano is also not urging lawmakers to defund enforcement of what many on the right consider amnesty.  Instead, the former New Jersey Superior Court judge thinks Obama’s actions warrant his removal from office.

Earlier this week, 17 states, led by Texas Attorney General and Governor-Elect Greg Abbott, filed suit against the federal government.  Napolitano says that’s not going to get the job done.

“They can file all the lawsuits they want and the court is going to say, ‘Tell your client, Mr. Boehner, tell your client, Senator McConnell, that there’s a perfectly acceptable remedy right there in the Constitution that’s bloodless and they can do it by taking a couple of votes.  It’s called impeachment,'” said Napolitano.

Republicans from leadership to the most rock-ribbed conservatives have all dismissed any speculation about impeachment since they clearly don’t have the votes to convict Obama in the Senate and they believe it will backfire politically heading into 2016.  Nonetheless, Napolitano finds that GOP position baffling.

“For some bizarre reason that I have yet to understand, the Republican leadership in Washington believes that if they file articles of impeachment, this is going to elect Hillary president.  What?  That’s a disconnect to me,” said Napolitano.

On Thursday, the House approved legislation authored by Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida) that forbids Obama from implementing any unilateral changes to immigration law.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) vows the bill will never reach the Senate floor on his watch.  Napolitano believes the bill would never achieve its desired effect.

“They could enact a statute that says all these executive orders are illegal and no one’s to obey them.  The president could veto that.  Let’s say they have enough votes to override his veto.  They don’t, but let’s say they do.  Let’s say they override the veto and the statute becomes law without the president’s signature.  He’s not going to obey that statute.  He doesn’t obey the laws that were in existence at the time he took an oath to enforce them faithfully.  He’s certainly not going to obey a statute that was written in order to regulate his behavior when he’s already decided that his behavior is going to be the opposite of it,” said Napolitano.

Napolitano says the case for Obama acting unconstitutionally is very clear.

“We have a lawless president who is saying to five million people, ‘You want to stay here?  Do A,B,C,D and E.’  Where did the A,B,C,D and E come from?  He made them up.  They’re not even in the statute as it now exists,” said Napolitano.

While Napolitano does not claim the votes exist to convict Obama, he contends the damage being done to our system of government by Obama circumventing Congress needs to be addressed.

“That effectively denies the public its voice in Congress.  When Congress writes a law and the president doesn’t enforce it, and the president instead rewrites the law, nullifies the law or writes his own, all of which Barack Obama has just done, he is effectively nullifying Congress.  If that’s not an impeachable event, I don’t know what is,” said Napolitano.

In his new book, “Suicide Pact: The radical expansion of presidential powers and the assault on civil liberties,” Napolitano chronicles what he sees as the lawless grab of executive power by presidents throughout history.  His examples include Abraham Lincoln detaining 3,000 reporters from northern states who were critical of his handling of the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson banning the speaking of German in public in the days of World War I and Franklin Roosevelt confiscating gold from American citizens before he had any legal grounds for doing so.

But Napolitano saves half of his book to blast the war on terrorism policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, including expanded NSA powers, due process denials and the targeting of American citizens in drone strikes.

Immigration policy is largely seen as separate from the issues raised in “Suicide Pact,” but Napolitano says it’s further evidence of the insatiable desire of presidents to accumulate more and more power for themselves.

“The essence of the book is when presidential lawbreaking is unpunished, unchecked and not stopped, presidents will continue to do it.  And they will rely on the unpunished, unstopped, unchecked, unconstitutional behavior of their predecessors to justify it,” said Napolitano.

The judge firmly believes that on what he considers the biggest three issues facing America, Republicans and Democrats are largely in agreement and their biggest public squabbles are on the periphery.  He says it’s an opinion that’s not well-received at the Fox News Channel but one he feels compelled to articulate anyway.

“The three great issues of our day in my view are: Where do our rights come from?  Both parties believe our rights come from the government because they have taken our rights away from us by majority vote.  Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence and most Americans would tell you our rights come from our humanity,” said Napolitano.  “The second and third great issues of our day are war and debt and both parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt.”

If both parties are truly guilty of pushing America down this path as Napolitano alleges, what recourse do Americans have to reverse the tide?  He thinks a different kind of president can set things on the right track and he has a candidate in mind.

“The solution is probably to elect somebody like the fellow that wrote the forward in this book to the White House, but that would presume that there’d be a number of people who agree with him in both houses of Congress.  I speak of (Kentucky Senator) Rand Paul,” he said.

“In my world view, when the Democrats and the Republicans are on the same side and it’s always bigger, stronger government and smaller and lesser liberty, only a person who truly would break that mold will be able to break it.  A middle of the road Republican or a middle of the road Democrat in the White House, a la George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, will further this march towards totalitarianism, not stop and reverse it,” said Napolitano.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see robust job growth in November.  They also shake their heads at a year of invective aimed at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over “Bridgegate” as a new legislative report finds no evidence that he ordered it or knew about it.  And they discuss the implosion at The New Republic.

Just days after admitting the existence of documents that show the IRS shared confidential taxpayer information with the White House, the Treasury Department is now refusing to hand over the papers due to what it calls privacy and disclosure issues.

The announcement from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) comes even after a federal judge ordered the government to turn over documents sought by the grassroots organization Cause of Action.  The group’s top attorney says this latest lack of cooperation was expected.

“Sadly, I don’t think that we’re surprised that they did this.  This has been a two-year fight, where they have stonewalled and stalled throughout.  Despite getting a very favorable court order that would have forced them to tell us whether there were investigations and produce the documents, they’ve decided to withhold every single page,” said Cause of Action Chief Counsel Prashant Khetan.

The Treasury Department says it cannot hand over any documents because sensitive taxpayer information needs to be protected.  Khetan flatly rejects that excuse.

“We don’t think that there’s a valid argument there,” he said.  “We agree that taxpayer information ought to remain confidential but what they’re doing is using it as a sword and a shield.  Here they’re attempting to block groups like us and taxpayers from knowing whose information has been targeted by the White House.”

Even without seeing a single document, Khetan says Cause of Action and other groups and individuals have already been vindicated their suspicion of the IRS and the Obama administration.

“We thought all along that there had been targeting going on of individuals.  What this lawsuit has accomplished is…we’ve gotten an admission that the IRS was sharing confidential taxpayer information with the administration and they’re not supposed to do that,” said Khetan.

Khetan says this takes the scandal to a new height from the harassment endured by conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

“We have, for the past few years, been focusing on whether or not the administration in the White House has been targeting groups or individuals.  We all know through the Lois Lerner scandal that there was targeting of groups.  We had thought that they had been targeting individuals as well. We started with a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act request) both to the IRS and TIGTA, just to find out if there had been unauthorized disclosures of taxpayer information.  Here we are nearly two years later and we’ve learned that there were,” said Khetan.

Where does the legal fight go from here?  Khetan says the court is likely to side with Cause of Action and force the documents to be handed over, but he says it make take awhile and come with some conditions.

“We go back to the same judge.  In fact, there should be a filing very soon that will set out a briefing schedule.  Unfortunately, that will take us into 2015.  Ultimately, I would say that it’s unlikely that we will get the documents in unredacted form and that may actually be OK because citizens have the right to not have their information disclosed, even to groups like us,” said Khetan, who says lawmakers need to jump on this as well.

“Congress really has the ability to get the documents, the same documents that we’re seeking but to get them in unredacted form and to review them and maybe learn about who was being targeted and why,” said Khetan.

Khetan says Congress has done a lot of good work so far in peeling back the layers of this scandal, but there’s more to do.

“We’ve been pleased with some of the steps that have been taken, not just with this but even the broader IRS scandal of the administration targeting certain groups.  What we’d like to see is Congress be even more active, particularly in 2015,” said Khetan.

“The government needs to come clean about obtaining private American taxpayer information.  Our lawsuit has at least revealed the IRS is doing unauthorized disclosures to the White House.  So the White House was looking at certain taxpayer information,” said Khetan.