Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are cautiously optimistic once again as expert number cruncher Nate Silver gives the GOP a 60 percent chance of taking back the Senate majority. They also react to the news of an Afghan soldier killing a two-star U.S. Army general. And they cringe as Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks accuses Democrats of waging a war on whites.
Rise of the Libyan Caliphate
Jihadists in Benghazi are declaring themselves part of an Islamic caliphate just days after tribal warfare forced American diplomatic personnel out of Libya over fears for their safety.
With most of the world focused on foreign crises like the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russian influence in Ukraine, the State Department quietly announced the withdrawal of U.S. embassy staff on July 26. Barely a week later, the fate of the war-torn country appears even more bleak.
“There has been a rapid deterioration over the past couple of weeks. (Friday) in Benghazi, the Ansar al-Sharia group, which of course was involved in the attacks on our special mission compound in Benghazi, have announced an Islamic Sharia state, a portion of a caliphate. They have taken over Benghazi and declared Islamic law,” said author and reporter Ken Timmerman, author most recently of “Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi.”
Timmerman says the fighting between radical Islamic groups is steadily intensifying and the conditions on the ground simply became untenable.
“The country is descending into chaos. I think this was a foreseeable thing. I’ve been talking to people who have been at the U.S. embassy recently, who have been engaged in the security procedures. They told me this was a disaster waiting to happen,” said Timmerman, who did have a bit of praise for Secretary of State John Kerry while jabbing his predecessor.
“Secretary Kerry at least had the foresight to evacuate the embassy, unlike Hillary Clinton, who left our people out to dry on September 11, 2012,” he said.
According to Timmerman, the rapid unraveling of stability in recent weeks is particularly noticeable and alarming.
“In Tripoli you still have ongoing fighting. The international airport has been bombed and shelled repeatedly. Aircraft have been destroyed on the ground. Libyans are basically isolated from the rest of the world. The country is going to hell in a hand basket,” he said, noting that all of this was avoidable because there was no need to force Col. Moammar Gaddafi from power in 2011.
“The Obama administration engaged in the sabotage, an undermining of a regime in Libya that was no threat to the United States whatsoever. Gaddafi had given up his weapons of mass destruction. He had destroyed his ties to terrorist groups. He was helping the United States in the war on terror. Was he a nice guy? No, he wasn’t. Were people in political prisons? Yes, they were. Were thousands jailed? No. He was a thug. He was a dictator, but he was not a threat to the United States and, frankly, he wasn’t even a threat to the Libyan people,” said Timmerman.
“We overthrew him and the result of that was predictable. It was getting these Islamist groups, these jihadi groups, who we helped to arm by the way. We helped to arm them, in Benghazi and elsewhere. They took over the country, and since then they’ve been fighting for control,” he said.
Much of “Dark Forces” details how the toppling of Gaddafi led to a massive amount of American-made weapons winding up in the hands of the world’s worst actors. Timmerman says the risks posed to the U.S. and our allies may well end up being the most troubling legacy of our involvement in Libya.
“The weapons that we delivered to the Libyan opposition, the anti-Gaddafi forces, leaked into the Jihadi networks around the world,” said Timmerman, noting that surface-to-air missiles have been tracked to Sinai, Gaza and even the shooting down of an American helicopter in Afghanistan.
“This is a clear threat to U.S. security interests around the world and I think it’s something that’s got our officials in the intelligence community and even in the military very worried,” he said.
In his book, Timmerman details about 2,500 Russian-made surface-to-air missiles disappeared from Libya’s arsenal after Gaddafi was killed. He says what happened next was even more troubling.
“I was able to document in “Dark Forces” that about 800 of them wound up in this jihadi arms bazaar in northern Niger. That’s a country in Africa, just below Libya. They were upgraded with CIA batteries and then traded amongst various jihadi groups and wound up in the Sinai, Gaza and elsewhere. That’s 800 missiles that are out on the loose,” said Timmerman.
In early 2011, the so-called Arab Spring was proclaimed as a wave of freedom as protests engulfed nations like Egypt, Libya and, eventually, Syria. With chaos gripping Libya, civil war and an Islamic state raging in Syria and Egypt emerging from a two-year battle with the Muslim Brotherhood, Timmerman says the early evaluations of the Arab Spring are less than rosy.
“While it may have had some liberal, pro-western leanings in the beginning, it was quickly dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, quickly dominated by jihadi forces and, in fact, has ushered in an era of darkness across the Arab world,” said Timmerman.
Three Martini Lunch 8/4/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are cautiously enthused by an NBC poll showing voters more enthusiastic about GOP control of Congress than Democratic control. They also slam local governments and utilities for raising water prices after succeeding in getting residents to decrease demand. And they laugh about an ill-planned Obama administration plan to foment rebellion in Cuba.
Inside the House GOP Border Battle
One of the most prominent amnesty opponents in the House Republican Conference says he supported the original border bill, backs the new one as well and believes the legislation will give the American people a clear choice between the parties on immigration policy heading into the November elections.
Friday’s vote was scheduled after GOP leaders failed to muster enough votes to pass the original bill. Members were on their way home for summer recess when they were called back to work again on the legislation. Following a meeting of Republican members Friday morning, passage of a revised bill was largely expected by the end of the day.
Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-California) made headlines last year by suggesting House Speaker John Boehner should lose his leadership position if he ever brought an immigration bill to a vote without having a majority of House GOP members ready to support it.
The congressman says he supported the original legislation. By Friday afternoon, Rohrabacher was waiting to see the final language of the revised bill.
“It’s the same bill as what we had before and the other bill was a step forward. Many of us have been fighting the good fight against the nonsense we have in terms of immigration policy. I was going to vote for it,” said Rohrabacher.
For Rohrabacher, the plan included two of his top priorities. The first is stronger border security.
“We are going to make sure that the National Guard can play a legal role at the border when it’s necessary to call upon them. When they do, the federal government will take that expense because protecting the border is a federal responsibility,” said Rohrabacher, who is also pleased the bill rolls back recent laws mandating that every young person coming across the border be processed.
“It was eliminating a loophole in the law that had been placed there by legislation a long time ago that was aimed at human trafficking but set up a loophole that was actually giving due process rights to people who just ended up at our doorstep. That’s why we were ending up with such a flooding, a swarming of young people at our border,” said Rohrabacher.
He says the failure to pass the bill on Thursday was the result of some confusion other conservative members had over specific language in the bill.
“There was some wording of the bill that some of our more conservative members felt was not as effective as we could have had it and might lead to some confusion,” said Rohrabacher. “They insisted on getting together last night and they worked out the proper wording. That’s what we are going to vote on today and I have no doubt that it will pass.”
Rohrabacher says he still isn’t sure what the wording problems were.
“That was the biggest problem that I had with these people. When I asked for specifics, they really couldn’t give me things. When they tried to, it didn’t make sense to me,” he said.
Other conservative criticisms of the bill include the failure to address President Obama’s unilateral 2012 decision to offer legal status to young people in the country illegally, providing their parents brought them here against their wills while they were minors.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) also demanded that Central Americans entering the country illegally be treated the same as Mexicans committing the same offense. King says that provision was fixed in the updated bill.
While fellow anti-amnesty stalwarts such as Rep. King and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) found the original language unacceptable, Rohrabacher says he respectfully disagrees with their tactics from Thursday.
“I don’t vote against a bill because of what’s not in it. I think that that’s irrational to do that. That way you would vote against every bill because there’s something you can add into every bill that’s going to be more positive. You take a look and you say, ‘Is that bill a step forward. Had they killed that bill for that particular reasoning, it would have been a great disservice to our country because then the positive things wouldn’t get in,” said Rohrabacher.
Thursday was largely a public relations nightmare for the GOP, with leaders briefly giving up on hopes of passing a bill they previously said was vital an planning to take it up again in September. However, Rohrabacher says this debate and the current border crisis are both serving to unify the House Republicans on the issue of immigration reform.
“The circumstances and historic events have been happening that have crystallized in people’s minds what this issue of illegal immigration really is. I have, time and again, said this is not just the president. The president hasn’t brought on this border crisis. It’s the president as well as the Republican leadership. We’re going down the wrong path,” said Rohrabacher, noting that he repeatedly told his GOP colleagues embracing concepts like legalizing young illegal immigrants would lead to a flood of kids at our southern border.
“Our leadership has changed. I think they’ve come to a more realistic understanding of where the Republican constituency is,” he said. “I think that events have caught up with the decision makers in Washington. Now, at least the decision makers in the Republican Party are together and they’re going in the right direction,” he said.
Passage of the bill, he says, puts Democrats in a very awkward position.
“The Democrats are going to suffer because of this because there are a lot of Democrats who are saying, ‘Hey, What’s the president’s answer? He’s going to give away work permits to millions of people who have come here illegally? What is that going to do to the working people of our country who are unemployed now?'” said Rohrabacher.
Senate Democratic leaders vowed to reject the original House bill and left Washington before the House voted on Friday. President Obama reiterated on Friday that he would veto either of the House bills if they somehow made it through the Senate.
So what can the GOP gain by staying in town to pass a bill that will never become law?
“The best thing we need to do as Republicans is say, ‘This is what we’ve passed. This is what our policies would be. Compare it to the Democrats and then you vote. American voters vote and decide what direction our country goes.’ In that way, this bill has served it’s purpose well,” said Rohrabacher.
Three Martini Lunch 8/1/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are not surprised to see a new Kaiser poll showing Obamacare unpopularity at record levels. They also discuss House Republican difficulties in agreeing on border legislation. And they rip the idea of a Florida congressional hopeful to pay each member of Congress the median income in their district.
Bolton: Obama Gets an ‘F’ on Foreign Policy
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the failure of President Obama to lead on the world stage leaves us more vulnerable and some of the most volatile areas on earth even more unstable.
Commenting on crises ranging from the Israel-Hamas conflict to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) to Russia’s defiance in Ukraine, Bolton says if he were grading the Obama administration on these major global tests, the report card would be rather depressing.
“It would be fail, no question about it. We are becoming more endangered. Our friends are becoming more endangered by the weak and ineffective policies we’re pursuing,” said Bolton.
When asked which of the hot spots should be of greatest concern, Bolton instead chose the nation he believes to be pulling the strings in multiple crises.
“If you look at the Middle East, that’s the most critical because it’s the most dangerous. The center of all of this trouble is Iran [because of its] support for international terrorism, like Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is the most dangerous country in the region, the most threatening to friends of ours, Israel and Arab countries alike, and ultimately the biggest threat of the region to the United States if it were to give nuclear weapons to terrorists,” said Bolton, who says Iran is emboldened because U.S. leadership is lacking.
“The Obama administration has not dealt seriously with the ayatollahs in Tehran. It doesn’t appreciate their threat. It’s trying to negotiate with them in a way that will give Iran the advantage to our disadvantage. We need somebody to stand up in the Democratic Party and say, ‘Mr. President, your policies on Iran are endangering America, Israel and our Arab allies and they need to be reversed,'” said Bolton.
He says the clearest example of Iran’s influence is in the actions of Hamas, as it continues to lob rockets and Iranian-made missiles into Israel while Hezbollah has the same weaponry in Lebanon.
“Between Hamas and Hezbollah, they can cover the entire civilian population of Israel. In a way, the battle that Israel is now fighting and is about to fight with Hamas is a surrogate battle with Iran and really Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” said Bolton.
Bolton says that reason alone should be enough for the Obama administration to be far less condemning of Israel’s actions and start backing away from incessant cease-fire demands.
“I think Israel’s legitimate exercise of its right of self-defense here is something the United States should be supporting, not trying to get a cease-fire that prevents Israel from doing what it really needs to do to protect itself. (They’re saying) all the time they’ve got Israel’s back. That’s not the actual policy they’re pursuing,” said Bolton.
The Israel-Hamas fighting is also revealing some curious loyalties in the region. Just a year after shedding Muslim Brotherhood rule, Egypt is cracking down on Hamas as well, from securing its border with Gaza to demolishing tunnel networks created by Hamas. Meanwhile, longtime U.S. allies Qatar and Turkey are openly hostile to Israel.
According to Bolton, many Arab states want Israel to crush Hamas because it represents a blow to the power Iran holds in the Middle East and uses as leverage against its neighbors. Nonetheless, he believes weak leadership from the U.S. is also playing a role in some of the brazen opposition to Israel.
“It shows who’s isolated here is the Obama White House and how much more support we’d have if we demonstrated a little bit of leadership. Friends like Turkey that go the other way do so because they think they can oppose the United States with impunity. They see a weak, inattentive leader in the White House and they’re performing accordingly,” said Bolton.
Iran is also a key player in the major developments to the north in Syria and Iraq, where radical Sunni militants claim to have erased a border and created the Islamic State. That movement has led to mass executions of Iraqi and Syrian forces and the persecution of Christians to either convert, flee or die in parts of Iraq.
Bolton says it does little good to dwell upon the squandered opportunity in Iraq, although he does say it serves as a lesson into why the U.S. cannot withdraw from the world and leave outcomes to outside forces. Once again, he sees failed policies from the Obama administration.
“We have plenty of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria who oppose ISIS, but they don’t want to be put under Iran’s influence. Yet, by negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, we’re giving the ayatollahs legitimacy. It just shows, from top to bottom, the Obama administration doesn’t understand what’s at stake in the Middle East or what we need to do about it,” said Bolton.
Another foreign policy headache continues to unfold with Russia and Ukraine. Two weeks ago, Russian-backed rebels shot down a commercial airliner, killing nearly 300 people. This week, President Obama sternly announced new economic sanctions against Russia . However, Bolton says sanctions like these do more damage to our position than doing nothing at all.
“When you put in sanctions that are ineffective, it says to the Russians, ‘That’s all there is.’ So their calculus is they’re getting away with their aggressive, belligerent policies,” said Bolton.
Bolton says it’s not only the case with U.S. sanctions but European Union actions as well, as evidenced by new EU sanctions cracking down on Russian banks but none of their subsidiaries in the European Union.
“There are comparable loopholes in the sanctions the president announced this week that say to the Russians, ‘They’re simply not serious. We can take minor hits and yet continue aiding the separatists in Ukraine and pursuing aggression on the continent of Europe,” he said.
Obama Lawsuit Labeled ‘Political Stunt’
By Ryan Brown
Amid growing Republican discontent with President Obama’s actions, the House of Representatives passed a measure to file a lawsuit against President Obama. Though the resolution passed with a vote of 225 – 201, the vote was clearly divided on party lines.
At an event in Kansas City, Obama garnered applause from the crowd as he voiced his opinion that the lawsuit votes are simply “political stunts.”
“Everybody recognizes that this is a political stunt, but it’s worse than that because every vote they’re taking like that means a vote they’re not taking to actually help you,” said Obama.
But accusations of political stunt-making came back to the President from Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Republican representatives are quick to note that the lawsuit doesn’t mean they’re trying to get the President impeached. Boehner said, that the word impeachment, is being thrown around more by those close to the President than by conservatives:
“This whole talk about impeachment is coming from the President’s own staff, and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Why? Because they’re trying to rally their people to give money and to show up in this year’s election,” he said.
And in an attempt to downplay the significance of the House-led lawsuit, Boehner was also quick to mention that the House has no plans to impeach the president.
“We have no plans to impeach the President. We have no future plans. It’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House,” said Boehner.
Scam or political stunt notwithstanding, it’s obvious that both Republicans and Democrats see potential in the lawsuit, whether that comes in increased votes, or reduced political power.
Three Martini Lunch 7/31/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review get a kick out of the Clinton releasing a statement saying authors of books critical of them shouldn’t be allowed to do that. They chide conservative media for treating an alleged transcript of a conversation between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu as fact. And they laugh as Hillary gets on board the effort to get the Washington Redskins to change their name.
Three Martini Lunch 7/30/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review have fun with Kentucky Democratic Senate hopeful Alison Grimes thinking the Iron Dome protects Israel from Hamas tunnels. They’re also furious as Democrats try to orchestrate an unnecessary budget crisis over transportation funding. They slam Jesse Ventura for pursuing a defamation case against an American hero’s widow. And Jim offers an epic rant in response to a reader’s demand that he remove a picture of Alison Grimes from his blog.
Legislating Judges Advance Gay Marriage
Traditional marriage advocates are slamming a three-judge panel from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for striking down Virginia’s constitutional amendment affirming traditional marriage, saying the decision violates the separation of powers and potentially opens the doors to any arrangement of adults being considered marriage.
On Monday, Circuit Judges Henry F. Floyd and Roger L. Gregory voted to strike down the constitutional amendment defining marriage in the commonwealth as the union of one man and one woman. The amendment was approved by 57 percent of Virginia voters in 2006.
“Over the decades, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that the right to marry is an expansive liberty interest that may stretch to accommodate changing societal norms,” wrote Floyd in his opinion.
For traditional marriage supporters, that rationale showcases judges who have no problem thinking of themselves as lawmakers.
“With this decision, I think you see another example of the courts exercising legislative powers. They actually believe they have the right to make new law and now they’re not even afraid of proclaiming that in their decision,” said Liberty Counsel Special Counsel Rena Lindevaldsen, who is also a dean and professor at the Liberty University School of Law.
However, it is the summary argument from Judges Floyd and Gregory that is raising many eyebrows about how widely same-sex marriage activists may want to broaden the definition.
“Civil marriage is one of the cornerstones of our way of life. It allows individuals to celebrate and publicly declare their intentions to form lifelong partnerships, which provide unparalleled intimacy, companionship, emotional support, and security. The choice of whether and whom to marry is an intensely personal decision that alters the course of an individual’s life. Denying same-sex couples this choice prohibits them from participating fully in our society, which is precisely the type of segregation that the Fourteenth Amendment cannot countenance,” they wrote.
Lindevaldsen contends that approach leaves a stunning amount of room to define marriage in an infinite number of ways.
“I do see that as a risk. First you have the court proclaiming that the right is ever-expanding and then you have this language that adults should be free to choose to love who they want to love. We already have challenges to the polygamy bans. We have a movement out there suggesting that two, three, four, five people should be able to come together in the marital union. So this opens that door entirely. Once you’ve opened the door past one man and one woman, which has historical and foundational roots, what’s to say the line can’t be drawn to allow two, three, four and five people to marry,” said Lindevaldsen.
While the judges may have opened that door, same-sex marriage activists insist they are not interested in growing the number of people in a marriage but instead in allowing two people of the same gender to wed. Lindevaldsen says once you start meddling with the definition of marriage it will be hard to justify forbidding marriage to people in other unconventional relationships.
“I like to think we could limit it, but from a legal perspective and realistically speaking, once you open the door the door is open. There simply is no reason to now say that three consenting adults, who love each other and want to raise children together, shouldn’t be allowed to marry once we retreat from the definition of marriage as one man and one woman,” said Lindevaldsen.
The two judges also became the first to invoke “segregation” into a marriage ruling. It’s especially significant in Virginia, which was the state at the center of the interracial marriage debate in the late 1960s. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of interracial couples to wed.
Lindevaldsen says there are no genuine similarities between the two issues.
“The movement for same-sex marriage is entirely distinct from the case that took place to allow people of different races to marry. Marriage is about the coming together of one man and one woman. A ban that prohibits people because of their skin color from marrying has nothing to do with advancing that purpose. In fact, it’s racial discrimination. The idea that that’s the same as two people of the same sex, who don’t promote the state’s interests in raising children and coming together to build that firm foundation is entirely distinct from that,” said LIndevaldsen, noting that black pastors are among the most vocal in denouncing comparisons of the same-sex marriage movement to the civil rights era.
In addition to alleging the two judges legislated from the bench, Lindevaldsen also claims they unintentionally undermined one of the key arguments behind the same-sex marriage movement.
“You have the majority opinion stating that it’s wrong for us to have argued that same-sex couples only have sexual relations with same-sex [partners]. So they’re actually saying that same-sex couples can come together in opposite-sex relationships as well, which plays into this pro-creation argument. But it also undermines their argument that ‘we’re born gay, can’t change and we need the right to marry.’ Now the majority is proclaiming that they have this free right to engage in sexual relations with people of the same sex or of the opposite sex. So where’s that going to take us?” said Lindevaldsen.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring made headlines earlier this year by announcing the state would no longer defend the constitutional amendment. In the wake of Monday’s decision, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said he would also stop defending the law in his state.
“I’ve actually been working on a project right now with regard to the duties of state attorneys general to defend the law. They simply do not have the authority to refuse to defend the law. They are charged with enforcing the civil laws. The mechanism to repeal laws is through the legislature or have it declared unconstitutional through the courts. But the people deserve a defense of the laws that were duly enacted,” she said.
The marriage debate is often seen in political terms, but all three judges on the panel were either nominated or promoted by Republican presidents. Floyd was nominated to the district court and promoted to the appeals level by President Obama. Gregory was nominated for the district level by President Clinton and chosen for the appeals court by Bush. The lone dissenting judge, Paul V. Niemeyer, was a George H.W. Bush appointee.
Lindevaldsen is not surprised.
“Obviously, the vetting process wasn’t what it should have been. More importantly, we’re talking about a legal education and judicial system that has been raised on the idea that as judges they set public policy and make law. That transcends political parties, Republican or Democrat. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Justice Scalia talks about it often of how lawyers have been trained. So it’s not surprising you see Republican appointees getting it wrong on what their role is,” she said.
The relative silence of Republicans and even conservatives on the marriage issue in this year’s midterm elections is also troubling to Lindevaldsen.
“I think it’s wrong for conservatives to shy away from this issue by avoiding these issues that are at the forefront of the cultural debate right now. Societal division is taking place. We don’t distinguish ourselves, if you’re a conservative, from the other parties. I think we’re trying too hard to meld into a mushy middle,” said Lindevaldsen.
“By doing that, you don’t distinguish yourself and set yourself apart for what you truly stand for. We really can’t shy away from this. This is the issue of the day that we have to stand for and fight for. If we’re going to be afraid of it, the consequences for our society…I don’t even want to think about where we’re going to go,” she said.