RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/357705/print

In late 2007, Powerline’s John Hinderaker reminds us, Senator Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, provided answers to questions posed by Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe and New York Times, in order to provide voters with his views on presidential power – you know, so we would know what to expect if we elected him. Here’s an exchange in which the self-proclaimed constitutional law scholar explained his position on the commander-in-chief’s use of force:

Q. In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites — a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)

A. The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As John points out, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment to the use-of-force authorization voted out of the foreign relations committee yesterday. The amendment precisely tracked the position articulated by Obama in 2008. It was defeated 14-4, thanks mostly to Democrats who are doing President Obama’s bidding.

Interestingly, Obama claimed yesterday that the use of force is necessary to enforce a purported international norm against chemical weapons. Of course, the fact that most countries sign a treaty hardly means there is an international norm – the world has declined to act against Syria, and conduct is a more reliable indication of a norm than parchment. It is also an international norm that sovereigns may not be bound by international law without their consent, and Syria has neither signed nor ratified the chemical weapons convention.

http://www.nationalreview.com/ Ed Markey, Useless Doofus If you wanted a parody of a politician’s fear, paralysis, indecisiveness, and timidity, you couldn’t do much better than the Senate’s newest addition, Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey: U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey punted as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a compromise resolution designed to win support for President Obama’s […]

Why Conservatives Should Rally for the President’s Resolution

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/09/04/why-conservatives-should-rally-for-the-presidents-resolution-and-work-to-defeat-the-forces-of-the-new-isolationists-left-and-right/?print=1

THOSE OF US WHO OPPOSE INTERVENTION ARE “EERILY REMINISCENT” OF CHARLES LINDBERGH AND OTHERS? HMMMM…FUNNY BUT YOU WERE SO OPPOSED TO A FAR MORE JUSTIFIABLE WAR IN VIETNAM THAT YOU WERE ONE OF THE USEFUL IDIOTS CHEERING FOR THE VIETCONG, MAO, AND SOVIET UNION….RSK

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/09/04/why-conservatives-should-rally-for-the-presidents-resolution-and-work-to-defeat-the-forces-of-the-new-isolationists-left-and-right/?print=1

[1]As the Obama administration goes to Congress to seek support for a resolution authorizing a military strike against Syria, the deep divisions in both the Democratic and Republican parties are at present making it problematic, at best, that he will gain the votes he needs for a consensus in favor of action.

The divisions today are eerily reminiscent of those at the beginning of the Cold War, when pre-war isolationists or, to use the term they preferred then and prefer now, non-interventionists once again came forth on both the Left and Right to oppose a strong response to Soviet expansionism.

Before Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to face convincing a strong isolationist sentiment at home, as well as a reluctant Congress, to do anything that could involve the United States in war. After running for the presidency with a promise to keep the nation out of war, once in office Roosevelt acted to strengthen the British resolve through the Lend-Lease program as well as putting through the famous trading of bases for destroyers.

At home, the America First Committee, headed by Charles Lindbergh and which included old liberals and progressives such as John T. Flynn and Oswald Garrison Villard as well as conservatives such as Col. Robert McCormick and William H. Regnery, became very influential. During the years of the Nazi-Soviet pact, the American Communist Party created its own front group, the American Peace Mobilization, which argued that FDR was seeking to wage an imperialist war for oil and urged Americans to keep out of war and focus their opposition on the nefarious plans for intervention favored by the British Empire.

Pearl Harbor put an end to the America First Committee’s efforts, as the nation united behind the president and thousands of young men flooded the recruiting centers to volunteer to fight against the threat to America’s security. At the war’s end, as the Soviets moved effectively to use the turmoil and insecurity to expand communism as far as they could in the East and the West, a new opposition emerged on both Left and Right against taking a firm stand against Stalin and his cadre.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-three-decade-delay-of-a-nuclear-waste-repository?f=puball There was a time when the United States was a can-do nation that built canals, bridges, railroads, and highways. Now we are a nation whose civil engineers annually report the dangers of decaying infrastructure. A perfect example of how incompetent our government has become is the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In 1982 the […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/syria-and-other-unlearned-lessons It is autumn’s first festival of incompetence. Like the President-in-council surrounded by high-level blockheads vainly searching for their first clue. Like the Joint Chiefs Chairman insisting that more delays in the already belated US response to Syrian provocation will not present any intelligence or operational problems.  He would be joking except that the administration’s […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ There isn’t much enthusiasm for Obama’s plan for Syria. A lot of the Senate would like Obama to go bigger. A lot of the House would like Obama to just go. Even the experts have trouble explaining how and why the attacks will do any good. The debate has congealed down to credibility. The […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/video-jamie-glazov-on-jihad-denial-2/ The Left’s Heart of Darkness — on The Glazov Gang To order Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror, click here. In this special episode of The Glazov Gang, Josh Brewster interviewed the host of the show, Frontpage’s editor Jamie Glazov. In the two-part video interview below, Brewster speaks […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/europes-would-be-masters/print/ It’s getting pathetic. Or is farcical the proper word? What to call it when European Union politicians, functionaries, and assorted publicists, promoters, and hangers-on throw themselves into a full-scale campaign to transform the continent’s peasants into enthusiastic boosters of the whole elite EU project – only to fail ignominiously? And then, not having learned […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/no-to-war-in-syria-2/print/ A Senate panel has voted to authorize Barack Obama to use military force in Syria. This is a disaster in the making. Just as in Afghanistan, Obama has no goal, no plan for victory. He said that the military strikes in Syria would not be directed toward removing Bashar Assad, but then he said […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/al-qaeda-vows-to-slaughter-christians-after-u-s-liberates-syria/

Will this be a U.S. Assisted genocide?

While U.S. leaders continue pushing for war against the Syrian government, today “Al-Qaeda-linked rebels,”reports AP, “launched an assault on a regime-held Christian mountain village in the densely populated west of Syria and new clashes erupted near the capital, Damascus, on Wednesday… In the attack on the village of Maaloula, rebels commandeered a mountaintop hotel and nearby caves and shelled the community below, said a nun, speaking by phone from a convent in the village. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.”

Arabic news agency Al Hadath gives more information concerning this latest terror attack on Syria’s Christians, specifically how the al-Qaeda linked rebels “terrorized the Christians, threatening to be avenged on them after the triumph of the revolution.”

Thus al-Qaeda terrorists eagerly await U.S. assistance against the Syrian government, so they can subjugate if not slaughter Syria’s Christians, secularists, and non-Muslims — even as the Obama administration tries to justify war on Syria by absurdly evoking the “human rights” of Syrians on the one hand, and lying about al-Qaeda’s presence in Syria on the other.