Freedom Line Blog

The blunt-force trauma of cold, hard reality hitting Barack Obama’s vacuous “Hope and Change” artifice continues.

Sixty years after Winston Churchill proclaimed a “special relationship” with the United States, and approximately one year after Obama shamefully returned a White House bust of Churchill to Britain, members of the United Kingdom’s parliament returned Obama’s insult and declared an end to that designation.  Britain’s Commons Foreign Affairs Committee decided that the term “no longer accurately characterised the modern relationshiop between the two countries and should be dropped,” and held that the British/American alliance was now “just one of a series of relationships.”

Naturally, the committee sprinkled a gratuitous anti-Bush remark onto its pronouncement, saying that the term “special relationship” was “now more likely to be defined by what was seen as Britain’s support for President George Bush over the Iraq War.”   This ludicrous fig leaf, however, fails to explain why the committee made this determination over one year after Bush’s departure and Obama’s arrival, when a magical new era of international goodwill and harmony was supposed to descend over the world.

Perhaps nothing symbolizes our nation’s sad state of political affairs than the fact that government-town Washington, D.C. thrives relative to other major American cities.

As noted by a recent Wall Street Journal report, home prices in the D.C. area rose 2% in 2009, compared to a 3% decline in 20 areas covered by the S&P/Case-Shiller Index.  The capital’s unemployment rate stands at 6.9% compared to 9.7% nationally, and restaurants have added workers in D.C. while other metropolitan areas bleed such jobs.  The reason?  Federal government employment in the area increased by over 20,000, whereas approximately 100,000 private-sector jobs were lost there.  Not only has our bloated federal government increased its employment rolls even as the rest of our society cuts back, but $78.5 billion in federal contract work and the flurry of bureaucratic activity brings domestic and foreign visitors to town.

Americans everywhere have had to trim their budgets and expectations during the downturn, but not the expanding federal government.  What sad, albeit fitting, symbolism.

American liberals love to praise supposedly superior European governance and culture, oblivious to the irony that they nevertheless continue to live in the United States.  This phenomenon became particularly visible during the ObamaCare ordeal, as liberals claimed that we must somehow join the rest of the “industrialized world” in providing unsustainable government-controlled healthcare.

Well, here’s a dose of sobering reality.  As noted on a front page story in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Europe’s Choice:  Growth or Safety Net,” Europe has stagnated economically for the past two decades compared to the United States.  Worse, this has occurred even as Europe continued its failure to carry their own weight with respectable defense expenditures.  From 1990 to 1999, Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.0%, compared to 3.3% for the U.S.  From 2000 to 2008, Europe only grew 1.7%, whereas the U.S. grew 2.2%.

Yet we’re supposed to emulate their example?  Can’t liberals just move there instead?

Barack Obama simply cannot seem to muster the same anger toward America’s sworn enemies that he heaps upon our most loyal allies.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s David Luhnow, Obama said yesterday that he was “deeply disturbed” by Cuba’s latest human rights atrocities, including the starvation death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata.  In contrast, Obama was reportedly “livid” toward Israel following its decision to merely construct apartments in its own capital city.

The good news is that Israeli Prime Minister stood up to Obama’s backwardness during his speech this week to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), saying “Jerusalem is not a ‘settlement’ – it is our capital.” Nevertheless, how embarrassing and frankly pathetic that America’s President cannot exceed the “deeply disturbed” level on his anger meter for the death of a Cuban political prisoner, but erupts volcanically when our only true friend in the Middle East simply allows apartment construction in its own capital.

As CFIF has noted before, former Hollywood “star” Anna Nicole Smith has made quite a splash in the legal world – and not by diving nude off a roof into a pool at a trial lawyers’ convention in Cancun.

The litigious executors of Smith’s estate have attempted to manipulate our judicial system, filing multiple lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions to claim private property to which they have no right.  True to our federalist system, state courts were best situated to resolve this claim.  Unfortunately, her attorneys were able to successfully game the system by playing “jackpot justice” and filing duplicative suits in federal court elsewhere.  Their legal maneuvering has been so abusive that it’s dragged on for more than 15 years, and outlived every single one of the original litigants in the case.

Fortunately, it appears the end of the road may finally be in sight.

Late last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vindicated federalism’s division of powers and ruled in favor of private property rights.  It did so by recognizing the autonomy of state courts and preventing federal bankruptcy courts from overstepping their bounds by improperly interfering in matters properly left to local law.  This is an important step in preventing any further erosions of the concept of federalism in our court system, and vital to preventing trial lawyers and perpetual lawsuit abusers from seeking out favorable rulings by circumventing the state courts best equipped to negotiate state specific estate laws.

It’s also important to note that this ruling impacts more than just Hollywood starlets like Anna Nicole.  If the courts had ruled in favor of Smith’s estate, any family inheritance or estate matter anywhere could have been subject to such frivolous forum shopping.  Legal expert Todd Zywicki, who has long followed the case and also filed an amicus brief in the suit, wrote more on the case on the popular legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy.  His conclusion, in plain English:

“A clear line between state law and bankruptcy court is important to keep cases like this from arising in the future.”

We should be thankful that the Federal courts have drawn that line in favor of property rights, at least for now.  Unfortunately, Smith’s executor, coincidentally named Howard K. Stern, has indicated that he intends to appeal.  Accordingly, the United States Supreme Court could still overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in a fit of misjudgment.  Let’s hope the second time around, the Supreme Court gets this right, and upholds the Ninth Circuit’s protection of property rights, the rule of law and federalism.

In today’s Bookshelf section of The Wall Street Journal, former Marine combat infantryman and Assistant Secretary of Defense Bing West reviews Matt Gallagher’s new book “Kaboom.” The title “Kaboom” may sound familiar to many, because it’s the same name of Gallagher’s compelling blog about his combat tour in Iraq.  West offers a glowing review of Gallagher’s book, but one passage in particular stands out as a testament to the effectiveness and contribution of our troops in Iraq, for which all Americans should be grateful:

Mr. Gallagher is too modest, and too ironic, to tout his own accomplishments, so I’ll do it for him:  He is a classic representative of the U.S. military, a force that imposed its will, both physical and moral, to shatter al Qaeda in Iraq and quash the Shiite-Sunni civil war and that is now withdrawing with honor, leaving Iraq a much better place than under Saddam Hussein.”

What a fantastic tribute to Gallagher and our military more generally, and a welcome contribution to the literature on their service there.

After a wasted year in office during which he could have concentrated on revitalizing American employment, Barack Obama presides over a smoldering rubble that was once his electoral mandate.

Yet he and his administration label this radioactive ObamaCare ordeal a “victory?”

Obama began his self-destructive crusade last year possessing the strongest Democrat majorities in decades, but finished it with a string of jarring defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and then Massachusetts.  He entered office riding a crest of popularity and goodwill, but then saw his approval drop worse than any elected President in the history of scientific polling.  His wasted year ignited the Tea Party movement, and propelled Republicans to enormous leads on the generic ballot as November elections approach.

For such a supposedly effective leader, he could only manage to win a razor-thin victory despite enormous Democrat Congressional majorities.

And for what?  Over 90% of Americans already possessed insurance when Obama went on his hyper-partisan warpath, 90% of whom were satisfied or very satisfied with their care.  Even under the rosiest projections, ObamaCare will add only 5% to that number of insured.  Meanwhile, another $1 trillion will be piled atop the rotting federal budgetary heap, Americans will literally be compelled by law to purchase insurance that bureaucrats deem appropriate, unemployment festers at a 10% rate fully one year after Obama’s “stimulus” and Democrats may lose one or both houses of Congress.

Any more divisive, costly “victories” like this, and the term “Pyrrhic victory” will soon be renamed “Obama victory.”

Proponents of ObamaCare make the intellectually sloppy claim that health insurance is a “right.”

Simultaneously, however, they insert an individual mandate requiring American citizens to purchase that “right” as a necessary component of the bill.  A mandate enforced by none other than the IRS, and which is potentially unconstitutional, oh by the way.

But wait a moment.  How is it that one can label something a “right,” and then turn around and mandate its purchase under penalty of imprisonment and IRS persecution?  Does the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms require that the federal government mandate firearms purchase by citizens who don’t possess them?  Does the First Amendment right to free speech require that the federal government mandate the purchase printing presses?

It’s dishonest, and it’s cognitively vapid.

The ongoing, excruciating, resource-draining attempt by Democrats to foist ObamaCare upon an unwilling American public (what ever happened to their promise to “focus on jobs” in 2010, anyway?) by any means necessary, legal or illegal, will obviously cause deafening reverberations in November’s Congressional elections.  With each passing day, scientific polling suggests that a Republican takeover is more and more likely.

In a brilliant commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, however, Michael Solon points out that ObamaCare’s impact may be even more dramatic than Congressional midterms, or even the 1994 Congressional elections that vaulted Republicans to majorities in both houses for the first time since the 1950s.  This is because not only are Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s majorities in jeopardy, but so are Democrat seats in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, which control Congressional district realignment following the 2010 census.  As stated by Solon:

Of all the political consequences that could flow from the national healthcare effort in 2010, the potential of the fall elections to shift 2011 redistricting to the Republicans’ advantage may be the most important.  That puts the long-term viability of the president’s healthcare reform in serious jeopardy, no matter the outcome of the 2012 elections.  While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country…  As Democratic legislators consider their choices, many are missing the impact of an electoral wipeout in 2010 on the redistricting of Congressional seats as well as those in the state legislatures.  The electoral advantage gained from 2011 redistricting would extend the short-term pain of 2010 at least through the redistricting of 2021.”

The late Thomas “Tip” O’Neil once said that “all politics is local.” But the Democrats’ suicide mission in trying to pass ObamaCare may turn O’Neil’s observation on its head and prove that not only are local politics sometimes national, but also enduring.

The U.S. airline industry is slowly recovering from a worldwide recession and severe downturn in travel volume, and hasn’t completely righted course since the catastrophic 9/11 attacks.

So what do you if you’re a labor union representing employees of that struggling industry?  Threaten to strike and kill it off for good, apparently.

In recent weeks, union bosses representing airline employees are demanding pay increases and costlier benefits, even as the economy continues to shed jobs and unemployment remains stubbornly high.  They may also strike for the first time at a major U.S. carrier since 2005, despite rising fuel costs as summer approaches.

Few things illustrate the dramatic distinction between workers’ interests and labor unions’ interests than the unions’ continuing destructive behavior.  They have nearly killed the domestic automobile industry through decades of unsustainable demands, and states such as Michigan decay while employers hire in friendlier states.  Big Labor’s apologists like to argue that they provide better jobs and benefits to everyday workers, but the sad truth is that they kill jobs or drive them overseas, leaving unemployed workers and decaying communities to pay the price.

Hopefully, union leaders and the everyday workers whose livelihoods they control will regain sobriety rather than do to domestic airlines what they did for domestic automakers…

Didn’t Barack Obama promise to magically bring an era of post-partisanship and moral relativism after eight years of supposed moral chauvinism under President Bush?

Apparently, that promise was every bit as ephemeral as his promises to scour the federal budget “line-by-line,” to televise healthcare negotiations on C-Span, to close Gitmo and to abide by public campaign finance rules.  Welcome to the era of Obama as moral arbiter.  Speaking in Strongsville, Ohio to promote ObamaCare for the 6,294th time yesterday, Obama made a statement that would have triggered hysterical shrieks from leftists had President Bush said the same thing:

As long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership.  I don’t know about the politics.  But I know what’s right.”

Never mind that the American public is so broadly and steadfastly opposed to ObamaCare that he managed to get a Republican elected to the Senate…  from Massachusetts.  Never mind that despite possessing overwhelming – albeit temporary, in all likelihood – Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate, he’s had to resort to unconstitutional non-vote “vote” proposals to pass his takeover scheme.

No, Obama “knows what’s right,” so just shut up and bend over, America.

The Obama Administration continues its bizarre behavior in selecting targets for its wrath.

For reasons unknown, the Administration has ostentatiously and histrionically escalated its condemnation of Israel, our most loyal Middle East ally.  Why?  Merely because Israel announced preliminary approval (the fourth stage of a seven-stage bureaucratic planning process) to build housing units within its own municipal boundaries in Jerusalem.  Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal reminds us, the Obama Administration continues to treat such anti-American rogues as Libya, Iran, Venezuela and Syria with kid gloves.

Then yesterday, chief White House heavy David Axelrod characterized our First Amendment free speech and petition rights as “a threat to our democracy.” The First Amendment explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or of the right of the people … to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”  Despite those protections, federal laws like McCain/Feingold literally prohibited, under penalty of imprisonment, political speech within 30 and 60 days of an election.  Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court struck a blow for First Amendment rights in January by overturning some of those restrictions in Citizens United v. FEC.

The Founding Fathers would not have taken kindly to McCain/Feingold’s unconstitutional restrictions on free speech and the right to petition Congress.  To them, abridgment of free speech was a threat to democracy.  In contrast, that towering intellectual and philosophical sage David Axelrod considers free speech itself “a threat to our democracy.”

Google stands as one of the leading cheerleaders of so-called “Net Neutrality,” that benign-sounding movement to expand government’s regulatory reach over the Internet.

“Net Neutrality” is a bureaucratic “solution” in search of a non-existent Internet problem, and it would stifle incentives for Internet service providers to innovate and expand networks.  Currently, Internet service providers invest $60 billion or more annually toward network buildout and advancement, which is critical in this age of ever-expanding web traffic.  Without that enormous service network investment and expansion, Internet bottlenecks will increase and technological evolution will slow.

But why should Google or other Net regulation proponents worry about its negative impact on consumers, Internet service providers and network expansion?  It’s much easier to remain a free rider on networks that other people have built, and sanctimoniously advocate federal regulations for others.

But a funny thing happened to Google when it attempted to test the waters itself in providing high-speed Internet service.  In a piece this week entitled “Tough Road for Google’s Network,” The Wall Street Journal reports how Google quickly discovered that building Internet service infrastructure isn’t quite as easy as it looks.  Last month, Google announced that it would build high-speed Internet connections for up to 500,000 people in America.  Just one month later, however, Google realizes that “building such a network is a giant construction problem, with the cost potentially surpassing $1 billion.”

According to Jim Baller, an attorney providing consulting services to Google, the experience has been sobering:

Beyond the cost issues and economic challenges in terms of what it takes to develop the infrastructure, to me one of the most significant barriers is that we don’t have a vision of what [ultra-high-speed Internet connections] will enable us to do.”

A Google spokesperson added:

We know that other companies have been in this business a long time.  We’re not pretending to have all the answers.”

Actually, Google did pretend to “have the answers” insofar as it advocated “Net Neutrality” regulations that would do to the Internet what the “Fairness Doctrine” would do to free speech.  Google quickly discovered how difficult life as an Internet service provider can be, and it needs to realize that “Net Neutrality” would only make it tougher.

Hopefully, Google’s experience will encourage it to reconsider its destructive position on “Net Neutrality.”  American consumers, tech sector employers and even Google itself will be better off for it.

How much longer will Obama’s escalating deficits still be blamed on Bush?

This week, the Treasury Department reported a $221 billion monthly deficit for February 2010, the largest ever.  This compares to a $194 billion deficit for February 2009, and the year-to-date 2010 deficit has now reached $652 billion, also an all-time high.  Consequently, the projected 2010 annual deficit now appears likely to exceed last year’s $1.4 trillion dollar record.

Obama continues to blame his budgetary irresponsibility on Bush, but at least when Bush was President we counted the deficit in billions, not trillions.  Further, the Treasury Department data points to the true culprit:  spending for February 2010 increased some 17% over February 2009 spending, to $328 billion.  That’s certainly not Bush’s spending.

To paraphrase the increasingly-popular bumper sticker, please don’t tell Obama what comes after “trillion.”

Perhaps the most delicious recent indictment of the arrogance and hypocrisy of “Climate Change Cassandras” comes courtesy of Mary Kissel’s commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal regarding Indian Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh.

What seems to rankle Mr. Ramesh the most about these kinds of demands is the idea that India should sign themselves on to the rich world’s environmental fads at the expense of its own poor people.  Many Indians have long understood that the kind of climate interventions pushed by the likes of Mr. Gore – binding emissions targets, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes and so on – all amount to giving up on cheap energy sources in exchange for sharply higher costs and economically unproven technologies. In India, that means consigning legions of the poor, many of whom don’t even yet have electricity or gas, to perpetual life in the slums.

It’s easy for Al Gore or Leo DiCaprio to feel as though they’re “sacrificing” to save Mother Earth by separating glass from plastic in kitchens larger than most Indians’ entire houses.  It’s also easy for such sanctimonious activists to command others to primitive lifestyles while they hypocritically consume tons of jet fuel gallivanting to the latest film festival.

But if such airheaded celebrities can’t even reduce their carbon footprints to the size of the average American’s, how can they in good conscience expect developing populations to consign themselves to poverty on behalf of “the rich world’s environmental fads?”

Today is an important day in United States Supreme Court history, and in the ongoing battle to protect the individual freedoms enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Two years ago, the Court finally and explicitly confirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller. Today, it hears oral argument in McDonald v. Chicago to determine whether that right protects citizens against state infringement as well as in federal jurisdictions such as Washington, D.C.

Everyday citizens unfamiliar with Court precedent and the legal contortions distinguishing which provisions of the Bill of Rights will or will not be protected will scratch their heads and wonder, “if the First Amendment applies to protect citizens against state infringement, why not the Second Amendment?”  The Court has also recognized Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment protections against state violation.  The legal niceties, however, are less important than the overarching illogic that even attempts to render Second Amendment rights less important or worthy of protection.

The simple fact is that this case illustrates once again the way in which politicized judges decide which rights they consider important based upon their own personal political preferences.  Our Founding Fathers did not draft the Constitution as a byzantine code to be understood and applied only by conceited judges.  Rather, they intentionally began the Constitution with the words, “We the People” and created it to be understood, treasured and applied by everyday citizens.

Accordingly, the legal nuances are less important than the overall theme:  big government once again seeks to infringe upon citizens’ individual freedoms and Constitutional rights via court decree.  Fortunately, the Court appears likely to side with the Second Amendment over the city of Chicago.  But even if it abandons logic and principle by upholding Chicago’s prohibition, the battle will continue with citizens exercising their rights at the federal, state and local legislative and executive levels.  In which case gun “control” advocates may ultimately come to regret a fleeting Pyrrhic judicial triumph.

Many political pundits immediately labeled yesterday’s healthcare summit a failure simply because it failed to result in some misplaced compromise.  But that is too narrow a perspective.  For conservatives and libertarians, the conference actually served a positive purpose.

Pardon our cynicism, but Barack Obama’s purpose in convening the conference was not to consider opponents’ legitimate points or data.  Despite Democrats’ baseless “party of ‘no'” broadsides, multiple Republican alternatives to ObamaCare have been readily available for months for all to see.  Rather, Obama’s goal was to once again ascend the stage and provide yet another “last and final” lecture to Americans on the wisdom of ObamaCare.  After all, he revealed his opinion on why his efforts had failed so far when he absurdly stated in his State of the Union address that, “I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.”

Thus, as liberals almost invariably do, Obama mischaracterized his failure as one of tactics or communication to the plodding American electorate, rather than one of defective policy.

Obama remains under the strange impression that all he needs to do is take the stage once again to cast his magical spell, and the fawning media reflexively praises him every time.  His September healthcare speech to a joint session of Congress, his State of the Union address and his recent appearance before a Republican Congressional gathering are the latest examples.  But if he is such an effective persuader and communicator, why does he keep having to repeat the same tired points?

That brings us to the reason why yesterday’s summit was a success for opponents of the ObamaCare takeover.  Namely, that Obama not only failed to dazzle the assembled opposition, but actually got schooled.  As just one example, Obama attempted to scold Senator Lamar Alexander (R – Tennessee) by saying, “this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight.”  A short time later, Obama was forced to admit that ~he~ was the one whose “facts weren’t straight.”  Moreover, Obama clearly appeared petulant and flustered, and avoided even attempting to battle rising Republican Congressional superstar Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) on Ryan’s substantive data and argument.

Meanwhile, the American people were able to witness the avalanche of reasons why ObamaCare is a toxic proposal.  For that reason, yesterday was a victory for conservatives and libertarians who oppose Obama’s healthcare boondoggle, and a loss for those seeking to impose it.

In April 2009, Senator Arlen Specter (D – Pennsylvania) announced that he was leaving the Republican Party and hitching his political fortunes to Barack Obama, just as Obama began his decline toward political radioactivity.

Obama’s approval has since plummeted worse than any elected President in the history of scientific polling, and Specter became the equivalent of someone abandoning a lifeboat to climb aboard the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg. Yesterday, however, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did Specter one better, moving him down to second place on the list of most foolish Republicans to join Team Obama.

In an appearance on ABC’s This Week, the Governor who has presided over California’s decline to basket-case status heaped endless praise upon Obama, applauded Obama’s failed “stimulus” bill and missed no opportunity to attack his own Republican Party.  In fact, Schwarzenegger failed to substantively defend his own party (whose political fortunes are skyrocketing) even a single time even while Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell sat beside him and launched his own litany of predictable anti-Republican attacks.

Among other things, Schwarzenegger – we’re not making this up – offered the following advice for an Obama Administration whose policies and tactics have turned American voters decisively against it in just one year:  “I think the key thing for the Obama Administration is just to keep staying on track.”  The same track that brought it to this point, Governor?

Schwarzenegger also advised fellow Republicans that their primary concern should be to ask themselves, “how do we support the President, how do we support him,” and attacked them for criticizing the Obama-Pelosi-Reid “stimulus.”  He continued by labeling his own GOP “the party of ‘no,'” and added “the Tea Party is not going to go anywhere.”

Earth to Schwarzenegger:  the Tea Party already has “gone somewhere.”

So the man who is quite possibly the most failed governor in America advises Obama to stay the course that has brought him political ruin, labels his own Republican Party “the party of no,” proclaims that the Tea Party that has transformed American politics at the grassroots level “is not going to go anywhere” and claims that the smart course is for Republicans to ask not what they can do for their country, but what they can do to “support the President.”

Great timing, Governor Schwarzenegger.   Got any hot tips on Enron stock while you’re at it?

According to a Boston Herald report, a relative of murderous University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Amy Bishop described her as a far-left political extremist:

“A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children – the youngest a third-grade boy – was a far-left political extremist who was ‘obsessed’ with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.”

Admittedly, we cannot muster the gastrointestinal fortitude to continuously monitor the silly MSNBC triumvirate of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but weren’t the Tea Partiers the potentially violent political extremists, according to them?  The trio repeatedly manages to locate the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack Tea Party protester carrying a distasteful “Obama = Hitler” placard, and they constantly suggest a sinister proclivity toward violence amongst those who actually treasure the Tenth Amendment and concepts of federalism.

We certainly won’t hold our collective breath awaiting Matthews’s, Olbermann’s or Maddow’s hard-hitting expose on the danger of violence among “far-left political extremists,” even though that perfectly describes Lee Harvey Oswald himself.  But it might be a nice change of pace from their usual unicorn-chasing and suggestions that the Tea Party movement is merely cover for a return to slavery.

In January 2007, President Bush announced a surge of approximately 20,000 troops to win the war in Iraq.  In this convenient and brief video clip, then-Senators Joe Biden and Barack Obama insisted that the surge was a terrible idea destined to failure.  Biden even slurred General David Petraeus as the only person who believed the surge would work, and Obama actually predicted that the surge would make things worse, not better.

Fast forward to last week.  In one of the most distasteful and brazen illustrations of chutzpah in modern politics, Vice President Biden now claims in this video clip that success in Iraq, following the surge that both he and Obama opposed so unequivocally, may stand as “one of the great achievements of the Obama Administration.”

On second thought, however, perhaps Biden is correct.  In light of the utter catastrophes inflicted to date by the Obama Administration, perhaps not managing to bungle the successful Iraq surge that the Bush Administration ordered is indeed its greatest success.  Either way, former Vice President Cheney is also correct that Obama and Biden owe Bush a belated “thank you” on Iraq.