† Nagin Has A Chocolate Chip On His Shoulder: LA Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, 49, is following his father’s footsteps as the mayor of New Orleans – the first white mayor the majority-black city has elected since Moon Landrieu left office in 1979. The younger Landrieu beat out 10 opponents to win in a landslide with 66 percent of the vote, reports The Associated Press:

 

Landrieu, who lost to [Ray] Nagin in a runoff four years ago, was a welcome change for some voters who grew frustrated with the city's current mayor. Little known outside New Orleans before Katrina, Nagin became a central, and sometimes controversial figure, in the city's struggle to recover. Though he won re-election as he courted black voters in the 2006 campaign, Nagin notoriously pledged after the hurricane that New Orleans would be a "chocolate city" again, offending many whites.

 

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: A year ago, “[e]very street corner, it seemed, had Obama wares (or Obama wear) for sale” but now “T-shirts depicting our president as a dunking Michael Jordan, a victorious Muhammad Ali, or saber-baring Luke Skywalker (yes, these shirts all existed) are nowhere to be found,” reports US News & World Report. And the Obama Store - the mecca for all things Obama - “[i]deally situated in the basement of Washington’s Union Station … to make big profits” [has been shuttered]. ... Meanwhile, the Pepsi campaign that borrowed heavily from Obama has fizzled.”

 

† BAM To DOJ: KSM In NYC Is DOA: In a pre-Super Bowl interview with CBS' Katie Couric, President Barack Hussein Obama said he has not ruled out trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in NYC, reports The Associated Press. In a separate interview, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) countered that it is not feasible and “the administration should realize that and move on.”

 

In the interview, Obama also walked back Attorney General Eric Holder’s oft-stated claim that “more than 300 individuals” were tried and convicted on terrorism-related charges during the Bush administration: “The prosecuted 190 [terror suspects] … got convictions and those folks are in maximum security prisons right now.” For months, Sen. Jon Kyl (D-AZ), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security has been trying to find out who these high profile terrorists are and whether they pose a comparable national security risk as Gitmo detainees  – but the administration has been stonewalling. Well, 37 percent of them are accounted for – they were figments of Holder’s imagination, according to Obama.

 

† My Friend The Witch Doctor, He Taught Me What To Do: When President Barack Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast last week, he made a point of condemning a proposed Ugandan law that criminalizes  homosexuality: “We may disagree about gay marriage, but we can surely agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are whether it's here in the United States or as Hillary mentioned more extremely in odious laws proposed most recently.”

 

Too bad he didn’t also say, “We may disagree about abortion, but we can surely agree that it is unconscionable to target innocent children for sacrifice as Hillary mentioned in odious pagan rituals.” Oh, wait: When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her keynote address that "[i]n the Obama administration, we are looking take on religious discrimination and violations of human rights,” she wasn’t talking about Ugandan witch doctors kidnapping, killing and mutilating children to appease “the spirits.” And neither was Obama.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think): Five months after the Obama administration announced the creation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, the “elite” team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects, has finally been authorized to begin questioning terrorism suspects. The Washington Post reports that the administration is still grappling with resolving “pressing issues that emerged since Christmas -- including how to draw the line between gathering intelligence and building a legal case.” But the HIG is supervised by the National Security Council - not the CIA – and will get legal guidance from the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, so it seems pretty clear that its mission will be to collect evidence rather than to glean intelligence.

 

Columnist Stephen Hayes takes Attorney General Eric Holder’s view that absent a "public safety" exception, the law and FBI policy require conferring Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists captured within our borders to its logical conclusion: “[T]he FBI could pick up al Qaeda's chief of operations in, say, Tampa, Fla., and unless he met the criteria for a public safety exception (i.e. had a gun), the FBI would be required to Mirandize him immediately and give him a lawyer.” If President Barack Hussein Obama opposes Mirandizing terrorists, as he claimed in a "60 Minutes" interview last year (“[D]o these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter - down the block? Of course not.”), why has he allowed Holder to supersede his authority?

        

Hearing weather forecasters describe the Washington, D.C. blizzard as "Snowmaggedon" and the "Snopocalypse" would deter most people from going for a drive, but not former Tom Daschle. A local FOX News crew spotted the former Senate Majority Leader on Wisconsin Avenue trying to push his car out of the snow, and came to the rescue. Reporter Matt Ackland magnanimously offered the assistance of his photographer Nelson Jones, who was able to get Daschle back on the road. FOX turned the incident into an object lesson on common sense.

        

Things That May Cause Or Worsen GERD

- HealthDay News, February 7, 2010

        

Tainted Milk Shows China's Food Safety Challenges

- The Associated Press, February 4, 2010

        

Former NFL defensive tackle Warren Sapp was arrested for misdemeanor domestic battery, reports ESPN.com:

 

The victim had a swollen knee and bruises on her neck, according to an arrest affidavit. She told detectives that she was partying with Sapp and her friends at the [Shore Club] hotel and asked for his room key when she grew tired. Sapp reportedly woke up the victim a few hours later and they started to argue. She told investigators that Sapp started to choke her and pushed her down on a couch.

 

As the argument escalated, Sapp grabbed the woman by her shirt and neck and threw her down again, the affidavit states. 
 

The NFL Network immediately yanked Sapp him from its coverage of the Super Bowl, and will keep him off the air while they “review the matter.” Sapp also works as an analyst for Showtime's "Inside the NFL" show, which continues to feature him in a promo for its “Beat the Insiders” game as of this writing.

        

A spate of salacious new details about John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter – and his handlers’ desperate, and possibly felonious, attempts at damage control – has become public with the publication of campaign post-mortem “Game Change” and former campaign aide Andrew Young’s tell-all, “The Politician.” Edwards is just one in a long line of ambitious pols to cheat on his wife, and his affair with Hunter shares a number of interesting parallels with the sex scandals of previous presidents and candidates for the office. For instance:

 

† James Garfield had his own Rielle Hunter of sorts in the person of an 18-year-old New York Times reporter named Lucia Calhoun. He gave her up when his wife threatened to divorce him, which would have nip his political career in the bud.

 

† Like Edwards, Grover Cleveland was accused of having fathered an illegitimate child early in his presidential campaign, Ignoring the advice of his aides to lie, he came clean about his affair with Maria Halpin right away and acknowledged being the boy’s father. The thing is, Halpin was something of a slut (or worse) and the child could have been fathered by several men, but Cleveland assumed financial responsibility for the child because all the others had wives and children to support.

 

† In contrast, when Edwards became aware that the National Enquirer would name his lover and divulge her pregnancy a couple of weeks before the 2008 Iowa primary, he strong-armed Young – a married father of three – into a public declaration of paternity. In an interview on "Good Morning America" Young said he agreed to the ruse out of loyalty for Edwards, compassion for his cancer-stricken wife and because "two very powerful people" assured him that “every viable Democratic candidate” had a skeleton in his or her closet. When Frances Quinn Hunter is born on February 27, 2008 in California, no father’s name is given on the birth certificate. In an interview with “Nightline” some five months later Edwards admitted to an affair with Hunter, but denied fathering her daughter or making child support payments.

 

At one point, Edwards asked Young to steal one of the girl’s diapers for a secret DNA test and get the doctor to fake the results if necessary, but the increasingly disenchanted and disgusted aide refused. Edwards finally confessed that he was the father of Hunter’s child a couple of weeks before Young’s book was published.

 

† Edwards promised Hunter that he would marry her after his wife Elizabeth succumbed to breast cancer – he envisioned a rooftop wedding in Manhattan with the Dave Matthews Band providing the entertainment. When Woodrow Wilson began dating Edith Bolling Galt just seven months after his wife, Ellen Louise Axson, died of chronic nephritis (known then as “Bright's disease”), the media rumor mill blamed Ellen’s death on heartbreak over the affair. (And some people darkly suggested that Wilson killed his wife so he could be free to marry Galt.)

 

† Warren G. Harding, who failed to tell the Republican National Committee of his long-standing affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of a friend, before he accepted the party’s nomination for president. To prevent anyone getting wind of the affair before Election Day, party officials sent the Phillips family off for an extended, all-expenses paid (and then some) holiday. As with the Harding-Phillips scandal, during the first primaries of 2008 Hunter and the Young family were kept on the move until the baby was born to keep the media off the scent - with campaign finance chairman Fred Baron and other Edwards backers bankrolling their living expenses.

 

Young told "20/20" that Edwards’ supporters shelled out $1 million in cash, private jets and hotel rooms to conceal the affair and pregnancy. A federal grand jury investigation is under way to determine whether these payments – which were made to maintain the viability of Edwards’ candidacy – should be considered campaign donations and disclosed under campaign finance regulations.

 

† The MSM got scooped by nontraditional media in reporting Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, as well as Edwards’ affair with Hunter. In Clinton’s case, upstart Internet tip sheet "The Drudge Report” broke the news that Newsweek had spiked a story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff about the affair hours before publication on Saturday, January 17, 1998; the first newspaper stories about the affair wouldn’t be published for another three days. On October 10, 2007, the National Enquirer was the first paper to report that Edwards had been involved with another woman for a year-and-a-half – and for months the Enquirer was the only print or electronic media outlet to chronicle Edwards’ affair and Hunter’s pregnancy.

 

And both the Clinton and Edwards peccadilloes were caught on tape. In Clinton’s case, 37 secretly recorded telephone conversations totaling more than 22 hours between Lewinsky and her then-confidante Linda Tripp. With Edwards, a sex tape and voice mail messages Young says are in his possession. Young and his wife, who watched the tape together, claim that while the face of the woman having sex with Edwards is not visible, she is clearly pregnant and they saw bracelets and a thumb ring belonging to Hunter in the video. In an interview with “The View,” Young said the grand jury has subpoenaed a copy of the tape.

 

While it’s true that more than a few pols and presidents in both parties have been philanderers, the particulars of Edwards’ affair – the terminally ill wife pus the illegitimate child plus the elaborate cover-up of his paternity plus not taking responsibility for his daughter Quinn until she was two years old plus the sex tape plus the latest bombshell allegation that he became enraged and struck Elizabeth during a heated argument – make it the most sordid sex scandal in the annals of American political history.

 

And a recent survey in Edwards’ home state of North Carolina by Public Policy Polling finds that he is viewed positively by only 15 percent of voters, making him the "most unpopular person we've polled anywhere at any time." In other words, John Edwards is King Of The Heels now, and probably for all time – notwithstanding the revelations in Jenny Sanford’s memoir “Staying True” about soon-to-be-ex husband Mark Sanford’s history of caddishness, which she tolerated and abetted with her cluelessness.

 

Editorial Note: An earlier version of this post was published on Fox Forum.

        

† Putting The “Boo” In Boomer (second item): Or is that putting the “eeewww” in? Apparently the over-50 crowd has discovered “sexting” – as in sending naked photos taken with a cell phone camera to a contact via text messaging. CBS News (Channel 2-NY) interviewed one Debbie Nigro, 52, who founded a group for divorced women, FirstWivesWorld.com and has been sexting for a couple years now. She claims that “The only difference between being 50 and sexting and being 20 and sexting is you need reading glasses to see what the heck they're saying.” Um, the difference is that you need to take your glasses off so you can’t see what they’re sending too clearly.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Americans are drinking as much as ever, but have “traded down” to bargain brands of bourbon, vodka and tequila to get their buzz on, instead of super-premium spirits, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS). And people are doing more of their drinking at home or private parties, and less in restaurants, bars, hotels and nightclubs, reports MarketWatch.

 

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: For the better part of eight years, Leslie Calhoun, a chef at the NBC cafeteria lobbied her bosses to let her make special entrees every Thursday during February in honor of Black History Month. When a musician who plays in Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night" show band posted a photo of the menu - fried chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas - on Twitter, it went viral and the celebratory feast was deemed “racist” by people who feel entitled to be the arbiters of racial outrage.

In an interview with the New York Post, Calhoun - who, BTW, is black - said:  

 

"All I wanted to do was make a meal that everyone would enjoy - and that I eat myself." …

 

"The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn't." …

 

Asked if she understood why some people might find her menu concept offensive, Calhoun said, "I don't understand it at all. It's what I eat."

 

So if the NBC cafeteria serves corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread on St. Patrick’s Day is that racist? What about tacos and quesadillas on Cinco de Mayo?

 

† Obama’s Family Values: Part V (second item): President Barack Hussein Obama's aunt Zeituni Onyango, a Kenyan citizen, arrived at U.S. Immigration Court for a closed- door hearing before Judge Leonard Shapiro in a wheelchair with a cane across her lap. She testified on her own behalf, as did two doctors – who presumably testified about her recovery from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing autoimmune disorder. The 2½-hour proceeding ended without a decision.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Take The Veil Off, Or Go Home): French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has refused to grant citizenship to a Muslim man from Morocco whose treatment of his French-born wife failed to respect the “values of the [French] republic,” reports The Christian Science Monitor:

 

“He has no place in our country,” … Fillon told Europe 1 radio, in a decision that comes a week after a French parliamentary commission recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face. The ban still needs to be voted on, but it would apply in hospitals and on public transport. France already has bans for wearing headscarves in state schools. …

 

“This case is about a religious radical: he imposes the burqa, he imposes the separation of men and women in his own home, and he refuses to shake the hands of women,” Fillon said. …

 

Writing for Forbes, columnist Emre Deliveli says the burqa ban will backfire.

 

“According to Interior Ministry figures and expert testimonies to the parliamentary commission, 1,900, or fewer than one in a thousand, Muslim women in France wear a burqa," Deliveli writes.

 

So because “fewer than one in a thousand” Muslim women are being subjugated and treated like chattel in a Western democracy, it’s OK? Even one is too many.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): Remember that high-tech “virtual fence” that was supposed to keep illegal aliens on their side of the border? Well $672 million later, President Barack Hussein Obama is considering cutting back, if not scrapping, the glitch-plagued $6.7 billion project, reports The Washington Times:

 

Among other things, the radar system had trouble distinguishing between vegetation and people when it was windy. Also, the satellite communication system took too long to relay information in the field to a command center. By the time an operator moved a camera to take a closer look at a spot, whatever had raised suspicion was gone.

 

The Homeland Security Department and Boeing said the early problems were fixed, but other glitches keep popping up. The latest: A software bug that causes video recording devices to lock on to the wrong cameras, hindering agents trying to collect evidence against illegal border crossers. …

 

Both Boeing and the government officials said the technical problems stemmed from an erroneous belief that the first-of-its-kind virtual fence could be put together relatively quickly by tying together off-the-shelf components that weren't designed to be linked.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts  (ninth item Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised): The New York Times reports that millions of homeowners are doing the math and figuring out that they’d be better off walking away from their homes than to continue make monthly payments on a home that’s worth less than 75 percent of what the owe the bank:

 

In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.

 

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

 

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing. …

 

In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.  …

 

The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance. …

 

Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage. Bloggers were quick to note recently that landlords of an 11,000-unit residential complex in Manhattan showed no hesitation, or shame, in walking away from their deeply underwater investment.  

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): President Barack Hussein Obama tries to get populist cred with his campaign against “Washington” and “Wall Street,” but members of his own party who are nervous about their prospects in November are trying to get their populist cred by campaigning against him reports The Baltimore Sun:

 

A Democratic Senate candidate in Missouri denounced the budget's sky-high deficit. A Florida Democrat whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center hit the roof over NASA budget cuts. And an endangered Senate Democrat denounced proposed cuts in farm subsidies.

 

A headline on the 2010 campaign website of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), blares her opposition to Obama's farm budget: “Blanche stands up for Arkansas farm families,” it says.

 

Heading into an election season in which Republicans are trying to tie Democrats to Obama's unpopular policies, Obama's budget gives his fellow Democrats an unlikely campaign tool - a catalogue of ways to establish their distance from controversial aspects of his administration.

 

It is a time-tested campaign tactic for politicians to declare their independence of party leaders. But the tactic is particularly important for Democrats this year, because their party dominates Washington, and being an insider is a political liability in an anti-incumbent climate.

 

Underscoring that dynamic, Obama held a question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats on Wednesday, drawing polite challenges from a procession of incumbents up for reelection. [Contextual video link added by The Stiletto.]

 

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), a recent party-switcher, questioned trade policies battering the steel industry. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) asked about health care for first responders involved in the Sept. 11attack. The message from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.): “California is hurting.”

 

Few, if any, of these Dems will invite Obama to go on the stump with them (you know, the kiss of death).

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, GOP Hoping To Find A Chair That’s “Just Right”): The Washington Times reports that high-profile Repub wins in VA,NJ and MA have, for the moment at least, tamped down criticism of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele:

 

A feared open revolt against the former Maryland lieutenant governor fizzled at the 168-member RNC's winter gathering in Honolulu over the weekend, despite lingering questions about the party's finances and the chairman's side business dealings.

 

"The party came away from its winter meeting fired up and unified," said North Dakota GOP Chairman Gary Emineth, a Steele supporter on the RNC. Mr. Steele "had the benefit of New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts to build on, because the RNC invested significant financial resources and time, which paid off."

 

"If there is any concern, it is the limited amount of cash on hand with a huge opportunity before us in 2010," Mr. Emineth added.

 

In the view of RNC General Counsel Reince Priebus, who is also Wisconsin GOP state chairman, the "embattled" label on Mr. Steele "is nothing but fiction."

 

Mr. Steele is "popular with the members of the RNC, and he is doing a fantastic job in raising money, winning elections and keeping members happy," Mr. Priebus said.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth, Pierced Pussies For Sale On eBay): A Luzerne County, PA, jury convicted 35-year-old dog groomer Holly Crawford on two counts of animal cruelty for selling black "gothic kittens" with ear and neck piercings on eBay.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on 7-year-old Tristan Lavin, who saved his 10-year-old brother’s life when the older boy fell through the ice and into frigid water. The Press of Atlantic City reports:

 

From a floating dock, Tristan held onto his brother. …

 

About 120 yards away - in a home across the water on North Rumson Avenue - Scott and Joanne Abbott’s dog, Kano, started to bark uncharacteristically. …

 

Joanne Abbott looked outside her window. It was 5:15 p.m. and starting to get dark. …

 

“I can’t see distance that well, but finally I saw a red hat,” she said. “And I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I went out back and said, ‘Are you OK?’ And there was no response. I yelled, ‘Are you OK?’ and I heard ‘No!’” …

 

Margate police responded quickly, Joanne Abbott said. Officer [John] Oakes lifted the child from the water and into an ambulance.

 

Madonna Wulf describes her son Tristan as having “a lot of common sense,” “a strong little fellow” and “very calm.” She said that he told her, “I couldn’t let go because I knew if I let go that would be it.”

        

Kinman Chan, 30, was charged with interfering with the duties of a flight attendant and disorderly conduct for (allegedly) going into the bathroom shortly after takeoff, screaming, and dropping trou. According to the criminal complaing, Chan fought off crew members who tried to get him to sit, until he was subdued in a chokehold. US Airways Flight 1447 from Philadelphia to Los Angeles was diverted to Pittsburgh, where he was arrested. His defense? He ate a double dose of marijuana-laced cookies – prescribed in San Francisco for an unspecified medical condition – and freaked out, reports The Associated Press. If convicted of interfering with the duties of a flight attendant, Chan faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

 

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]

        

Understanding Perimenopause

- HealthDay News, Febrary 4, 2010

        

How Big Is $1.9 trillion? Very

- The Associated Press, February 4, 2010

        

The X-ray machine at the entrance of the Manhattan Detention Complex - in the vicinity of where the World Trade Center stood until September 11, 2001 – revealed that Imam Zulqarnain Abu-Shahid, 58, had a pair of scissors and three metal box cutter blades in the outer flap of his shoulder bag.

 

After his arrest on several counts of promoting prison contraband, further investigation revealed that Abu-Shahid – a NYC Department of Correction chaplain – was one of four men convicted of the murder of a customer during the armed robbery of a Finast supermarket in Harlem in December 1976, reports The New York Times:

 

James M. McQueeney, the chaplain’s lawyer, said that his client did not know the blades were in the bag when he entered the jail. …

 

As for the chaplain’s past, Mr. McQueeney said, “He has completely reformed his life” and lives with his wife and two children on Staten Island.

 

Officials with the city’s Department of Correction said that the chaplain, who joined the department in February 2007 and earns $49,471 a year, was immediately suspended without pay.

 

“Additional steps, up to and including dismissal, will be pursued consistent with the findings of the Department of Investigation,” Dora Schriro, the commissioner of the Correction Department, said in a statement.

 

Stephen J. Morello, a Correction Department spokesman, later added that in light of the chaplain’s criminal background, Ms. Schriro “has directed a full review of the circumstances of his hiring.”

        

† BAM To DOJ: KSM In NYC Is DOA: New York Law Journal reports that “despite statements by some administration officials that a Manhattan trial [for KSM and four co-defendants] may still be on the table, the tension at the [Southern District] courthouse has visibly eased, with relief being the prevailing emotion”:

 

[S]everal people said they had been concerned that a proposed security lockdown extending outwards from the Worth Street side of 500 Pearl would make it increasingly difficult to conduct business as usual at the courthouse. …

 

More than one judge expressed surprise at how quickly the landscape shifted last week.

 

One supervisor said some employees had expressed concern about their physical safety in the belief … that a 9/11 trial would increase the likelihood of a terror attack at the courthouse.

 

For his part, liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has courageously admitted what most Americans across the political spectrum have been thinking for quite some time now: “There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer” and “more is at stake here than America's image abroad”:

 

Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. …

 

Bush stands condemned by the facts for Sept. 11 - his watch, his responsibility - and in all likelihood he bent over backward to ensure that nothing like those attacks would happen again.

 

The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to have bent over backward to prove to the world it is not the Bush administration and will, almost no matter what, ensure that everyone gets the benefit of American civil liberties. But the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama.

 

† Felon Fingered For Terrorist Train Threat: CO prosecutors have declined to press charges against ex-con and self-described anarchist Ojore Nuru Lutalo, because further investigation did not corroborate the concerns of Amtrak passengers that he made a threat or acted in a suspicious manner.

 

† Not Your Father's (Or Your) Sex Education (second item): Sex education classes that encourage kids to remain abstinent “until they are ready” are effective in persuading sixth- and seventh-graders to put off sex for at least two years, according to a study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine involving 662 black students who were followed from 2001 and 2004, reports The Washington Post:

 

Over the next two years, about 33 percent of the students who went through the abstinence program started having sex, compared with about 52 percent who were taught only safe sex. About 42 percent of the students who went through the comprehensive program [combining abstinence and contraception] started having sex, and about 47 percent of those who learned about other ways to be healthy did.

 

The abstinence program had no negative effects on condom use, which has been a major criticism of the abstinence approach.

 

Sarah Brown, who heads the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, calls the study “game-changing," and John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led study noted that abstinence-only education had been “written off without looking closely at the nature of the evidence.”

 

The WaPo notes that the Obama administration eliminated more than $170 million in annual federal funding for abstinence programs in favor of a $183 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will pay for “only programs that have been shown scientifically to work.” If that is the case, and the administration does not have an ideological bias against abstinence only sex ed, these findings should restore funding to such programs.

 

† “Botched” Abortion Turns Into Infanticde: Remember Dr. Pierre Renelique – the FL abortionist whose unlicensed staff killed a baby born alive after a “botched” drug-induced abortion in 2006? Well, he was found guilty of medical malpractice a year ago and the FL Board of Medicine revoked his license a month ago. And he’s now employed by Clinton Place Medical Center in The Bronx (though it’s unclear whether the facility provides abortion services). Protesters are demanding that the New York State Medical Board get involved, because as Father Peter West of Priests for Life put it: “Apparently Dr. Renelique is not good enough for Florida but he is found good enough for the women of The Bronx.”

 

† Obama’s Family Values: Part V (second item): On Thursday, U.S. Immigration Court Judge Leonard I. Shapiro is expected to rule whether Zeituni Onyango, President Barack Hussein Obama’s aunt who has been living in the U.S. illegally for more than five years, can stay or must return to Kenya. The Boston Herald reports that the removal hearing – at which Onyango can call witnesses – is being held behind closed doors, “though it’s unclear why.” In 2004 Shapiro had ordered her to leave the country. As far as anyone can tell, President Barack Hussein Obama has not tried to influence the outcome of Onyango’s immigration proceedings.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: A National Retail Federation/BIGResearch poll finds that for the second year in a row, sweethearts are shying away from showy (read: costly) expressions of love, planning to spend $63.34 on gifts for a significant other or spouse, compared to $67.22 in 2009, reports MarketingDaily:

 

[T]otal spending for the holiday - at $103 per person - is more or less in line with last year's total of about $14.1 billion.

 

Last year's drop was the doozy, when consumers said they planned to spend an average of $102.50, down from $122.98 per person the previous year. …

 

As is typical, men say they will spend about twice as much as women: $135.35 versus $72.28. And as was true last year, when consumers were still reeling from the recession, personal, creative or practical gifts are getting more attention. Many of the gifts are as predictable as ever, including greeting cards (which 54.9% plan to purchase), candy (47.2%), flowers (35.6%) and jewelry (15.5%). But others are losing favor: Only 35.6% plan an evening out, for example, compared with 47% last year.  

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think): Obama administration officials are claiming vindication in their handling of underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, saying that he’s resumed talking to the FBI about his training and contacts since last week, reports The Washington Post:

 

The disclosures that the Nigerian student is cooperating with criminal investigators come amid a fierce debate in Congress over the Obama administration's handling of the case and, more broadly, its approach to national security. …

 

The Obama administration asserts … however, that its approach is paying dividends. "It's been very successful as far as gaining his cooperation," a senior administration official told reporters late Tuesday, referring to Abdulmutallab. Officials have also said that the civilian legal system is more than capable of handling terrorism investigations and trials. …

 

U.S. investigators flew members of Abdulmutallab's family from Nigeria to the United States on Jan. 17, the senior administration official said. The family members have proved vital in getting Abdulmutallab to talk, he said - indicating that it would have been counterproductive to interrogate him under military rules, as some have suggested.

 

But administration critics are not mollified by this new development, reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

"There's no changing the fact that Mirandizing Abdulmutallab gave terrorists a six-week head start to cover their tracks," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. "We will never know what life-saving information on co-conspirators and future plots we missed out on."

 

Coincidentally – or not – Abdulmutallab started talking when his attorney, public defender Miriam Siefer began negotiating a plea deal. Remember back when the U.S.A. did not negotiate with terrorists?

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Obama’s One-Two Cha-Cha-Cha): Remember all those successful terrorist prosecutions Attorney General Eric Holder and other Obama administration officials keep touting to justify their handling of jihadis as common criminals? Leaving aside the fact that in many cases, convictions of high-profile terrorists like Richard Reid were obtained as a result of guilty pleas (which is the likely disposition of the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab prosecution), the case of al Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam (AKA “The Millennial Bomber”) – which has gone from district court to the high court and to an appellate court – is not an example of a successful prosecution, even though he was convicted in a plot to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport.  

 

A panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Ressam’s 22-year prison sentence on the grounds that the trial judge had improperly deviated from sentencing guidelines and had gone so easy on the terrorist as to imperil public safety, reports the Los Angeles Times:

 

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour gave Ressam a lenient sentence, the appeals court found. The panel cited four procedural errors by Coughenour and ordered the case transferred to another judge for sentencing.

 

Coughenour had rejected the federal sentencing recommendation of 65 years in prison for the terrorism conspiracy offenses, noting that Ressam had provided U.S. intelligence with essential insights into the Al Qaeda network until he ceased cooperating with federal agents after solitary confinement and what he considered excessive interrogation.

 

Two years into his post-conviction agreement to cooperate in return for a reduced sentence, Ressam retracted statements key to prosecuting … Al Qaeda suspects [Abu Doha and Samir Ait Mohamed, who were in British and Canadian custody at the request of the U.S.] and undermining the conviction of a third.

 

The 9th Circuit panel cited Coughenour's failure to adequately explain why he deviated from federal sentencing guidelines and his disregard of prosecutors' concerns about potential security consequences if Ressam is released after 22 years at age 53.

 

The paper notes that – to little avail - First Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Bartlett explained to Coughenour that because Ressam retracted his testimony, our government had to drop charges against Doha and Mohamed, and was put "in a horrible position" with two important allies.

 

American jurisprudence requires that foreign-born terrorists prosecuted in a civilian criminal court be accorded all the rights of a U.S. citizen to a fair trial, even if national security is compromised. But national security requires prosecution by a military commission with the accused granted only those rights necessary to ensure a fair trial. As a fair trial is the aim of both systems of justice, trying terrorists at Gitmo does not force “the false choice between our security and our ideals,” as President Barack Hussein Obama puts it, whereas trying terrorists in a criminal court does.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder): When President Barack Hussein Obama called on Senators who oppose cap-and-trade legislation despite “overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change,” in his State of the Union address, the audience tittered, and Vice President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and even the president himself – joined in on the laughter. If you look closely, their facial expressions are acknowledging: "I know that you know that I also think it's a bunch of BS, but I gotta do what I gotta do to satisfy the base":

With a spate of articles in British newspapers reporting new revelations of a cover-up of rigged temperature data (the latest involve moving the locatons of Chinese weather stations), the systematic shunning of scientists with contradictory findings or opposing viewpoints) and U.N. research reports based on anecdotal evidence (sixth item), the global warming jig is up – except amongst those who stand to gain politically (keeping the moonbats happy) or financially (carbon traders). And then there’s Usama bin Laden, who correctly figured out that cap-and-trade legislation would so hobble the U.S. economy that climate changeis jihad by other means. UBL’s endorsement may well be the final nail in the coffin of one of the biggest scientific frauds of all time (fourth item).

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): A federal grand jury has charged Mohammed Wali Zazi with conspiring to obstruct a criminal investigation of his son, Najibullah Zazi, who was charged in September with plotting to attack NYC with homemade bombs. The father is accused of hiding and destroying liquid chemicals, glasses and masks.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on multimillionaire Jim Ansara, founder of Shawmut Design and Construction and his wife, Karen, who  “have become powerful forces in Haiti’s recovery and rebuilding,” reports The Boston Globe:

 

Ansara … made his way to the devastated main hospital in the Haitian capital four days after the earthquake and went to work amid piles of lifeless bodies.

 

He found small generators and got them working. He spliced wires to light the makeshift operating rooms. He helped move patients around. For 12 days, working with Americans and Haitians, doctors and nurses, and hospital maintenance workers, he helped bring some order to the turmoil. …

 

“Jim was saving lives on the ground and Karen was making sure we connected with the Haitian-American community here and getting the fund up and running,’’ said Kate Guedj, vice president for philanthropic services at the Boston Foundation who has worked with the Ansaras for a decade. “They are just incredibly genuine and incredibly engaged.’’ …

 

“If it weren’t for Jim’s involvement, we would not have accomplished what we did on the ground in the last two weeks,’’ said Dr. David Walton, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who arrived in Haiti just after the quake and worked side-by-side with Ansara. “He was so hands-on that he was taking things apart, and putting them back together.’’

 

Meanwhile, from their home in Essex north of Boston, Karen went to work the day after the Jan. 12 quake, creating a Haiti relief and development fund through the Boston Foundation. The Ansaras put up $1 million to match public gifts to the new Haiti recovery fund, with the goal of collecting $2 million in all.

        

The “heavily Jewish” Boston suburb of Newton was in a tizzy when a subcommittee of the Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a resolution by Aldermen Stephen Linsky and Ted Hess-Mahan that called for the city to “welcome” Guantanamo detainee Abdul Aziz Naji to the city, reports The Jerusalem Post:

 

The resolution itself cites [the 34-year-old Algerian’s] local connections – he is represented pro bono by two Newton-based lawyers [Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell] – in expressing a willingness to “welcome this cleared detainee into our community” as soon as Congress repealed the ban on settling released Guantanamo prisoners in the US, which the resolution also urged.

 

“Newton has historically welcomed refugees from a variety of countries and under many circumstances,” the resolution also stated.

 

“Newton’s history of supporting human rights makes it fitting that our community provide safe resettlement to a man who has been unjustly imprisoned by the US government at Guantanamo Bay.”

 

Stephen Linsky, one of the two cosponsors of the resolution, explained that to implement a repeal of the ban – something he supports – communities would have to accept detainees, and he wanted his support to be more than empty words.

 

“This isn’t about rewarding any individual. It’s about aiding US interests, and how we can help,” he said. “It means raising our hand to do our part.”

 

But when another alderman, Charlie Shapiro, heard about the resolution, he thought it was far from being in Newton’s interest, let alone the country’s.

 

“Under normal circumstances I would have been the first to welcome immigrants to the City of Newton, but I draw the line at anyone who is associated with terrorism in any way, shape or form,” said Shapiro.

 

At a meeting of the full board, the resolution to urge Congress to lift the ban on Gitmo detainees relocating to the U.S. was unanimously voted down and the resolution welcoming Naji to the city was designated “No Action Necessary,” effectively killing it.

        

What's Causing My Shoulder Pain?

- HealthDay News, January 26, 2010

        

Dirty Hotels Gross Out Travelers

- CNN January 29, 2010

        

Doctors treating the heart condition of 59-year old Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams advised him to have cardiac surgery in the U.S., and the procedure will be done by a “renowned expert,” reports the National Post (Ontario):

 

Mr. Williams' decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada's health-care system.

 

"It was never an option offered to him to have this procedure done in this province," said [Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale], refusing to answer whether the procedure could be done elsewhere in Canada.

 

Based on an unscientific online poll by CBC News, and the readers’ comments, most Canadians don’t have a problem with Williams - or any other citizen with the necessary funds - going to the U.S. for treatment (hey, it’s a free country), but they do see the irony of it.

        

The Washington Times finds another case of federal employees whose salaries are paid by taxpayers whiling away their work hours surfing for porn on the Internet:

 

The work computer of one regional supervisor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in a 17-day span: …

 

But he wasn't alone. More than two dozen SEC employees and contractors over roughly the past two years have faced internal investigations after they were caught viewing pornography on their government computers, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other public documents. …

 

In response to the open records request by The Washington Times, the inspector general's office provided more than 150 pages of records and transcripts on the investigations, but declined to identify the employees involved. The office noted that disclosure of the employees' names "could conceivably subject them to harassment and annoyance in the conduct of their official duties and private lives." …

 

While the inspector general recommended disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, the SEC ultimately gave the employee a reprimand instead, records show.

 

The SEC documents also show that the employees were not only stealing from taxpayers by getting paid for the hours they spent viewing porn instead of doing their jobs, but also for the time they spent figuring out how to circumvent Internet filters that blocked access to porn sites.

        

An enduring leftist meme is that Vice President Dick Cheney was President George Bush’s puppet master. If that’s the case, then Cheney has his counterpart in the Obama administration: Attorney General Eric Holder.

 

Holder apparently has the unilateral authority to determine that the Christmas Day bomber would be Mirandized and tried in criminal court – without consulting President Barack Hussein Obama (AKA the Commander-in-Chief) or any national security or intelligence agency heads – and that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be tried in a federal courthouse steps away from the site where the World Trade Center once stood – again, without consulting Obama, the city’s mayor, police commissioner or the state’s representatives in Congress.

 

Well, Holder may be able to control Obama, but not New Yorkers. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly exacted his revenge for Holder rolling over him by riling up activist residents and prominent business owners in the area with an "extremely powerful" speech at police charity event last month about how their lives would be a living hell and their businesses would shrivel and die because of the hard perimeters, soft perimeters and checkpoints that would wall off huge swaths of lower Manhattan.

 

And these folks promptly gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg an earful, after which the mayor let it be known that he would "prefer that they did it elsewhere" because “[t]here are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City," a federal law enforcement official told the New York Daily News, adding: "They're in a tizzy at Justice over Bloomberg. It's like a half-baked soufflé - the plan is collapsing."

 

But instead of forcefully telling Holder to forget a 9/11 criminal trial, Obama merely asked for a change of venue - which means that KSM could end up at a courthouse near you, reports The New York Times:

 

Federal venue rules provide for wide leeway in choosing a location, requiring only “a plausible connection” between the crime and the district, said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University.

 

For a murder charge, federal law requires a trial venue tied to “the place where the injury was inflicted, or the poison administered or other means employed which caused the death.” Mr. Vladeck said that might arguably extend beyond the sites where the hijacked d airliners crashed — New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia — to Massachusetts and New Jersey, where two of the jets took off.

 

For a terrorism conspiracy charge, the list of possible venues could grow still longer to include states where the hijackers lived and plotted, among them California, Maryland and Florida.

 

The Associated Press explains that “[t]here is no requirement that the trials of professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others be held in the places where the most victims died.” Thus, in addition to the locations Vladeck mentioned, trials could also be held in “Florida, where [the September 11 terrorists] trained to fly airplanes; Boston, where some boarded a jet; San Diego, where several of them lived; or the attack targets.”

 

But growing numbers of Dems in Congress are joining their Repub colleagues in opposing terror trials in their states - or anywhere in the U.S. - and Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jim Webb (D-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ) sent a letter to Holder last week expressing their concern over the undue burden of cost and increased risk of terrorist attacks created by “[h]olding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in [New York], and trying other enemy combatants in venues such as Washington, DC and northern Virginia.”

 

Webb also told reporters: "I don't think it's appropriate for them to be held on American soil” so he also opposes the administration’s plan to buy the Thomson Correctional Center in IL to house Gitmo detainees, for which Obama has included $237 million in his 2011 budget.

 

The budget also includes $200 million to cover security costs for terror suspects’ trials, as part of $1.1 billion in grants to urban areas to for anti-terrorism programs. Note that taxpayer money will be spent to protect terrorists from Americans, instead of Americans from terrorists.

 

On “FOX News Sunday” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) pointed out that “$200 million is about four times the startup cost of Guantanamo in the first place.” For his part, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) wants terror trials to be held at a location "where can you try them quickly, where can you try them as inexpensively as possible, and where do you not jeopardize American security any more than absolutely necessary."

 

Gee, that sounds like … Gitmo. And if Obama can’t connect the dots, Congress will do it for him.

 

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) predicted that Congress would deny funding to try KSM in a federal courthouse, and that it "will be done on a bipartisan basis." To that end, Rep. Pete King (R-NY) introduced a bill in the House that bars the use of Justice Department funds Gitmo detainees, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will take a second crack at a legislation that cuts off funding for September 11 trials in federal courts. When Graham first tried to get his bill passed in November, it got only 45 votes. But that was before the Christmas Day bomb plot blew up any patience voters had to indulge the Obama administration’s naïve progressive conceits.

Update: The DOJ’s proposed $29 billion budget for 2011 includes $73 million for the transfer, detention and prosecution of (alleged) terrorist mastermind KSM and his (alleged) September 11 co-conspirators.

        

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Commenting on President Barack Hussein Obama’s having found his populist voice with full-throated denunciations of Wall Street bankers and K Street lobbyists, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel notes that the administration is taking a page from FDR’s playbook when it comes to domestic policy:

 

FDR was re-elected in 1936 for many reasons, but among them was his fiery denunciations of "economic royalists," "economic tyranny," and "economic slavery." Business knew it was in the president's crosshairs and put its capital on strike. The economy didn't recover until the war.

 

Team Obama is already witnessing a repeat. The U.S. economy ought to be flying out of recession. Yet bank lending is sluggish. Companies refuse to hire. Business is going elsewhere to raise capital: China last year outstripped the U.S. as a center for initial public offerings. The market gyrates on Washington's latest political drama.

 

A venture capitalist recently remarked to me that the uncertainty the administration has created is "nothing short of paralyzing." Nobody will invest in an industry that might be the next to be overtaxed, overregulated, or publicly disemboweled.

 

Add to that uncertainty the administration's new populist bent, and it's a recipe for a continued capital freeze.

 

For his part, historian Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, likens Obama’s “Jeffersonian” foreign policy to Jimmy Carter’s - with a soupçon of Richard Nixon - in this fawning and cringeworthy cover story in the January/February 2010 issue of Foreign Policy magazine:  

Like Carter in the 1970s, Obama comes from the old-fashioned Jeffersonian wing of the Democratic Party [minimize foreign commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state] and the strategic goal of his foreign policy is to reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments wherever possible. He's a believer in the notion that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home and moderation abroad. …

 

Jeffersonians like Obama argue that even bad regimes can be orderly international citizens if the incentives are properly aligned. Syria and Iran don't need to become democratic states for the United States to reach long-term, mutually beneficial arrangements with them. And it is North Korea's policies, not the character of its regime, that pose a threat to the Pacific region.

 

At this strategic level, Obama's foreign policy looks a little bit like that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. In Afghanistan and Iraq, he hopes to extract U.S. forces from costly wars by the contemporary equivalent of the "Vietnamization" policy of the Nixon years. He looks to achieve an opening with Iran comparable to Nixon's rapprochement with communist China. …

 

A Jeffersonian policy of restraint and withdrawal requires cooperation from many other countries, but the prospect of a lower American profile may make others less, rather than more, willing to help the United States.

 

There is an additional political problem for this president, one that he shares with Carter. In both cases, their basic Jeffersonian approach was balanced in part by a strong attraction to idealistic Wilsonian values [promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy] and their position at the head of a Democratic Party with a distinct Wilsonian streak. …

 

Like Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama doesn't just love the United States for what it is. He loves what it should - and can - be. Leadership is not the art of preserving a largely achieved democratic project; governing is the art of pushing the United States farther down the road toward the still-distant goal of fulfilling its mission and destiny. …

 

With great dignity and courage, Obama has embarked on a difficult and uncertain journey. The odds, I fear, are not in his favor, and it is not yet clear that his intuitions and instincts amount to the kind of grand design that statesmen like John Quincy Adams and Henry Kissinger produced in the past. But there can be no doubt that American foreign policy requires major rethinking. …

 

If Obama's foreign policy collapses - whether sunk by Afghanistan or conflicts not yet foreseen - into the incoherence and reversals that ultimately marked Carter's well-meaning but flawed approach, it will be even more difficult for future presidents to chart a prudent and cautious course through the rough seas ahead.  

 

Editorial Note: Á propos of absolutely nothing, Mead throws in a gratuitous Sarah Palin insult and describes Jacksonians as “today's FOX News watchers” - The Stiletto prefers to think of them as today’s Spike TV watchers, BTW – but he doesn’t have the wit to extend his analogy (such as it is) to Hamiltonians, Wilsonians and Jeffersonians. So using Mead’s definitions, today’s Hamiltonians should be watching FOX Business Channel; Wilsonians, PBS; and Jeffersonians, Nat Geo.

 

† Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy: In an address to The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in August 2006, then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama (he wasn't using his middle name back then; only "racists" were) called Iraq "the wrong battlefield."

 

In six hours of testimony before a five-member panel conducting a government-commissioned inquiry to investigate Britain's role before, during and after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, former British prime minister Tony Blair describes why Iraq was not the “wrong battlefield” in light of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks - even though coalition forces did not find the weapons of mass destruction that their intelligence agencies had warned of for years:

 

BLAIR: [I]f September 11 hadn't happened, our assessment of the risk of allowing Saddam any possibility of him reconstituting his programmes would not have been the same. But after September 11 … our view, the American view, changed, and changed dramatically.

 

Straight after 9/11, in the statement of made to the House of … I specifically deal with this issue, to do with weapons of mass destruction and the danger of the link with terrorism. Here is what changed for me the whole calculus of risk. It was my view then, it remains my view now. The point about this terrorist act was that over 3,000 people had been killed on the streets of New York, an absolutely horrific event, but this is what really changed my perception of risk, the calculus of risk for me: if those people, inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have. For those of us who dealt with terrorism from the IRA, and, incidentally, I don't want to minimise the impact of that terrorism; each act of terrorism is wicked and wrong and to be deplored. But the terrorism that an organisation like the IRA were engaged in was terrorism directed towards a political purpose, maybe

6 unjustified, but it was within a certain framework that you could understand.

 

The point about this act in New York was that, had they been able to kill even more people than those 3,000, they would have, and so, after that time, my view was you could not take risks with this issue at all, and one dimension of it, because we were advised, obviously, that these people would use chemical or biological weapons or a nuclear device, if they could get hold of them that completely changed our assessment of where the risks for security lay, and just so that we make this absolutely clear, this was not an American position, this was my position and the British position, very, very clearly, and so, from September 11 onwards we obviously had to deal with Afghanistan, but from that moment, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Iraq, the machinery, as you know, of AQ Khan, who was the former Pakistani nuclear scientist and who had been engaged in illicit activities and in distributing this material, all of this had to be brought to an end.

 

[O]ur perception of the risk had shifted, and the reason for dealing with Iraq and I think I said this at the time was because it was Iraq that was in breach of the United Nations Resolutions, had ten years of defiance and I felt, we felt, it was important that we make it absolutely clear he has to come back into compliance. …

 

Now, my assessment of risk prior to September 11 was that Saddam was a menace, that he was a threat, he was a monster, but we would have to try and make best. If you had asked me prior to September 11, did I have any real belief in his good faith. No, I didn't. Did I really think that a new sanctions framework was going to do the trick? No, I didn't. On the other hand, precisely because the consequence of military action is so great, for me the calculus of risk was, "Look, we are just going to have to do the best we can".

 

After September 11, that changed … [I]n my view, we cannot afford the possibility that nations, particularly nations that are brutal, rogue states, states that take an attitude that is wholly contrary to our way of life, you cannot afford such states to be allowed to develop or proliferate WMD.

 

RODERIC LYNE (Panelist, former ambassador to Moscow):  Why Iraq?

 

BLAIR: [S]sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question. Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons, who were going to follow him, in charge of Iraq, people who used chemical weapons, caused the death of over 5 1 million people, what we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual knowhow to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to be. I think it is at least arguable that he was a threat and that, had we taken that decision to leave him there with the intent, with an oil price, not of $25, but of 3 $100 a barrel, he would have had the intent, he would have had the financial means and we would have lost our nerve.

 

JOHN CHILCOT (Panel Chairman): [W]hat broad lessons you have drawn you have drawn some already in the course of your testimony and … whether you have regrets about key aspects of the Iraq conflict?

 

BLAIR: [L]essons that can be learned about nationbuilding … [Y]ou have got to look very carefully at what type of forces you require because there will be a security situation that you face, a challenging security situation. I also think you have really got to look at the issue to do with the nature of this threat from AlQaeda on the one hand, Iran on the other, and the impact that that will have, not just on Iraq but potentially in different arenas right round the Middle East region and beyond. … I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse and possibly in circumstances where it was hard to mobilise any support for dealing with that threat. I think we live in a completely new security environment today. I thought that then, I think that now. … [I]f I'm asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of power and out of office than in office, I indeed believe that we are, and I think in time to come, if Iraq becomes, as I hope and believe that it will, the country that its people

18 want to see, then we can look back, and particularly our armed forces can look back, with an immense sense of pride and achievement in what they did.

 

CHILCOT: And no regrets?

 

BLAIR: Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think that he was a monster, I believe he threatened, not just the region but the world, and in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to deal with it, to remove him from office, and I do genuinely believe that the world is safer as a result.  I know sometimes, because this happens out in the region, sometimes people will say to me, "Well, Saddam was a brake on Iran". Let's be clear, there is another view of foreign policy in this instance, which is the way, if we had left Saddam in place, he would have controlled Iran better. I really think it is time we learned, as a matter of sensible foreign policy, that the way to deal with one dictatorial threat is not to back another, that actually the best answer to what is happening in Iran is to allow the Iraqi people the freedom and democratic choice that we enjoy in countries like ours.

 

Congress should ask Obama to testify about his thought processes leading to his conclusion that Iraq is “the wrong battlefield” and that withdrawing from Iraq while ramping up in Afghanistan addresses the rogue nation and terror threats Blair described in 2003 and today.

 

† Fact-Checking Obama’s SOTU Speech (AKA “You Lie!”): A new Rasmussen telephone survey finds that Americans do not believe many of the claims President Barack Hussein Obama made about his administration’s policy and legislative successes in his State of the Union speech:

 

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. … [J]ust 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. …

 

The president also asserted that “after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false.

 

Obama claimed that steps taken by his team are responsible for putting two million people to work “who would otherwise be unemployed.” Just 27% of voters say that statement is true. Fifty-one percent (51%) say it's false. …

 

On all the points raised in the president’s speech, there is a huge partisan divide. On the question of cutting taxes for 95% of Americans, hardly any Republicans or unaffiliated voters believe it's true. However, Democrats are evenly divided: 34% say the tax cuts have been delivered, 29% say they haven’t, and 38% are not sure.

 

Sixty-three percent (63%) of Democrats agree with the president’s statement that the economy is growing again. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans and 60% of unaffiliated voters disagree.

 

As for the claim about two million jobs, 46% of Democrats say it’s true, while 77% of Republicans say it’s not. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 24% say it’s true, and 59% say it’s false.

 

Note that even amongst Dem voters, fewer than half believe that Obama has delivered on jobs and tax cuts.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The U.S. is “a country that has long shunned haggling outside of car dealerships and mattress stores … until the Great Recession,” reports The Washington Post:

 

Firms are desperate for revenue, Americans are feeling broke, and the aisles from Best Buy to Macy's and even your neighborhood Giant - as well as the 1-800 numbers at Comcast and Verizon - have become venues for let's-make-a-deal.

 

A recent Consumer Reports study found that 66 percent of American consumers had haggled at least once in the preceding six months, with an 88 percent ka-ching rate on gadgets, clothes, furniture and steak. …

 

The recession merely popped the lid off a retailing shift that has been brewing for a decade. EBay gave millions of consumers dealmaking training wheels (top bid for a "Goonies" DVD: $3.50). The Internet offers instant pricing data (do a Google search on "Lucky jeans and deal and DC"). And don't forget Priceline, which lets consumers name their price for flights, hotels and rental cars (thank you, William Shatner).

 

† You Can’t Make Fun Of Obama? Sez Who?: Washington Post media analyst-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz reports that the openly left-leaning “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart – “a pop-culture bellwether” – has begun to pole fun at President Barack Hussein Obama, albeit somewhat gingerly:

 

After showing video of Obama speaking to schoolkids, the "Daily Show" host said in amazement: "You set up a presidential podium and a teleprompter in a sixth-grade classroom? … I'm not a political adviser, campaign strategist, et cetera, but that's not a great photo op in a middle school classroom." …

 

[W]hile the White House notes that Obama used the prompter to address journalists, not the students, the details matter little in comedy.

 

Stewart's barbs are generating partisan buzz. In a tweet, Americablog's John Aravosis invoked Martha Coakley's Massachusetts loss in trashing the prompter joke: "So is this the new post-coakley Jon Stewart, picking on Dems for insignificant BS to burnish his indie credentials. Third time in 7 days." The conservative Fox Nation site, by contrast, ran the video under the gleeful header "Jon Stewart Mocks Obama's Teleprompter Dependence." …

 

None of these jokes are particularly cutting, but what's telling is that they're being told at all. During the campaign, Lichter says, comedians made far more jokes about George W. Bush and John McCain than about Obama. …

 

The left's honeymoon with Obama ended long ago. Liberal commentators, including [Keith] Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, have taken shots at him for being too cautious or compromising on various issues. But there is something about a comic caricature that is indelible. …

 

We've all seen Jon Stewart fire his comic bazooka, against Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire" and Jim Cramer over CNBC's financial coverage. With Obama, he's merely using a popgun. But given Stewart's platform, even that has quite an echo.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder): On the heels of a retraction of inaccurate claims that Himalayan glaciers are melting away, The Telegraph (London) reveals that a 2007 report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – which claims mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa is disappearing – is based on a 2002 article in Climbing magazine quoting anecdotal evidence from mountain climbers and on a master’s degree dissertation by a geography student that included that interviews with mountain guides in the Alps:

 

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change. …

 

Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded. …

 

But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC's use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.

 

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.

 

"Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.

 

"There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense."

 

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people. …

 

Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons. …

 

The chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri has faced mounting pressure and calls for his resignation amid the growing controversy over the error on glacier melting and use of unreliable sources of information.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): The IL Senate race for the people’s seat that President Barack Hussein Obama occupied before trading up to the White House, “will be among the most symbolically important and expensive races in the country this year,” reports The Washington Post -  and it’s one that that Repubs have high hopes of winning:

 

After Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts this month, the GOP sees a clear path to victory in this Democratic state - and his name is Mark Kirk.

 

Kirk, 50, a moderate five-term Republican House member, appears to be the man of the moment. As the likely GOP nominee to emerge Tuesday, Kirk is seen as a formidable, well-funded candidate, a Navy Reserve officer who has done two tours in Afghanistan and who can withstand the weight of a White House set to defeat him. …

 

Democrats have criticized Kirk for soliciting support from Sarah Palin and for switching his position on cap-and-trade - a measure intended to reduce carbon emissions by taxing certain forms of energy use. He was one of a handful of Republicans who voted for the House bill. But after tea-party activists protested at his office, he came out against it.

 

Kirk said in an interview that he shifted his position after he traveled the state and heard from businesses that the measure would "hammer them and cost jobs."

 

Paul Green, director of policy studies at Roosevelt University here, said: "Kirk will have plenty of time to modify his positions in the general. He is going to be very tough to beat if the current trends continue. None of the other candidates' résumés match up to his."

 

If Obama campaigns for the Dem candidate – who will be damaged goods going into the fall election because of a particularly nasty primary campaign - and the seat goes to Kirk, perhaps he will finally hear the message that voters across the country have been sending him.

 

Editorial Note: Obamagirl seems to have a new crush: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) - for whom she promised to do a campaign video, should one be needed. HuckPAC has a paltry $192,000 in the bank - roughly one-tenth the amount Mitt Romney has amassed - suggesting that he either isn’t running for president in 2012, or is laying low for as long as he can so as not to have to give up the free - actually, priceless - national exposure he gets on his eponymous talk show on FOX.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, How ACORN Got Buried By “Squirrelly Right-Wingers”): After the arrest of ACORN nemesis James O’Keefe for a sting operation at the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D) that went awry, The New York Times examines the phenomenon of his brand of “gonzo journalism or a conservative version of ‘Candid Camera’ ” and its key practitioners:  

 

Those methods took root on college campuses in the latter half of George W. Bush’s presidency, fostered by a group of men and women in their late teens and early 20s with a taste for showmanship and a shared sense of political alienation - a sort of political reverse image of the left-wing Yippies of the 1960s. They studied leftist activism of years past as their prototype, looking to the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who laid the framework for grass-roots activism in the ’60s, as well as those of gay rights and even Communist groups.

 

They held “affirmative action” bake sales with prices set based on the age and race of the buyer, posed as donors to Planned Parenthood seeking to contribute to the abortion of African-American fetuses only, and held a mock “Love Thy Prisoner” campaign to find American homes for Guantánamo inmates. …

 

In the incident in New Orleans, several of the group’s central players came together. They had met through a small community of conservative college newspaper editors that is fostered by advocacy organizations supported by old Republican families like the Coorses and Scaifes.

 

One of those arrested was Stan Dai, 24, a former editor in chief of the irreverent GW Patriot at George Washington University, where he published an anti-feminist article lampooning the play “The Vagina Monologues.” His version was called “The Penis Monologues.”

 

Another was Mr. Basel, 24, the co-founder of a conservative publication at the University of Minnesota, Morris, that features headlines like “Third World Countries Need Sweatshops” and “I Hate Che Guevara T-Shirts.”

 

The fourth was Robert Flanagan, 24, who did not know the others before roughly two weeks ago, his lawyer said, when Mr. O’Keefe gave a speech for the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a libertarian organization in New Orleans for which Mr. Flanagan works a few hours a week. Until then, Mr. Flanagan, a star athlete and son of a federal prosecutor, had not been known by friends to be particularly provocative in his conservatism, though he had been sharply critical of Ms. Landrieu on the institute’s blog.

 

And then there was Ben Wetmore, 28, who was not arrested but who allowed Mr. Dai, Mr. O’Keefe and Mr. Basel to stay at his house in New Orleans this month. The authorities have not indicated that Mr. Wetmore, a Loyola law student, was connected to the incident at Ms. Landrieu’s office, but he has nonetheless played a vital role in Mr. O’Keefe’s career, as well as that of Mr. Basel and other activists.

 

Editorial Note: Columnist Doug Giles - the father of O’Keefe’s ACORN partner, Hannah Giles – correctly notes that O’Keefe’s misadventure does not absolve ACORN of any wrongdoing. Also, The Times could have mentioned that O’Keefe and the other conservative pranksters have liberal counterparts in the Yes Men.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think): In response to its bumbling performance in the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab case, the National Counterterrorism Center has selected “more than three dozen of its most capable analysts from across its ranks to form what it calls pursuit teams to focus on threats from Yemen and other offshoots of Al Qaeda that could imperil the United States,” reports The New York Times:

 

“We have dedicated teams that don’t have any responsibility for producing intelligence, but simply for following up on these small leads,” Michael E. Leiter, the center’s director, told the House Homeland Security Committee this week in the latest of several recent appearances on Capitol Hill. …

 

The pursuit teams are just the beginning of an ambitious effort that intelligence officials say could potentially add several hundred additional analysts to the more than 200 specialists who work on terrorism and watch list duties now, officials said. Congress would need to approve financing for the additional hires. …

 

Terrorism and national security experts applauded the counterterrorism center’s decision to create the new analytical teams and start their training, but some expressed dismay that such an obvious job had not been created until now.

 

Let’s hope that these new teams of Columbos are operational, and not aspirational, before the next attempted terror attack.

        

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again: Tomorrow, Punxsutawney Phil - the unusually long-lived prognosticating groundhog - will tell us whether he sees his shadow, dooming us to another six weeks of frigid weather. He communicates his verdict in "groundhog-ese" to the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle president who then translates it into English. Got that?

 

In the 124 years  ol’ Phil has been predicting the weather – a typical groundhog would have been in the ground permanently roughly 118 years ago – he’s purportedly seen his shadow about 80 percent of the time. Which should be strong enough “evidence” to counter the bogus global warming claims in those U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

 

This year, there’s a high-tech twist to Phil’s mysterious methods: Those who cannot get to Punxsutawney, PA, to see Phil up close and personal will be able to text "Groundhog" to 247365 to get his prediction (in English).

 

Now, The Stiletto hates to pour cold water on this venerable event meant to separate tourists from their dollars, but having Phil “text” his prediction is stretching credulity a tad too far. How is it that Phil can speak only “groundhogese” but can text in English? Also, everyone knows that opossums have opposable thumbs, but not groundhogs - so Phil can’t use a PDA keyboard or cell phone keys to text his message. Oh wait, maybe Phil’s neighbor is an opossum who knows English. Yeah, that’s it.

 

Editorial Note: According to LiveScience.com, on other 364 days of the year, Phil eats, sleeps and poses for photos. Cushy as his one-day-a-year job is, he must be getting bored with it, because he once tried to “run for the hills.”

Update: For what it’s worth, Phil saw his freakin’ shadow.

        

State Delegate Marvin E. Holmes Jr. (D-Prince George's County) is proposing a bill to require MD residents who have been convicted of drunken driving three times to put special yellow license plates that read "DUI" on their cars for five years, reports The Baltimore Sun:

 

"Displaying the special license plates will give people some understanding of who they are sharing the roadways with," Marvin E. Holmes Jr., a Democrat, said at a hearing on his bill. …

There are 2,029 drivers in the state who fit that description, he said.

 

Similar legislation has been introduced in the General Assembly twice before and failed, and has had mixed success in other states. MN issues plates marked with “W” to people convicted of drunken driving, driving without insurance or a license and parking ticket scofflaws, but AR lawmakers rejected special license plates over concerns that innocent passengers would be stigmatized. OR requires drunken drivers to affix a sticker on their tags, but found that they just peeled them off.  

        

Dealing With Pinkeye

- HealthDay News, January 26, 2010

        

Obama: Cutting Deficit As Important As Job Growth

- The Associated Press, January 30, 2010

 

Editorial Note: Obama must not be taking his own advice, as his proposed $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 will push the deficit to an all-time high of $1.6 trillion this year - breaking last year’s record $1.4 trillion deficit – before “shrinking” it to a projected $1 billion (give or take a billion or two) in 2013.

        

Ashley M. Sullivan, 17, was sentenced to six months in Niagara County Jail, one year of home confinement with electronic monitoring and five years' probation for criminally negligent homicide and misdemeanor driving while intoxicated. Though the judge had inclined towards leniency based on Sullivan’s “extreme youth” his sentence was based, in part, on a photo she posted on Facebook just one month after the crash with the caption: "Drunk in Florida."

 

Driving more than 55 mph in a 30-mph zone, she smashed her car into a brick pillar in the wee hours of May 30, 2009, killing her boyfriend, Alex Rozicki, 20. Her blood alcohol content was measured at 0.13 percent - the legal standard for intoxication in NY is 0.08 percent, reports The Buffalo News:

  

"I'm troubled by your conduct since the crash," County Judge Matthew J. Murphy III told Sullivan, "and that's the reason for the jail sentence."

 

Murphy also refused to grant Sullivan youthful offender status for the same reason. …

 

When defense attorney Glenn Murray said in court, "This young woman is remorseful," someone laughed among a crowd of more than two dozen of the victim's friends and relatives, drawing a reprimand from the judge.

 

The judge also forbade Sullivan to drink for the next five years, reminding her that at age 17 “you’re not old enough to drink.”

        

In a speech at the University of Denver days before the Super Tuesday primaries, then Sen. Barack Obama (he wasn’t using his middle name back then; only “racists” were) said: ‘‘Democrats will win in November and build a majority in Congress not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but by choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change.”

 

Well, a year into his only term as president, Obama finds Republicans in both houses of Congress, as well as moderate and independent voters, united against his expensive and unpopular agenda, and he made it clear that the White House is "not hitting a reset button at all," as his adviser Valerie Jarrett asserted on “Meet the Press” in an interview that previewed many of the themes and rationales that were in Obama’s State of the Union speech.

 

So the pundits who predicted Obama would pivot, move to the center and admit his mistakes were wrong.

 

As USA Today’s Chuck Raasch notes:

 

Obama reaffirmed his core policies and principles and pivoted to a more robust public relations offensive to defend both his record and his ideas as he sought to regain both legislative momentum and public confidence.

He reminded his national audience of the state of the union he inherited a year ago, with record deficits and a spiraling economy, and in plain language defended his actions and pushed for more: a jobs bill, tax credits for small business, clean energy spending, a freeze on a small part of the federal budget, and most significantly, passage of health care reform.

In some ways, it was an extension of his campaign platform a year into his presidency.

 

'"I never said change would be easy," he said, rekindling his Change You Can Believe In campaign slogan. "Let's seize this moment to start anew."

Anyone seeking a course correction in the 69-minute address likely came away disappointed.

 

What Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers heard is “a Reaganesque mantra: Stay the course”:

 

Sure, Obama tried to tap into the voter anger and anxiety about the economy in his first State of the Union address, hoping to channel it rather than being overrun by it, as the Democratic Party in Massachusetts was last week. He added some new proposals, such as $30 billion to small banks to encourage lending and tax breaks for small businesses, calling them just more steps in his plan to grow the economy and create jobs. He also vowed to start reining in soaring budget deficits.

 

Yet despite the stinging defeat his party suffered in Massachusetts, the erosion of his own political support and calls from Republicans and moderate Democrats to change his agenda, Obama signaled that he'll make no abrupt turn from the path he set more than a year ago.

 

As The Washington Times presciently pointed out a couple of days before Obama’s State of the Union address, “Mr. Obama is in a state of denial. His party's losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts all sent the message that the American people want the party in power to govern more wisely. … Mr. Obama pledges to keep on fighting, but pushing harder for ruinously bad policies is not populism; it is political suicide.”

 

Three other things that didn’t change:

 

† Continuing to blame President George Bush:

 

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. … By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.

 

The only thing Obama gave Bush credit for was the bank bailout program that “we all hated” (well, all except for Tiny Tim Geithner) and “was about as popular as a root canal.”

 

† Self-absorption and false modesty:

 

I know the anxieties that are out there right now. … These struggles are the reason I ran for President. These struggles are what I've witnessed for years in places like Elkhart, Indiana and Galesburg, Illinois. I hear about them in the letters that I read each night. … when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular I would do what was necessary … From the day I took office, I have been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious that such efforts would be too contentious, that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for awhile. … I did not choose to tackle [healthcare] to get some legislative victory under my belt. … Now, I am not nave [sic]. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony, and some post-partisan era.”

 

I, I, I. Even the towns Obama cites are in states that begin with “I.” It’s his favorite letter, isn’t it?

 

† Rather than admitting the mistakes that stalled his agenda, deflecting responsibility for his failure to lead to Wall Street, Republicans, “Washington,” pundits:

 

[W]hat frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. … But it is precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it is sowing further division among our citizens and further distrust in our government. …  If the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. … [E]ach time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people's doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates into silly arguments, and big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away. … I campaigned on the promise of change, change we can believe in … I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. … Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved.

 

† The closest Obama came to acknowledging that he has fallen short in any way:

 

I take my share of the blame for not explaining [healthcare] more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering what's in it for them. … We are filling unacceptable gaps revealed by the failed Christmas attack, with better airline security, and swifter action on our intelligence.

 

Obama started his address with a brief retrospective of rocky periods in the nation’s history, and said: “Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history's call.”

 

This time, though, it is about him. Obama is the one being tested. The takeaway message from the elections in VA, NJ and MA is that rather than pursuing a sweeping agenda like FDR’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society, Obama needs to answer the call of the American people who want smaller government, lower taxes and deficit reduction.

 

Editorial Note: An earlier version of this post was published on FOX Forum.

 

 

Fact-Checking Obama’s SOTU Speech (AKA “You Lie!”)

 

While Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) confined his SOTU rebuttal to a Facebook video, this time, the “you lie!” protest came from Justice Samuel Alito, in response to President Barack Hussein Obama’s false characterization of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United ruling upholding free speech rights (“The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign companies - to spend without limit in our elections.”). During Obama’s attack on the high court, Justice Samuel Alito - whose confirmation was opposed by then-Senator Obama four years ago - did not appear to find the SOTU speech a big yawn. Justice Alito wrinkled his brow in disbelief that Obama -  purportedly a former Constitutional law professor - could have misunderstood the high court’s ruling, shook his head in dissent and then mouthed “not true.”
  

ABC News, and the St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact were amongst those who also called Obama out on his mischaracterization of the high court ruling, as well as his laughable claim that lobbyists have been excluded from his administration. Obama’s insistence that healthcare “reform” would cut the deficit and that his targeted tax cuts made an appreciable contribution to disposable income were also challenged.

 

In addition to covering these bases, The Washington Post notes that in his claim that "North Korea now faces increased isolation and stronger sanctions … that are being vigorously enforced. … [T]he Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated,” Obama “skips lightly over the fact that his efforts to engage rogue nations have largely fallen flat. North Korea last year tested a nuclear weapon and tested missiles, and Obama has been unable to coax it back to six-nation disarmament talks. … Obama’s … outreach to end three decades of estrangement has been greeted with indifference or scorn by Tehran's leaders.” For its part, The Washington Times slams Obama as being “full of it when he talks about creating or saving jobs.”

 

One more thing The Stiletto would like to point out: When Obama bragged that the number of al-Qaeda fighters killed last year was "far more than in 2008," he forgot to mention that the pace of terrorist attacks carried out against American targets – even right here at home – has quickened “far more” than in the seven years before he took office.

 

 

In Memoriam

 

J. D. Salinger, January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010

        

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: The Washington Times interviewed legislators, party leaders and political operatives nationwide to find out why they think he’s been an ineffectual campaigner – for other Dems. The paper got an earful:

 

The list of White House failures is growing: It hasn't galvanized the legions of 2008 Obama backers in three major statewide losses. It hasn't prevented primary challenges for at least two vulnerable Senate Democrats even though Mr. Obama endorsed them. And it hasn't recruited strong candidates for Senate seats once held by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the president himself.

 

"I get the sense that it's all about them ... and that if they do get involved, it should be magic. But, in my experience, it hasn't been," said Democratic Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas. …

 

They suggested Mr. Obama's team is overly focused on his likely 2012 re-election bid. And they blamed the White House for a muddled message about what he's trying and accomplishing as president.

 

Only now, Dems are figuring out that Obama is self-centered, self-engrossed, self-interested – in other words, selfish?

 

† Caroline Kennedy (Finally) Killed Camelot: Former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II is lamenting his decision not to run for the people’s seat that was occupied for nearly 50 years by his uncle, Ted until Republican Scott Brown’s “upset” victory in last week’s special election, reports The Boston Globe:

 

Kennedy smiled when a reporter asked him whether he regretted not running. “The thought had crossed my mind,’’ he said.

 

Kennedy, 56, contemplated jumping into the race after his uncle’s death last August, and that consideration put the political world on edge. Several potential candidates said they would not run if he did, but Kennedy announced last September that he would not run, ending the family’s half-century of political dominance in Massachusetts. …

 

Dan Payne, a Democratic strategist based in the Boston area, said in a telephone interview: “In the future, it will be hard for any Kennedy to get a post because they are already filled, there aren’t going to be any seats available soon, and anyone who wants to take on an incumbent will have a tough run at it.’’

 

Here’s a sampling of how the paper’s readers reacted to Kennedy’s sense of dynastic entitlement - and apparent certainty that had he run, he would have won:

 

headpin1: He would have lost the election big time, most are sick of the Kennedys. He should be driving an oil truck for 50K a year not on TV for 500K, not sure if he is qualified to do that.

 

Brazner: Joe Kennedy is in bed with anti-American dictator Hugo Chavez. That wouldn't have gone over well in the election.

 

anotherdave: Dan Payne seems to have missed the Senate campaign. Scott Brown was elected on a promise to not vote with the Democrats on the left wing agenda, such as government takeover of healthcare

 

LeoTheLion4: I don't know who Brian Ballou is, but he has clearly assumed a long and dishonorable tradition of Globe “alleged reporters” serving as full-time Kennedy sycophants. (Bob Healey comes to mind as one who played that role, as does the hermaphrodite, bow-tied Tom Oliphant; and let's not forget that industrial strength Kennedy bum-kisser: Martin Nolan.)

 

mannahatta: You would think by now people would have woken up and realized what a bunch of phonies these Kennedys are and always have been. Seymour Hersh's book "The Dark Side of Camelot" says it all, exposing a sickening glimpse into the dissolute lifestyle of these devious sexual predators. Good riddance to all of them.

 

Hawk75: Flash for Joe K., we're all glad you didn't run. Obamacare,cap and trade,amnesty for illegals, and the rest of Hussein's facist agenda all DOA with the election of Brown. All would have been alive and kicking with you in DC. Just keep on hangin' with your homey Hugo and leave the rest of us alone, we're fine without your family's magnificent benevolence.

 

Chris0721: I greatly applaud your decision Mr. Joseph Kennedy! The last thing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts needs is another person from the corrupt Kennedy family in office.

 

† Average Americans To Liberals: Existential Angst Over Torture? It’s All You.: In his recap of this week’s episode of “24,” New York magazine writer John Carney nicely captures the tension between the revulsion that decent people feel about torturing or killing someone and the secret hope that we could find it within ourselves to “do what we had to do” to stop a terrorist attack:

 

Jack became a voyeur, watching the perhaps suicidal violence of outcast FBI agent Renee Walker. Reduced to passively watching and listening as Renee coerced cooperation out of a man she mutilated, and then as she met with Russian gangsters who very nearly murdered her and may have raped her, Jack became us - the viewers of 24. …

 

But if Jack can become us, the question is raised: Has he been us all along? On the level of action, of course, the answer is no. We certainly would have perished several seasons ago. Probably right at the start of season one, actually. Or we would have slunk away in cowardice and incompetence. The world would have suffered any number of devastations if left in our hands.

But if what separates us from Jack is just our failings, that tells us something about ourselves. Most of us would like to think we wouldn’t torture someone to get information we wanted. We wouldn’t knowingly lead a reformed criminal to his death, as Renee did last night. But is that because we’re good - or because we’re weak?

 

† Judge Rips BofA For Hypocritical Defense Strategy: Is there even more about the Wall Street bailouts - in this case, the hush-hush handling of the $62 billion AIG paid to financial institutions for credit default swaps in November 2008 - that Treasury Secretary Tiny Tim Geithner knows without having to read about in the papers? Testifying at a congressional hearing, Geithner and “a list of powerful folks denied being involved in the secrecy decision,” reports  Corporate Counsel:

 

A flurry of e-mails in January 2009 flew among in-house counsel at the New York Fed and at AIG, along with outside counsel at Davis Polk & Wardwell. They show that the lawyers were intently focused on keeping details of the deals secret - including the names of the counterparties and the amounts they received.

 

The e-mails, subpoenaed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, do not say who at the Fed requested the secrecy, nor why. Committee members suggested the "cover-up" was invoked to hide from Congress the fact that the Fed was giving a "backdoor bailout" to more big banks.

 

Presumably none of the other 250,000 pages of subpoenaed documents go to the heart of the who and why questions either, because committee members kept asking each witness during the hearing. …

 

With all those denials, we at Corporate Counsel were intrigued. So on Thursday we just asked the New York Fed outright: Who ordered the lawyers to find a way to keep the payments secret? Was it the bank's No. 2 person, Cumming?

 

A spokesman for the New York Fed replied that the bank's "investment staff," in consultation with outside counsel, made the decision to seek secrecy.

 

So now we know ... sort of.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The fourth annual 'What's On Brides' Mind' survey of 500 engaged women aged 18 to 35 by David's Bridal finds that 68 percent plan to spend less on their wedding, compared to 75 percent last year, reports MarketingDaily:

 

And 54% plan to keep the big event on the smaller side, with a total budget of $25,000 or less, while 30% plan to spend less than $10,000. Only 22% are going whole hog, and plan on a total wedding budget of more than $50,000. …

 

Among their favorite ways to lower costs, 46% have trimmed the guest list, 39% plan to trade down on venue, and 39% are giving wedding planners the heave-ho. And while brides-to-be say they won't compromise on their dream dress, they are watching prices - with 50% determined not to pay more than $800 on their own dress, or ask their bridesmaids to pay more than $150.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think): Earlier this week, former Gov. Thomas H. Kean (R-NJ) and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), who led the 9/11 commission told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the Obama administration botched the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reports The Washington Post:  

 

Asked for his reaction to the fact that the intelligence community was not consulted, Mr. Kean told the Senate Homeland Security Committee , "I was shocked, and I was upset."

 

The former governor said that "it made no sense whatsoever to me that, here is a man who may have trained with other people who are trying to get into this country in one way or another, who may have worked with some of the top leadership in Yemen and al Qaeda generally - and we don't know the details of that - who may know about other plots that are pending, and we haven't found out about them."

 

Pointing out that “the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI),” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer notes that “[t]he Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably.” Even if national security and intelligence officials had been consulted, the administration's High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group was “not available” to interrogate Abdulmutallab “because it does not yet exist. After a year!” Krauthammer adds:

 

I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.

 

Travesties of this magnitude are not lost on the American people. One of the reasons Scott Brown won in Massachusetts was his focus on the Mirandizing of Abdulmutallab.

 

Meanwhile, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism faulted the Obama for swine flu vaccine shortages in 2009, despite a heads-up six months in advance that the disease could potentially be deadly. The commission's executive director Air Force Col. Randy Larsen (Ret.) suggests that the inept handling of the epidemic indicates that the country is not prepared to respond to a bioterror attach.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): When he moved to Denver from Queens, bombing-conspiracy suspect Najibullah Zazi stayed with Naqib Jaji, 38, an uncle by marriage, for six months. In the days after Zazi’s September 24 arrest, Jaji told The Denver Post that t was “impossible” that his nephew was a terrorist and claimed that “[h]e wants to become a citizen and bring his wife here from Pakistan." But he may be singing a different tune with prosecutors. The New York Times reports that Jaji was arraigned on a felony charge “in a sealed federal courtroom in Brooklyn” and that “[t]he court docket on the case lists him as John Doe, a standard practice in cases where a defendant is cooperating.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Pearson's Knickers Still In A Knot Over His Pants): Former D.C. administrative law judge Roy Pearson Jr., who destroyed his credibility and his career while abusing the court system over a pair of pants he claimed his dry cleaner lost, has now turned his ire against U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, reports The Blog of LegalTimes:

 

Huvelle was the presiding judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who, last year, tossed Pearson's suit for damages that targeted - among others - city officials and judges [when he wasn’t re-appointed to a full 10-year term as an administrative law judge]. …

 

Pearson wants the appeals court to take notice of a photograph showing Huvelle standing with several Superior Court judges, including Anita Josey-Herring, who is a defendant in Pearson's suit. Pearson included the photo - taken in May at the annual Law Day Dinner Program hosted by the Washington Bar Association - in his opening brief, filed Jan. 21 in the appeals court.

 

Here's how Pearson puts it: "Judge Huvelle's enthusiastic participation in this smiling, arm-in-arm 'sisterhood' photo with defendant Josey-Herring" took place before Huvelle ruled on pending motions in the suit. Pearson said in court papers that Huvelle should have recused from hearing the suit.

 

Looks like Pearson will never run out of grist for his lawsuit mill.

 

Editorial Note: For some reason, this ditty popped into The Stiletto’s mind:

 

Pants suit ran aground
Pants suit ran aground
Lookin’ like a fool 'cause your pants suit ran aground

        

Passengers on an Amtrak train from Los Angeles to Chicago alerted authorities after overhearing a suspicious-sounding conversation Ojore Nuru Lutalo, 64, was having on his cell phone, reports The Associated Press:

 

Police said in an affidavit that passengers overheard Lutalo saying he hadn't killed anyone yet, and that he talked about going to jail.

 

Passengers say the man said, "We have to work in small groups. They can hold you for 18 months. Do they have security on these trains? Are you with me or not?"

 

One passenger said he heard Lutalo mention al-Qaida, saying, "17th century tactics won't work, we have 21st century tactics."

 

The conductor said Lutalo had a tan blanket over his entire body so the conductor could not see what he was doing.

 

Lutalo was taken into custody at the La Junta train station in southeastern Colorado. Police said he was not armed or carrying explosives. He was carrying propaganda for an anarchist group called Afrikan Liberation Army.

 

Lutalo, who was released from a New Jersey prison in August after serving 27 years for aggravated assault, robbery and weapons possession, faces a felony charge of endangering public transportation.

 

Either Lutalo is the dumbest would-be terrorist on the planet or this is a put-on for purposes known only to him as of this posting. Everyone knows that terrorists communicate in code and anyone overhearing a conversation between two jihadis planning murder and mayhem would hear an innocuous conversation about, say, watermelon or wedding cakes.

        

Caring For Acne-Prone Skin

- HealthDay News, January 21, 2010

        

Haiti Must Learn To Live With Earthquakes: Experts

- Agence France-Presse, January 29, 2010

        

U.S. District Judge Mark S. Davis sentenced Evanston, IL, attorney Beth Ann Broyles, 40, to eight months in federal prison on one conspiracy count in connection with her role in an immigration fraud ring, reports The Virginian-Pilot:

 

[Broyles pleaded guilty to] fil[ing] phony immigration paperwork with the federal government, enabling the Viktar Krus organization to bring in illegal workers. …

 

Krus, who was based in Virginia Beach, and other members of the organization have already been convicted and sentenced to prison as well.

 

Upon her release, Broyles will also spend a year in home confinement with electronic monitoring and three years of probation.

        

The Stiletto suggests a simpler, faster way to play the SOTU Drinking Game: Every time the camera focuses on Joe Wilson (R-SC) for a reaction shot, take a shot of your preferred spirits. Obama reportedly plans to admit his mistakes (“I am a workaholic and I will not rest”) - but without apologizing for his unpopular agenda or accepting blame for the ballooning national debt, the increased number of terrorist attacks against the U.S. by homegrown and foreign terrorists, long-term   unemployment rate, etc., etc., etc. Even if Wilson duct tapes his mouth shut, his gag reflex will be triggered - repeatedly. 

Update: The Stiletto’s gag reflex was triggered when Obama said, “I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace and harmony.” That’s exactly what he thought, and he must be mystified about why North Korea and Iran haven't shut down their nuclear facilities, why Israel hasn't torn down the West Bank settlements and why the Olympics were not awarded to Chicago. 

 

FL Manatees Freeze To Death

 

More than 100 manatees in FL have succumbed to a cold snap that lasted nearly two weeks, reports The Associated Press. The FL Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says that the number of manatees dying from cold stress has set a record for a single year. The previous record - 56 deaths – was set last year.

 

The Fearless Leader Of The Manatees (below, left) issued a statement regretting that he did not evacuate his loyal subjects to warmer climes in response to the lethal climate change, and blamed Al Gore’s global warming malarkey for clouding his judgment.

The Stiletto Scoops “Speech Critics”

President Barack Hussein Obama’s speeches are a lot like a Chinese dinner. Heaping helpings of impressive-sounding but empty phrases (“we will go forward with the confidence that right makes might and with the commitment to forge … a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes”). An hour later, you’re wondering what, exactly, he said he would commit to.

- “Obama’s Afghanistan Speech: One From Column A, One From Column B,” The Stiletto Blog, December 2, 2009

 

Ted Widmer, who edited an anthology of political speeches for the Library of America, praised President Obama for his "masterful" style, but could not cite a specific line the president said. Similar observations were made by Jeff Shesol, David Frum and Harry C. McPherson, who wrote speeches for presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson, respectively. "The speech he made in Cairo - I remember the intelligence, the breadth and the reasonableness," McPherson says. "But I can't tell you - and this is one of the shortcomings of the kind of speech he makes — I can't quote anything, or cite anything, off the top of my head."

 - Speech Critics Assess Obama's Oratory, The Associated Press, January 24, 2010

 

 

In Memoriam

Pernell Roberts, May 18, 1928 – January 24, 2010

        

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: In the space of a week, President Barack Hussein Obama lost MA, lost Paul Krugman and lost Obamagirl. Good thing his ego is bulletproof (see next item).

 

† Has Obama Been Humbled?: Despite the best efforts of Dems and their MSM army of winged monkeys to create a cult of personality around Obama, American voters have seen through the relentless propaganda campaign and focused on results. Obama, on the other hand, is narcissistic enough to believe his own hype (“Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me. We're going to see how much difference that makes now.").

 

As Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of The Washington Times puts it, “[T]he current president imagines that his talent is the size of his ego and he's big enough to speak things into existence. (Whether he's an authentic Bible scholar is open to argument but he has clearly read the Book of Genesis.)”

 

But enough about Obama – after all, he’s the first to tell you that “[Insert topic] isn't about me." But it’s always about him, because “he can't keep himself out of the spotlight,” gripes David Limbaugh:

 

When someone says that one time or a few times, you might believe him. But when he says it repeatedly … you have to conclude he is protesting too much and means just the opposite.

Given what we've learned about Obama's self-absorption, it's not a stretch to infer that when he says "it's not about me," he wants to project an air of humility while receiving personal credit for that which he denies seeking credit. What he really means is, "The causes I am working on are greater than self, but - wink, wink - I darn well expect you to applaud me anyway, not just for my transcendent accomplishments but also for my being humble and selfless about it."

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: The Supreme Court “granted a motion by the National Rifle Association for argument time March 2, when the justices will consider whether the Second Amendment individual right to bear arms applies against state and local restrictions on firearms,” reports The Blog of LegalTimes:  

 

The NRA will take an unspecified number of minutes from the plaintiffs who are challenging Chicago's gun restrictions, and who are represented by Alan Gura of Gura & Possessky of D.C. and Virginia. The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago. …

 

The NRA made its request for argument time in a Jan. 5 motion by its lawyer, former solicitor general Paul Clement, now at King & Spalding. Clement indicated the request was driven in part by the fact that the brief by Gura emphasizes the "privileges or immunities clause" argument in favor of applying the Second Amendment to the states, whereas the NRA wants to advance a more traditional "due process clause" argument for incorporation. Clement noted that the due process argument occupied only 7 of 73 pages in the petitioners' brief. Gura, in his reply, said the due process argument "will be presented fully" at oral argument without the NRA intervening.

 

The BLT speculates that justices who favor incorporation want to see how the privileges or immunities argument “will play out.” The Stiletto’s friend, The Heel - an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog – is taking this development as a hopeful sign. He says that the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling shows that the Supreme Court is putting the Constitution above social policy.

 

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: It’s one thing to economize by clipping coupons and foregoing pricey lattes. But when mama can’t buy a new pair of shoes, there’s just no more fat left in the budget to squeeze out! The Boston Globe reports on how the recession is affecting shoe-lover Melissa O’Shea (she is “slowing down spending on her own collection of 200 shoes”) and the Hello Stiletto Shoe Club, a social club she founded for like-minded women:

 

About 40 women - whose professions ranged from construction to personal health - crowded into a small room at the Capital Grille in Burlington. They sipped wine, admired each other’s fancy footwear, and lamented what they could no longer afford. The women took a break to strut down a short red carpet and show off their Christian Louboutin espadrilles and Jimmy Choo patent leather boots - almost all bought during better times.

 

In the corner, longtime club members Sheila Richards and Ali Santarlasci refused to hit the runway for the first time. Two or three years ago, they would buy shoes just to debut at Hello Stiletto gatherings.

 

Now, Richards, who does interior design work and historical reconstruction, is browsing consignment shops and searching websites to swap shoes with other women. Santarlasci was wearing the $39 black suede Bandolino mules she bought at Marshalls a few weeks ago.

 

“I won’t walk that runway in Bandolinos,’’ Santarlasci said. “I’ll just look at the nice shoes from here.’’

 

† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: Washington Post media critic-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz offers his post-mortem of the MA special election coverage:

 

If Martha Coakley's defeat in Massachusetts was a political earthquake, most journalists were slow to hear the tremors. …

 

The Times didn't run a piece saying that Coakley's candidacy was in trouble until Jan. 8; The Post didn't do so until Jan. 11; the Los Angeles Times until Jan. 14. …

 

Even the Boston Globe seemed caught by surprise. To the paper's credit, it asked on Dec. 17: "Can Scott Brown actually win this thing?" while quickly adding that he was still "considered a long shot."

 

A Jan. 7 editorial said that even with polls tightening, "Scott Brown still needs a political miracle to win." And a Jan. 10 Globe poll seemed to seal the deal, giving Coakley a "solid" 15-point lead among likely voters.

 

Frank Phillips, the Globe's state house bureau chief, says he missed the last few days of the campaign by taking a personal trip with his wife that he finalized a couple of weeks earlier. "I made a decision at Christmas that this was not going to be an important race, others could handle it, I could be out of town," Phillips says.

 

But he says Brown was going nowhere earlier in the campaign: "What would you have written? 'Things were heating up'? Things weren't heating up. It would be unfair to say we had missed it because it wasn't there."

 

While the Globe gradually reported signs of a closer race, it wasn't until Jan. 16 that Phillips definitively signaled the shift. He wrote that Coakley's strategy of ignoring Brown "turned out to be a major miscalculation" and that national Democrats were "now panicked about a neck-and-neck race."

 

† Marketing To Muslims (second item): In its print circulars and on its Web site, Best Buy wished its Muslim customers "Happy Eid al-Adha," which didn’t sit too well with infidels (that is to say, Christians and Jews) who have long been wished “Happy Holidays” by retailers, reports the Los Angeles Times:

   

"You insult all of the heros and innocent who died 911 by celebrating a holiday of the religion that said to destroy them!" wrote one [on Best Buy's website]. Many others said they would no longer shop at Best Buy.

 

The controversy underscores the continuing obstacles that retailers and other companies face in marketing to a U.S. Muslim population estimated at more than 2.3 million by the Pew Research Center.

 

Even an advertising-industry study three years ago that urged companies to cash in on what was then the community's estimated $170-billion purchasing power got little traction.

 

Best Buy is believed to be the first major retailer to market to Muslims nationwide, and only a few are even dipping their toes into direct ethnic local advertising [contextual link added by The Stiletto].

 

Rather than pave the way for more national advertising, the Best Buy ad seems to have reinforced the pariah status that Muslims have in mainstream marketing. …

 

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and with more recent incidents, such as the Ft. Hood shooting and attempted Christmas Day plane bombing, the word "Muslim" for some Americans is synonymous with terrorism. And that's an image that corporations don't want attached to their brand names.

 

A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 35% of Americans have a negative view of Muslims and 45% believe Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

 

† It’s Not News If It Happens To A Journalist: On her top-rated eponymous show, CNN's Nancy Grace grills guests until they squirm, cry – or in one case, allegedly commit suicide. Yet she wants to bar cameras when she is deposed in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the estate of Melinda Duckett alleging "intentional infliction of emotional distress" that led to the mother of missing 2-year-old boy Trenton Duckett killing herself after being interviewed by Grace, reports ABC News:

 

By keeping video cameras out, Grace's lawyers argue they would avoid "annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, and undue harm should the videotape be released prior to trial for purposes unrelated to the litigation," according to the motion obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

 

"It is indeed ironic," Kara Skarupo, one of the attorneys who represent Duckett's estate, her parents and sister, told ABCNews.com. "They allege we've been courting the media, which is completely ridiculous. The irony is she is out there on TV every day."

 

In a written order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Jones ruled that Grace will be videotaped during her scheduled deposition, but that prior written permission from the court is required to disclose portions of the tape.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Take The Veil Off, Or Go Home): After studying the impact of face-covering burqas and niqabs on French legal and social traditions for six-months, a 32-member French parliamentary panel issued a 170-page report that recommends condemning - but not banning them, reports The New York Times:

 

The commission called on 180 people to testify - including senior politicians, women’s rights activists and Muslim representatives. …

 

Critics of the veils have described them as a facilitator of extremism, a hindrance to women’s rights and an affront to France’s cherished secularity.

 

Others have raised concerns about the constitutionality of state mandates on dress and have pointed to the possibility of aggravating tensions among France’s Muslims, many of whom feel socially alienated and excluded from social and economic progress.

 

A French judge, Marc Trévidic, warned in an interview this month with the Journal du Dimanche that a law banning veils could provoke terrorist attacks.

 

“I don’t think an ideology should be fought through constraining measures but through ideas,” Mohammed Moussaoui, the head of a national coalition of Muslim organizations, told The Associated Press on Monday. “It’s very difficult to talk about the liberation of women through a law that constrains.”

 

He said, however, that it was legitimate to ask women to remove their veils in all “public services” like post offices and schools “where identification is necessary.”

 

If a Muslim woman can remove her veil to claim benefits for new mothers and other cradle-to-grave government welfare payments it proves that she is not wearing the face covering for religious reasons -  otherwise she would not compromise her “modesty” for a few French francs.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts  (fourth item Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised): Sales of existing homes plunged 16.7 percent in December, the steepest drop in more than 40 years, according to National Association of Realtors – even after Congress extended a tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homeowners an additional five months until April 30, 2010, and threw in a new $6,500 credit for homeowners who move to another home, reports The Associated Press:

 

The big question hanging over the housing market this spring is whether a tentative recovery will stumble after the government pulls back support. The Federal Reserve's $1.25 trillion program to push down mortgage rates is scheduled to expire at the end of March - a month before the newly extended tax credit runs out.

 

“Keeping the mortgage rates at historic lows, which required a commitment of more than $1 trillion, was viewed within the administration as a central plank of the economic strategy last year,”  reports The Washington Post, adding, “If the market again falls into a tailspin, homeowners could face another wave of trouble, and it would deal a body blow to President Obama's efforts to get the economy on track.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Paula Abdul: The New Lily Ledbetter?): ABC will give “American Idol” alum Paula Abdul a $1,000,000 development deal if she appears on the network’s "Dancing With The Stars," reports TMZ. The proposed deal does not preclude Abdul from also signing up as a judge on Simon Cowell’s new show, "The X Factor."  

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Isa D'Arleans – a Seattle artist by way of France – who gathered together neighborhood volunteers to spruce up a homeless shelter. The Seattle Times reports:

 

Kenny Taylor stopped in his tracks after entering his home Saturday morning.

 

"Wow, what a change," said Taylor, 53, gesturing to the commotion in the lobby of the "supportive housing" facility at the Union Hotel on Third Avenue in downtown Seattle. "This is too cool."

 

Two dozen people he didn't know were painting the lobby's pale tan walls peach pink, smoky blue and butter yellow. Volunteers ranging from a 5-year-old girl to men in their 60s participated in the painting, which began Saturday and will continue next Saturday.

 

It's part of a project called "Live in Colors." Volunteers plan to paint all eight Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) supportive housing sites this year, says the project's coordinator, Madison Park artist Isa D'Arleans. …

 

The goal of the project is to use color to change the buildings' institutional feel to a more homelike appeal, said Mary Ann Millican, DESC's director of development. …

 

DESC paid for the paint out of its maintenance budget.

 

D'Arleans said she hopes to involve schools in the future and make enough noise with the project in Seattle that it will become a national trend.

 

DESC officials, who serve 7,000 people every year, including 700 in supportive housing units, chose the Union Hotel as the first site for the project. The downtown Seattle building, which now serves 52 disabled and formerly homeless tenants, became the organization's first supportive housing unit in 1994. 

        

In a recent article titled, “Recessionomics 101: How to Make Extra Money,” The Wall Street Journal advises: “One of the best ways to earn extra cash is by creating a business using existing skills and interests, such as a gardening, art or photography.” Damian R. Bonazzoli, a senior staff attorney for the MA Appeals Court, did just that, placing an ad on Craigslist offering his services as a term paper writer. Bonazzoli’s employer learned of his sideline when a journalist writing an article on term paper trafficking posed as a college student looking for someone to write a paper on physician-assisted suicide, and Bonazzoli offered to do the job for $300 and provided his resume. It is illegal to sell term papers in the state and Bonazzoli is no longer working for the appellate court. It is unclear whether he left his $94,000-a-year job of his own accord, or was terminated.

 

[Hat Tip: Legal Blog Watch]

        

Are You Still Using An Easy-To-Hack Password?

- The Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2010

        

It's Time For Obama To Look At Terrorism Differently

- Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2010

        

Disbarred attorney Christopher Lee Diener, 42, has been arrested on one count of conspiracy to commit grand theft and 97 counts of grand theft by false pretense for allegedly defrauding more than 400 struggling homeowners in a $1.25 million loan modification scam. One of Diener’s partners, Terrence Green Sr., was also arrested on the same charges. Another partner, Stefano Joseph Marrero, is still at large, and there is a $1.5 million warrant out for his arrest, reports The National Law Journal:

 

According to the Orange County, Calif., district attorney's office along with two business partners, defrauded homeowners by promising loan modification services in exchange for advance payments. The trio allegedly told customers that they would guarantee their loan modifications, negotiate lower rates with lenders, reduce the principal on their mortgages and have lenders forgive second mortgages or late fees.

 

The accused, who were neighbors, operated under the names Home Relief Services LLC, U.S. Loan Mod Processing, HRS Communications, The Diener Law Firm and Diener Law Group, according to the district attorney's office. Diener allegedly served as the attorney in the scheme.

 

If convicted, Diener and Green face as much as 70 years in state prison.

        

This Los Angeles Times profile of Joseph Farah describes his appearance as “something out of a spy novel - suave, mysterious, bushy black mustache” and his 12-year old Website, WorldNetDaily.com, as having “the feel of a scandal sheet … and an infomercial”:

WorldNetDaily's unique visitors nearly doubled to 2 million a month after Obama took office, according to Nielsen's ratings. Farah says his traffic is at least twice that, citing private data from Google Analytics, a traffic-counting service. …

Revenue is on track to hit $10 million annually, Farah says. (That figure could not be independently verified.) His success comes in no small part from the storehouse of "birther" T-shirts, books, DVDs and postcards for sale in his virtual "superstore."

WorldNetDaily's book division publishes titles from high-profile conservatives … Perhaps one of Farah's greatest assets is the WorldNetDaily mailing list, recently rented by the Republican National Committee for a fundraising appeal. …

Farah has won fans in unexpected corners. In a 2008 testimonial, "Why a Liberal Jewish Feminist Likes WND," college journalism instructor Donna Halper praised Farah's "interesting and honest writing" and his reluctance to "blindly follow the 'party line.' " She makes the site required reading for her students at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.  …

Farah, 55, is an evangelical Christian whose politics would be called conservative by any measure. But he resents the label - noting that he is devoted to muckraking journalism no matter which party is in charge - and likes to think of himself as a lone wolf in a pack of complacent reporters, particularly where Obama is concerned. …

"Just because one newsman or one news agency decides to pursue a story that nobody believes doesn't mean we're fringe," he said. "When Woodward and Bernstein started pursuing Watergate, had no one else gotten on the story. … Woodward and Bernstein would probably be viewed today as some kind of fringe characters." …

Its reportage has been known to rattle careers.

Van Jones, a mid-level White House official admired by the president's closest advisors, resigned last year after Farah's team reported that he had once declared himself a communist and a radical.

When Cass Sunstein, now Obama's top regulatory official, came up for a Senate vote,several Republicans who opposed him cited his views on animal rights and hunting gleaned from WorldNetDaily. (Sunstein was confirmed anyway.)

        

† Obama Administration Christmas Bomber Missteps Worse Than You Think: The Associated Press gives a blow-by-blow account of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s questioning from the time he was taken off Northwest Airlines flight 253 by Customs and Border Protection officers and taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center to be treated for burns by local police officers and an ambulance crew, to the time he was read his Miranda rights. He was a Chatty Cathy with the EMTs and healthcare providers and with both sets of FBI agents who questioned him. The first FBI interview ended after 50 minutes when he was given medication prior to surgery. Five hours later, when he was re-interviewed, he did not provide any new information and – without anyone contacting the federal High-Value Interrogation Group - Abdulmutallab was told of his right to remain silent and to have an attorney. He exercised his newly granted rights.

 

Based on testimony of Obama administration national security officials before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week, a Washington Post editorial concludes that “the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model,” and slams the handling of Abdulmutallab as “myopic, irresponsible and potentially dangerous.” The WaPo adds that despite administration claims that Abdulmutallab didn’t know anything more about other al-Qaeda plots than he told the FBI before being Mirandized, “we may never know whether the administration made the right call or whether it squandered a valuable opportunity.”

 

For instance, is Abdulmutallab boast that “there are 20 more like me” linked to officials in the U.K. raising the terror threat level after noticing an “unusually high” number of people on the no-fly list trying to board U.S.-bound planes over the past week?

 

You know who else wasn’t in the loop when the decision was made to bypass the High-Value Interrogation Group or turn Abdulmutallab over to military interrogators? Our commander-in-chief, who was golfing in Hawaii at the time (sixth item).

Editorial Note: There seems to be some confusion over whether the High-Value Interrogation Group - which Obama said would be set up a year ago – is operational or exists in name only. Blair and FBI Director Robert Mueller disagree on this point. Which means we have bigger problems than the administration’s knee-jerk decision to question Abdulmutallab to build a case against him as opposed to questioning him to find out everything possible about al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and any terror plots in the offing.

 

† Netanyahu Is Bush III: You heard of shuttle diplomacy? President Barack Hussein Obama’s naïve expectations of achieving peace in the Middle East have fallen victim to scuttle diplomacy. As in: Shortly after meeting with Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scuttled hope for change in the relations between Israelis and Palestinians by vowing that his country is here to stay in the West bank “for eternity,” reports The Associated Press:

 

"Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel for eternity," Netanyahu proclaimed at a tree-planting ceremony celebrating the Jewish arbor day at a settlement just south of Jerusalem.

 

Netanyahu's participation Sunday in tree-planting ceremonies in two West Bank settlements were an apparent attempt to soothe Jewish settlers who vehemently oppose his decision - taken under intense U.S. pressure - to slow West Bank construction. Both settlements lie within areas Israel wants to keep in any final agreement with the Palestinians. …

 

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, for a future independent state and say settlements undermine this goal. They have refused to resume peacemaking until all settlement construction stops, something Netanyahu has refused to do. …

 

Last year, President Barack Obama took office with the ambitious aim of putting Mideast peacemaking on a fast track. Instead, the peace mission has stalled over Israel's settlements on occupied lands and the refusal by the Palestinians to return to peace talks.

 

Obama acknowledged last week that he underestimated the domestic political forces at play in the region and overreached in expecting a quick breakthrough.

 

† Gifted Children Left Behind (second item): Last year, 82 percent of students taking the Advance Placement chemistry class at Berkeley High School passed the exam that awards them college credit, and students taking the AP biology and physics classes beat the national 55.2 percent pass rate by an even bigger margin. So how will the school reward these high-achieving students and keep them motivated to excel? They won’t. Instead, the school wants a redistribution of funds from before-and-after school science labs for scientifically gifted students to classes for academic laggards, reports the Los Angeles Times:

 

Response to the proposal was swift. A group of science teachers sent a letter to Berkeley residents protesting the move and seeking support. More than 250 people have signed an online petition in support of the labs. The story ricocheted around the Internet with headlines like, "Berkeley High may drop 'white' science labs."

 

In this famously liberal college town, which prides itself on having one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country, the debate has revealed deep disagreement over how best to help underachievers, pitting haves against have-nots, whites and Asians against blacks and Latinos. …

 

In Berkeley's 10 square miles, multimillion-dollar hillside homes with sweeping views rise above working-class bungalows and apartments in the flatlands. The percentage of adults with at least a bachelor's degree is more than twice as high as in the state as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while the percentage of residents living in poverty is nearly 1 1/2 times the statewide level. …

 

Only 30.8% of African American students at Berkeley High are proficient in English and 31.3% in math, according to the state Department of Education. Just over 90% of white students are proficient in English, 87.1% in math. …

 

Berkeley residents voted for a parcel tax in the 1980s to shore up funds for education and help erase the gap. Two-thirds of the money is used to reduce class sizes, but much of the remainder goes to enriched science and arts programs and academic support such as tutoring.

 

But the extra money has done little to help narrow the difference.

 

† Virtual March For Life: Organizers of this year’s March for Life to protest the 37^th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion estimated the crowd at 200,000. The "virtual" march numbered 74,925 "avatars" by late Friday afternoon. New avatars continue to be added, and there are 82,209 as of this posting.

 

† "Sicko" Healthcare Prescription Causes Adverse Side EffectsFor Dems (second item): UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar’s description of the medical care he received in Canada when he became seriously ill with what turned out to be diverticulosis on a hunting trip was eerily similar to The Stiletto’s experience in Norway where ER doctors were more concerned about not reducing their rationed supply of X-ray films than determining whether her friend’s arm was seriously fractured and whether The Stiletto’s ribs were broken:

 

"They couldn't do nothing for me," he noted in a later media conference call Wednesday. "It was like I was in a Third World country." …

 

They had some machinery that wasn't working that couldn't do its job. And I needed to have it done. So we went to where we could have it done."

 

Lesnar said his wife “got me out of there and drove 100 miles an hour to get me down to Bismarck, North Dakota.”  He added:

 

"The only reason I'm mentioning this is I'm mentioning this to the United States of America because President Obama is pushing this health-care reform. And obviously I don't want it. I'm a conservative Republican … I'm speaking on behalf of Americans, I'm speaking on behalf of our doctors in the United States that don't want this to happen and neither do I."

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Red Is The New Blue (Dog): Q: How do you know when a Democrat is throwing in the towel? A: His lips are moving. On the heels of Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Little Rock) announcing his retirement comes word that Rep. Marion Berry (D-Gillett) will also call it a day. Meanwhile, there’s talk that Rep. John Boozman (R-Rogers) is thinking of running against incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), who is on particularly shaky ground.

 

Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Beau, has decided against seeking election to the people’s seat in DE that his father occupied from 1973 to 2009. His disinclination to run against Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE At Large) puts another Dem Senate seat in play, and proves that even “preordained” victories – Joe Biden’s former Senate chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, had been appointed by the state’s governor to keep the seat warm until the mid-term elections – can no longer be taken for granted after Scott Brown’s "upset" victory in MA.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eleventh item, Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”): The Associated Press reports that “[n]early six weeks after Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) halted an early prisoner release program that set free hundreds of potentially violent inmates, his administration is still struggling to identify which criminals - or even how many - got out. … The administration also acknowledged MGT Push started … Sept. 11, five days earlier than the announced date of Sept. 16.” Quinn’s early release program (AKA “MGT Push”) credited convicts up to six months of good-conduct on their first day of incarceration, and dropped a 61-day minimum stay. According to AP while the program was in effect, prisoners spent 26 days in the state penitentiary on average.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Drug-Stealing Surgery Tech Exposes Thousands Of Patients To Hepatitis): Federal District Court judge, Robert E. Blackburn rejected a plea agreement in which former CO hospital technician Kristen Parker would plead guilty to exposing hundreds of patients to hepatitis C in exchange for a 20year sentence, because he was not persuaded that the DA had given victims’ views short shrift, reports The New York Times:

 

Ms. Parker, 27, admitted to the police on videotape that while working at Rose Medical Center in Denver in 2008 and 2009, she stole pain-medication syringes from operating room trays, replacing them at times with needles she had already used to inject herself with heroin.

 

Seventeen Rose patients have so far been found to have a strain of hepatitis C linked through genetic sequencing to the strain in Ms. Parker’s blood, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Hepatitis C affects liver function and can have lifelong consequences.

 

Ms. Parker’s lawyer, Gregory C. Graf, said he had not consulted yet with his client but expected she would probably persist with her guilty plea, giving the judge discretion as to her sentence when the case reconvenes next month. Ms. Parker could also change her plea to not guilty and insist on a jury trial, or try to reach another plea agreement with prosecutors.

 

Judge Blackburn warned Ms. Parker in the brief hearing in before a courtroom packed with former Rose patients and their families, that if she chose to continue with her guilty plea, the sentence could be stiffer.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (tenth item, Extradite Polanski To Poland): Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza rejected Roman Polanski’s request to be sentenced in absentia: "I choose to insist in defense of the integrity of the judicial system. He needs to appear," Espinoza said. "I've made it clear he needs to surrender … Motion is denied."

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on 11-year-old Dayton Webber, whose legs were amputated at the knees and his arms, just above the elbows, before his first birthday when he developed a raging streptococcal bacterial infection that almost killed him because doctors discovered that he had been born without his spleen. The Washington Post reports:

 

Here's the scouting report on: No arms. No legs. Huge heart.

 

Whether he's wrestling, playing football, go-karting or ice skating, Dayton doesn't just participate - he competes.

 

"I just like to do sports," Dayton said. "I feel like I can play sports and kind of show people what I can do - that I can do sports just as good as them. I feel like I can do anything if I just put my mind to it." …

 

Dayton not only skateboards but also does tricks - the equivalent of handstands on his arm stumps. He races go-karts, with the help of Velcro-outfitted gloves that help him control the steering wheel with the insides of his biceps. He plays video games, such as "Madden NFL 10," balancing the controls on his lap and pecking at the buttons.

 

He ice-skates. "We just stick his legs in the skates and tie them real tight," said his mother, Natalie Webber, 37. …

 

When he was 8 and 9, Dayton played on a youth football team, which had an "A" squad for the better players and a "B" team. Dayton played for the "A" team. He has prosthetic legs, but he eschewed them on the gridiron. On his stumps, he played on the defensive line, usually lining up in a four-point stance, sometimes standing upright like a linebacker.

 

Before long, his teammates and coaches were calling Dayton "the Vacuum" because he was so good at recovering fumbles - at least four in one game.

 

"He has a nose for the football you wouldn't believe," said Rich Brenner, one of Dayton's football coaches.  

        

When Polk County (FL) Sheriff's Office detectives checked out a lead on the location of a green 1998 Dodge Durango that had been stolen from a local Wal-Mart parking lot, they found the vehicle parked in front of a home and the alleged thief, Michael Ray Ekes, 30,  inside playing “Grand Theft Auto,”  reports the Orlando Sentinel:

 

Detectives said they found a syringe filled with methamphetamine inside Ekes' pants pocket. Ekes told detectives he "shoots" meth and had just finished using before detectives arrived.

 

Ekes was already out on bail for previous charges of … wait for it … two counts of grand theft auto. …

 

Ekes was charged with burglary of a conveyance, grand theft auto, possession of burglary tools with intent to use, possession of methamphetamine, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

        

Got A Blister Outbreak?

- HealthDay News, January 21, 2010