RUTHFULLY YOURS

Obama-administration scandals never resolve. They just vanish — usually, under a new scandal.

So it was with one of this president’s earliest embarrassments, “Operation Fast and Furious,” designed to help the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) dismantle drug cartels operating inside the United States and disrupt drug-trafficking routes. Instead, it put into the hands of criminals south of the border some 2,000 weapons, which have been used to kill hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Now, Fast and Furious is back in the news. Earlier this month, a raid on the hidey-hole of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman recovered not only the notorious drug lord, but a (“massive”) .50-caliber rifle, capable of stopping a car or shooting down a helicopter, that originated with the ATF program. Rest easy, though: Only 34 such rifles were sold through the program.

The news comes just days after a federal judge rejected President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege to deny Congress access to Fast and Furious–related records it requested back in 2012 as part of an investigation into the gun-walking operation. Despite the IRS scandal, Benghazi, and a host of other accusations of malfeasance against this White House, it remains this president’s sole assertion of executive privilege.

Three-and-a-half years later, the question is still: Why?

In November 2009, the ATF’s Phoenix field office launched an operation in which guns bought by drug-cartel straw purchasers in the U.S. were allowed to “walk” across the border into Mexico. ATF agents would then track the guns as they made their way through the ranks of the cartel.

At least, that was the theory. In reality, once the guns walked across the border, they were gone. Whistleblowers reported, and investigators later confirmed, that the ATF made no effort to trace the guns.

A man whose bomb designs were responsible for killing many Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan was released from the Guantanamo prison camp and sent to Bosnia, the Pentagon announced today.

The government also acknowledged that Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed al-Sawah could possibly make his way back to terrorism, but that prospect isn’t likely because he cooperated.

Uh-huh.

The Hill:

The review board set up by President Obama to review remaining detainee transfers decided to release him last February.

The Pentagon also announced the transfer of Abd al-Aziz Abduh Abdallah Ali al-Suwaydi, a 41-year-old Yemeni, to Montenegro.

Al-Suwaydi admitted to being an explosives trainer, according to his files posted by the Times.

Thursday’s transfers mark the 15th and 16th of January. They are part of the president’s bid to release as many detainees as possible in order to bring the remaining detainees to the U.S. and close the prison.

The latest transfers bring the total number of detainees remaining at the prison to 91. One more detainee is scheduled to be transferred this month.

I suppose there’s an alternate universe somewhere where America has a president who isn’t concerned about his legacy and cares more about national security than his place in the history books.

But it isn’t this America. The blood and treasure expended to get these terrorists locked up in the first place should count for something. Sacrifices were made, lives lost so that some of the worst of the worst would be prevented from going about their business of threatening and killing Americans.

Republicans in the Senate are looking for Democratic votes to override a presidential veto of a GOP backed measure that would have prevented the EPA from regulating most of the waters in the US.

The legislation is aimed at a new EPA rule that would give the agency jurisdiction over small streams and tributaries that comprise about 80% of the water in the US.

The Hill:

The Senate will vote Thursday on a long-shot effort to override President Obama’s veto that preserved his contentious water pollution rule.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed for the vote Wednesday, less than a day after Obama announced that he had vetoed the GOP’s attempt to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation.

The rule, dubbed the Clean Water Rule or “Waters of the United States,” would extend federal power under the Clean Water Act to small bodies of water such as streams and wetlands. It is highly controversial, with Republicans calling it a massive power grab and Democrats saying it’s needed to protect vulnerable waterways from pollution.

McConnell slammed Obama for his veto earlier Wednesday.

The Supreme Court has decided to hear 26 states’ challenge to President Obama’s unpopular and constitutionally dubious plan that amnesties up to 5.5 million illegal aliens and provides incentives for foreigners to have so-called anchor babies in order to gain legal immigrant status here.

After the Obama administration lost twice in lower courts, the high court gave the administration a win Tuesday when it decided to review a November ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s order earlier last year halting implementation of Obama’s executive amnesty.

As attorney Gabriel Malor writes at The Federalist:

“At the most basic level, this case is about stopping yet another President Obama end-run around Congress. In accordance with its constitutional authority, Congress has established an elaborate immigration scheme governing which aliens may enter the United States, how long they may stay, and which aliens must be removed. Obama and the Democrats do not like Congress’ immigration scheme, but they lack the votes to change it.”

The decision to take up the politically explosive issue sets the high court up for high drama in this election year in which illegal immigration, and immigration policies in general, figure prominently. The Supreme Court is expected to render its decision on the merits of the case by June. Led by Donald Trump, most Republican presidential candidates oppose amnesty in varying degrees while all Democrats favor it.

Mayor Dayne Walling, a Democrat, led a cheerful countdown at the Flint water treatment plant to press the button moving the city over to river water. Walling and Darnell Earley, the Democratic emergency manager, even raised glasses in a toast and drank the water to show that it was safe.

“It’s a historic moment for the city of Flint to return to its roots and use our own river as our drinking water supply,” Walling said. “The water quality speaks for itself.”

Flint’s city council had voted in favor of the move 7-1. Despite claims about the power of the emergency manager, the switch could not have gone forward without that vote.

Even once the problem had surfaced, the EPA knew and kept quiet. It was only once the crisis broke, that the Democratic establishment attempted to redirect the blame at Michigan’s efforts to fix broken Democratic cities like Flint using emergency managers. The war against the emergency managers is not about clean water; it’s about protecting the dirty Democratic politics that destroyed these cities.

Flint’s dirty water had its origins in dirty politics. The Democratic Party had badly mismanaged the city.

On four separate occasions, President Obama swore that he would “faithfully execute the Office of President.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court told him to prove it. As expected, the justices voted to review Texas’s challenge to Obama’s executive action on immigration, known as DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans). Critically, the Court ordered the Obama administration to answer a pivotal question: Whether DAPA “violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.” In 225 years, the Supreme Court has never had occasion to ask the president whether he has reneged on his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. However, with pens-and-phones replacing checks-and-balances, the Supreme Court is now poised to break new constitutional ground in order to preserve our embattled separation of powers.

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced DAPA. This executive action purported to rely on “prosecutorial discretion” to defer the deportations of up to 5 million aliens and grant them work authorization. Two weeks later, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott (who had just been elected governor and would take office in January 2015) challenged DAPA in federal court in Brownsville. Two months later — and two days before the Department of Homeland Security would have begun accepting new applicants — Judge Andrew Hanen put DAPA on hold nationwide.

Judge Hanen found fatal the government’s failure to comply with the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Because Hanen ruled on narrow grounds, the court did not need to address whether the president had failed to comply with the Constitution’s requirement that he “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The case was then appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. In July, a divided court affirmed Judge Hanen’s ruling on administrative-law grounds. It, too, did not reach the constitutional question.

How is it that this appalling story came to the authorities and government so late? rsk In case you missed it.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2016/01/15/political-poison-how-many-flints-until-we-learn-our-lesson-by-kevin-d-williamson/
Political Poison How many Flints until we learn our lesson? By Kevin D. Williamson
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2016/01/11/appalling-breakdown-of-infrastructure-in-michigan/

Snyder Apologizes, Blames Dirty Water on Michigan Environmental Department Breakdown By Rod Kackley
For years, the people of Flint, Mich., and state inspectors were waving red flags that the water people were drinking was not safe. Their warnings were ignored or covered up. So for several years, people in Flint were cooking with, drinking and bathing in water that contained too much lead.

There are many layers of responsibility for the poisoning of the city’s municipal water supply.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) resignation. Hillary Clinton told a Martin Luther King event audience in Charleston, S.C.,“We would be outraged if this happened to white kids, and we should be outraged that it’s happening right now to black kids.”

Although he failed to remind Clinton that white kids live in Flint, too, Snyder did accuse her of “politicizing” the problems of the people in that community.

But Snyder apologized to Flint residents in his State of the State address Tuesday, and said they deserved better.

Snyder didn’t fall on his sword alone. He also blamed the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their lack of response to the first alarms of bad water in one of the state’s most economically depressed cities.

I am no fan of David Petraeus for his rules of engagement which put our soldiers at higher risk to avoid offending the sensibilities of Moslem enemies, nor, do I think the “surge” saved Iraq…. but this is pure hypocrisy….rsk

Whatever more may come in the career of David Petraeus, historians will remember him as one of America’s outstanding military men, whose “surge” strategy saved Iraq from chaos before President Obama squandered its gains. So what does it say of the Obama Administration’s priorities or sense of proportion that it may strip the retired general of one of his four stars, thereby docking his Army pension?

We’ll assume this isn’t Ashton Carter’s idea of parsimony, though the Secretary of Defense took up the case after then-Army Secretary John McHugh decided last year to take no action against the former general for sharing classified documents with his biographer and paramour Paula Broadwell. The breach was exposed in 2012 when Mr. Petraeus was CIA director. He lost his job and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling classified information and was punished with two years probation and a $100,000 fine. That and his public humiliation are punishment enough.

The Pentagon’s case against him seems to rest on an FBI claim that he shared some of his personal notebooks with Ms. Broadwell days before he retired from the Army. To our knowledge none of the information in those notebooks was publicly disclosed by Ms. Broadwell or anyone else, and what the bureau seems to think is a high crime is what most journalists would call a leak.

This suggests that what’s mainly at work here is Pentagon vindictiveness, perhaps including an effort to derail Mr. Petraeus’s prospects in the next Administration. Great strategists aren’t abundant, as this Administration proves, and it would be a shame for a future President not to use Mr. Petraeus’s talents.

Meantime, it will be instructive to see how the suddenly punctilious Administration deals with a far graver case of mishandled classified information—the one involving a certain former junior U.S. Senator from New York.