Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review review Hillary Clinton’s painful press conference regarding her private email account and server. We slam her unilateral determination of what emails were business and which were personal and her refusal to turn over the server to investigators. We also groan as the first reporter to question Clinton asked if this would be a controversy if she was a man. And we discuss how much this could all be hurting her 2016 White House bid.
Archives for March 2015
Military Rules Handcuffing Pilots, Blocking U.S. Air Power from Decimating ISIS
U.S. air power is making progress but not achieving nearly as much as it could in the battle against the Islamic State because American pilots or forced to go through a long bureaucratic chain before receiving permission to attack obvious targets such as convoys and atrocities being committed in real time.
Rules of engagement have long been a point of frustration in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the restrictions placed on pilots are getting renewed attention following a Sunday blog post by retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a former intelligence officer who is now a commentator for CNN.
In the post, Francona quotes a pilot using the pseudonym of “Chris.”
“The level of centralized execution, bureaucracy and politics is appalling. Pilots have no decision making authority in the cockpit. Unless a general can look at a video from an ISR sensor, we cannot get authority to engage. I’ve spent hours watching a screen in my cockpit as ISIS commits atrocities, but I cannot do anything. The fear of making a mistake is now the hallmark of American military leadership,” said the pilot.
Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula says that analysis is spot on. Deptula served 35 years in uniform and held command positions in Operation Northern Watch in Iraq in the late 1990s. He also played key roles in orchestrating the air campaign against the Taliban in 2001 and spearheaded the response to the devastating South Asian tsunami.
When it comes to the fight against the Islamic State, Deptula says our air campaign is having noticeable results but it’s only a fraction of what is possible.
“While what’s going on has been very very effective and air power has halted the further movement of ISIL, we could be so much more effective is we actually put together a coherent, comprehensive air campaign,” said Deptula.
The first problem, he says, is the limited amount of activity in the air campaign.
“We have to apply air power like a thunderstorm, not like a drizzle. So far, we’ve been applying it like a drizzle,” he said.
Deptula says the difference between the air campaign in the Gulf War versus the current operation could not be more different. In the 43 days of Operation Desert Storm, he says there were 1,100 attack sorties and a total of 3,000 air sorties per day.
“The average since the 22nd of September of 2014 in Syria has been less than a handful, on the order of 5-10 strike sorties a day. To date, we’ve accomplished about 2,700 attacks since September. If you put that in Desert Storm terms, that’s about two days worth of attacks,” said Deptula.
While the circumstances may be different between the two conflicts, so is the mindset of U.S. military planners. Deptula says American leaders are terrified of making a mistake.
“There appears to be a disproportionate focus on the objectives being to completely avoid any collateral damage to the exclusion of inflicting the greatest amount of impact on the adversary,” said Deptula.
The main frustration for pilots is that while they are authorized to carry out their pre-planned missions, they are not permitted to exercise their own judgment if they spot an enemy convoy or even witness the Islamic State committing barbaric acts against innocent victims.
Just as “Chris” noted in Col. Francona’s blog, Deptula says there is a maddening and time consuming chain of command that pilots must follow.
“That pilot has to make a request to a tactical operations center, who then has to approve or discern that there are no possibilities for collateral damage or friendly fire in the area. Then they have to pass that request to higher headquarters, who then has to sign off on it,” said Deptula.
Deptula says the bureaucracy sometimes goes further than that and opportunities to attack are frequently squandered.
“In some cases, depending on if you’re in Syria or in Iraq, then there are other officers from other nations that get involved in the approval process. So just from what I’ve been telling you, you can see we’re not talking about a matter of seconds or minutes. In some cases it may be as long as hours or it may not happen at all,” he said.
When it comes to civilian casualties, Deptula says there is often confusion about whether laws or the military’s rules are at issue He says the facts are quite clear.
“The laws of international armed conflict understand that warfare is ugly and that casualties will occur. But there’s a big difference between causality of casualties and the responsibility for who accomplishes that,” said Deptula.
The general says if civilians die because they’re used as human shields by the Islamic State, the responsibility for the deaths belongs with the enemy.
“There is this misplaced concern about creating negative impressions in the media that can be used against those who are actually applying force,” said Deptula.
“The sad part of all of this is that adversaries like ISIL, if they are co-mingling with civilians, in accordance with the laws of modern conflict, they are the ones responsible for any casualties, not those applying the force in a legal fashion against the adversary,” he added.
Deptula says the effort to avoid civilian casualties at any cost actually winds up getting more people killed.
“If we get over-consumed with casualties and collateral damage avoidance, that is going to lengthen the campaign and ultimately increase overall civilian casualties. The best way to minimize casualties is to conduct a swift, rapid and focused operation to eliminate ISIL,” said Deptula.
For Deptula, the solution is simple: trust the pilots.
“You need to delegate execution authority and engagement authority to the individual who has the greatest situational awareness at the time, and that’s the pilot who can clearly see and discern what is going on,” said Deptula.
This is not just military theory for Deptula. He says that strategy was very effective while he served as Joint Task Force Commander during Operation Northern Watch, a mission enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq in 1998 and 1999.
“Instead of having my pilots have to ask, ‘Mother, may I?’ for engagement authority, I delegated to them engagement authority based within the context of the pre-brief rules and the degree of certainty of what they were engaging,” said Deptula.
How much of a difference would we see in the fight against the Islamic State if pilots had engagement authority? Deptula says it would be instant and obvious.
“You’d see the difference immediately and it’d make a big difference, because now you’re not missing valid, legitimate and timely targets that have been missed because of an excessive vetting process and an over-subscription to a focus on casualty avoidance as opposed to mission accomplishment,” said Deptula.
Three Martini Lunch 3/10/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see Hillary Clinton finally deciding to emerge and answer some questions about her private email server while Secretary of State. They also slam President Obama for characterizing Wisconsin’s right to work law as Scott Walker declaring “victory over working Americans”. And they fire back at Democrats and liberals in the media for suggesting Republican senators are traitors and cozying up to the mullahs in Iran in response to their open letter saying any deal without Senate ratification will be scrapped in the next administration.
Pro-Lifers Set to Storm Boehner’s Office for Sit-In
Pro-life activist Jill Stanek is joining with the Christian Defense Coalition later this month to stage a sit-in on Capitol Hill over lack of action on a late-term abortion ban that was supposed to be passed in January.
The sit-in is scheduled for 11.a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 25 outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner. At issue is the GOP leadership’s handling of the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”, which bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy but includes exceptions for victims of rape and incest.
Stanek, a former nurse, rose to national prominence after confronting then-Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama over his opposition to legislation that would require medical personnel to take every measure possible to save the life of a baby born alive after an attempted abortion.
She says personal experience drove her to speak up then and it drives her now.
“I, as a nurse at a hospital in Chicago, held an abortion survivor for 45 minutes until he died and he was 21 weeks old. An abortion ban such as this would save babies like I held. This is very real to me. I have actually seen and held the babies that the House is just playing around with willy-nilly right now,” said Stanek.
The bill was supposed to be voted on January 22 in conjunction with the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion and while Washington was filled with pro-life activists for the annual March for Life. Stanek says the concept is very simple.
“It is a ban on abortion past 20 weeks. It is known that by 20 weeks, and probably before, children feel pain. When they are aborted at 20 weeks, they are literally drawn and quartered. They’re just ripped apart, limb by limb. So this ban would make it a federal offense [and] ban abortions past 20 weeks,” she said.
But the bill, which sailed through the House with a smaller Republican majority in the previous Congress, never received a vote.
“Inexplicably, inexcusably, the House leadership scuttled the bill at the last minute, reneged on their promise to pro-lifers. When we protest on March 25, it will have been two months. We’ve been patient, more than measured in our response, more than muted. I, among others, am just not going to stand for this anymore,” said Stanek.
The sticking point in the legislation centered on the exception for rape and incest victims, who would be required to provide a police report of the crime before receiving an abortion. Stanek thinks the exception is a bad idea altogether.
“There should have never been a rape-incest exception to begin with. We’re talking about five months along in pregnancy. Certainly by that time, mothers should know that they’re pregnant. And certainly, babies, even if they’re conceived in rape or incest, are innocent victims too and shouldn’t be put to death,” said Stanek.
Stanek says the provision exists because Republicans have suffered public relations headaches from multiple candidates fumbling the issue of rape and abortion and want to avoid the problem going forward.
Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, tapped Republican women to be the face of this legislation, but it was ultimately two GOP women who forced the bill back on the shelf. Reps. Renee Ellmers, R-NC, and Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., made it clear at the GOP retreat before the vote that they had problems forcing victims of crime to bring a police report with them to get an abortion.
Stanek says if you’re going to have the exception, not requiring women to present a police report would make the law virtually meaningless.
“Late-term abortions aren’t good for women to begin with, but taking out this reporting requirement would just give a huge loophole to abortionists to check that box every time a woman came in for a late-term abortion and say she’s been raped,” said Stanek, who says the reporting requirement also makes women safer.
“Making women report their crime to police protects other women from being victimized by these sexual perpetrators and protects the very women themselves against these perpetrators from violating them again,” she said. “Some of these women are victims of incest and girls are victims of incest. If they don’t have to report the crime, then the evidence is covered up, literally killed when the abortion is committed.”
Despite the eleventh-hour controversy, Stanek says leadership could have pushed the bill through the House.
“The bill never should have been sidelined. They didn’t even take a headcount to see if they had the votes. They had the votes. At the last moment, the chief opponent, Renee Ellmers, said she would vote for the bill, but they just chickened out and they took advantage of the pro-life movement,” said Stanek.
“They don’t take us seriously. They don’t respect us or fear us,” she added.
Pro-life dissatisfaction swelled after the bill was pulled. In response, the House passed legislation to ban taxpayer funding of abortions that same day. Many members also promised that the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would be revived shortly.
Stanek says there has been neither noticeable progress toward fulfilling that promise nor any explanations for why it hasn’t happened.
“There have been no excuses made. They did promise to bring the bill up right away and they haven’t. That is precisely the reason that after two months of waiting, we are going to Washington, D.C., and we are going to force them to address this,” she said.
The protest does carry some legal risks for participants but Stanek believes the cause is worth it.
“It’s going to be a sit-in. We’re going to risk arrest, but this form of civil disobedience is nothing compared to what is happening to these children every day,” said Stanek.
Three Martini Lunch 3/9/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised by how few Democrats are leaping to Hillary Clinton’s defense on the email scandal and how many are saying it’s a serious problem. They also react to poll numbers showing the Russian people hate the U.S. with an intensity not seen in decades. And they discuss UC Irvine students banning the American flag, only to have their decision reversed.
Three Martini Lunch 3/6/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review cheer a new Fox News poll showing Americans are glad Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress and believe President Obama is a bad negotiator who is not aggressive enough towards Iran. They also admit that the recent Hillary Clinton scandals won’t change her presidential plans one bit. And they discuss efforts to get a woman, any woman, on the twenty dollar bill and remove Andrew Jackson.
‘The Party’s Making a Huge Mistake’
Former California Democratic Party Chairman Bill Press says the growing email controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton should convince members of his party that an uncontested coronation of Clinton as the party’s 2016 nominee is a very risky idea and encourage other Democratic White House to throw their hats in the ring.
Press is now a widely-read columnist and television commentator, who wrote about his concern over the Democrats essentially stepping aside for Clinton in his latest column. He’s been stunned by the number of Democrats content to allow Clinton a virtually contested path to the nomination.
“It dismays me as a former party chair of California, as an active Democrat all my life that we’re hearing, ‘Well, nobody should challenge Hillary Clinton because she is the most experienced person we’ve got. She’s the best candidate we’ve got. She has such a powerful political machine. She can’t possibly lose, so everybody else just get out of the way and hand her the nomination,'” said Press, who says this is a rerun of a failed strategy.
“That’s exactly what we heard in 2008 and we know how that worked out. I think the party’s making a huge mistake in not recruiting other people to run. A healthy, contested primary would be good for Hillary. It would be good for the other candidates. It would be good for the party,” he said.
How did the party come to a consensus on Hillary as the nominee without even a campaign? Press says there are several factors at work.
“There’s a certain group of Democrats for whom the Clintons can do no wrong. I think people’s memories are short and then there’s all this media frenzy and attention to Hillary that some people forget there are other very experienced and talented and qualified Democrats out there. By the way, starting with the Vice President of the United States. Hello? Why isn’t anybody talking about Joe (Biden)?” said Press.
The issue is taking on more importance for Press in light of recent controversies over Clinton’s use of private email on a personal server in her home as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation accepting donations from foreign governments while she served as the nation’s top diplomat.
“Let’s face it, there may be other shoes to drop, right? And to put all the eggs, if you will, in the Hillary basket is really very foolish from a long term strategy. If she gets to the middle of the summer and other stuff breaks out and nobody else is out there, then the party’s left empty-handed,” said Press, who believes Clinton’s actions were legal but very “sloppy” and “careless.”
“Nobody has explained why. It’s such an unnecessary set of troubles now for her, for the party, for the Obama administration,” said Press, who believes the good news is more Democrats will seriously consider a 2016 White House bid because of all this.
“I would hope that this scandal over the emails would prompt some people who might have thought of not going for it to take another look at it and to speed up their decision making process, starting with Joe Biden. He has said he’s going to make his decision by the end of the summer. I think that’d be a big mistake. I don’t think they’ve got that much time,” said Press, who thinks other candidates ought to make up their minds in the next month.
In addition to Biden, Press thinks Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) would make solid candidates, along with former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD).
Press is quick to add he is not advocating a vigorous primary because he doesn’t want Hillary Clinton to be the nominee.
“It’s not that her time has come and gone. I would not say that, but I don’t buy the theory that this is her time, period, and everybody else ought to get out of the way,” said Press.
In addition to avoiding a coronation and allowing other candidates a chance to run, Press says a competitive primary would make Clinton a tougher nominee in the general election.
“The worst thing for her would be to be able to take the summer off and to coast, to go into the general election and stand up on stage in her first debate against Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, I don’t care whom, and be rusty, not be tested, not be sharp, not be up to date and up to speed on the issues,” said Press.
“It’s like sending someone to the Metropolitan Opera to walk on stage to sing the lead without going through rehearsals,” he added.
Press says the email and fundraising controversies of the past couple of weeks are leading many more Democrats besides him to encourage a competitive Democratic primary.
“I think there’s a growing feeling among Democrats that Hillary needs a challenge in the primary, for the good of the party and her own sake. (It’s a) big mistake to have a coronation. I don’t think it’s ever worked. I can’t remember in my lifetime when it’s ever worked and I don’t think it will work this time either,” said Press.
‘Blacklisted By History’ – Remembering M. Stanton Evans
On Tuesday, longtime conservative activist M. Stanton Evans died at the age of 80. For some 60 years, Evans was at the forefront of the conservative moment. His first piece was published in 1956. He was the author of the 1960 Sharon Statement of conservative principles drafted at the home of William F. Buckley.
He later played a key role in the creation of Young Americans for Freedom, served as head of the American Conservative Union, founded the National Journalism Center and the Education and Research Institute. He has been credited for reviving Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign which made a 1980 campaign possible.
Stan Evans was also a prolific writer. In the 1960s, he took on the growing concern of liberal indoctrination of college campuses “Revolt on the Campus.” In the 1990s, his book, “The Theme is Freedom” documented how political and personal freedoms are inseparable from freedom of religion and a society valuing virtue and morality.
However, one of his greatest passions was the fight against communism and telling the truth about the McCarthy era and the years that preceded it. His final two books focused on those topics.
In 2008, Evans published “Blacklisted By History,” where he endeavored to set the record straight on the red scare and the threat posed by communists within the U.S. Government before, during and after World War II. Below is my interview with Evans, shortly after “Blacklisted by History” was released.
Three Martini Lunch 3/5/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review applaud Sen. Jeff Sessions for setting EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy straight on the latest climate data as the EPA begs for a major funding increase to combat climate change. They also shake their heads as Hillary Clinton responds to the email scandal with one tweet asking the State Department to release her emails, even though the whole point of the story is that she alone has those emails. And we roll our eyes as Marie Harf first insists there was no classified information in the Hillary emails and then admits she doesn’t know and only said that because that’s what Hillary said.
New Obamacare Showdown
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case challenging the legality of Americans receiving health care subsidies through the federal exchange and which could implode President Obama’s signature legislation if the court rules against him.
Justices heard arguments in King v. Burwell. The petitioners say the law is clear in only allowing Americans to receive subsidies to offset the cost of health care premiums from exchanges “established by the state.” Opponents of the law say the language is crystal clear, while defenders say Congress surely intended for patients to have access to subsidies through the federal government if states decided not to create their own exchanges.
The issue is critical since just 14 states plus the District of Columbia set up their own exchanges.
Gayle Trotter is a lawyer and columnist, who made headlines in 2013 for her passionate defense of gun rights before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Trotter is also a senior fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum. She says this should be an easy call for the Supreme Court.
“Clearly, the stronger argument is to stick to the black letter of the law. That’s why we have laws and the rule of law. We can look at the text of the law. We can all understand it and agree and the language is very clear. The subsidies only occur when the state establishes the health care exchange, not when the federal government establishes a health care exchange,” said Trotter.
The Obama administration’s argument is that by forbidding subsidies through the federal exchange, the court would be sentencing millions of Americans to impossibly high insurance premiums, but Trotter says it doesn’t have to be that way.
“The citizens in those states should not be forced to have the individual mandate and they should not be entitled to the subsidies because their representatives decided that the costs of Obamacare outweighed the small benefits that the federal government was providing for a limited amount of time,” said Trotter.
Reports from Wednesday’s oral arguments suggested that liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were sympathetic to the administration’s arguments, while conservatives Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito seemed likely to back the petitioners in the case.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who is normally an active questioner during oral arguments, was noticeably quiet on Wednesday. Trotter says that might have been a deliberate strategy by Roberts after his prominent role in saving Obamacare in his 2012 ruling that determined the individual mandate was constitutional through the power of Congress to levy taxes.
“Because of that and the significant pressure that has been put on by all sorts of elite academics and media folks on John Roberts that they think was successful in the first go-around of this Obamacare fight, I think he’s holding his cards very close to his chest,” she said.
Trotter sees this case as a golden opportunity for a do-over for Roberts. In a Washington Times column this week, Trotter likened the second court fight over Obamacare to the flubbed oath of office Roberts rendered to Obama in 2009. She says this is obviously a much more consequential opportunity to right something Roberts clearly got wrong in 2012.
“Chief Justice Roberts went against what logic would dictate, what everyone thought he would decide on that case and he upheld Obamacare, torturing the logic behind it to find it a tax,” said Trotter.
The other justice to watch is Anthony Kennedy. He was an active questioner. Kennedy wanted to know whether states were under the impression there would be a federal exchange available to residents if they elected not to establish an exchange in their own states or whether they assumed people would not have access to subsidies.
Trotter says the government tried to appeal to Kennedy’s track record on questions like that.
“The government’s lawyers were certainly trying to make the argument to Justice Kennedy that this was a federalism issue, that the federal government can’t use a cudgel to make the states set up these exchanges to basically pass a law and push it on the states. They’re trying to play into what they think his judicial philosophy is,” said Trotter, who says Kennedy’s vote on this case will likely come down to a basic question.
“It’s really going to come down to whether Justice Kennedy accepts the plaintiff’s arguments or if he is subject to this sort of post hoc rationalization by advocates of Obamacare who were trying to use this to force the states to do what they wanted,” said Trotter.
If the court does strike down the issuing of subsidies from the federal exchange, it could leave the Republican majority in a precarious position. If they somehow salvage subsidies for those currently on the federal exchange, opponents of the law will likely accuse them of saving Obamacare. If they do nothing, Democrats will rail against them for forcing sky-high premiums on millions of people.
Trotter doesn’t expect it to be that dramatic.
“It is an extremely unpopular law, so Americans, and not the elite in Washington, D.C., are going to be happy if Obamacare collapses under it’s own weight. They’ve seen the rising premiums. They’ve seen the limitations of access to the doctors they want to choose. They’ve seen the choices they have not been able to make based on the types of health care they previously had,” said Trotter.
So what should Congress do if the court rules for the petitioners?
“Congress needs to come together and come up with the best patient protection type of legislation that increases free market options and makes sure that the power of the doctor-patient relationship is respected,” said Trotter.