Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez. 

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Americans might expect the U.S. government to demonstrate greater concern about who supplies resources and equipment to our men and women in uniform.  This week, however, the Obama Administration announced its decision to award a much-disputed, high-stakes Air Force light air support (LAS) contract to a Brazilian company over one based in Kansas.

The LAS contract could be worth over $950 million, so we’re irrationally sending nearly a billion American taxpayer dollars to Brazil despite the weak state of our manufacturing sector and economy more broadly.  But this is about more than the initial 20 aircraft, or the money associated with building them.  Americans should also be troubled that Embraer receives tremendous subsidies from the Brazilian government, which has been very vocal in its opposition to the War on Terror and American interests while siding with Iran and Venezuela time and again.  As one of the few nations that continues to work with the Iranian regime, Brazil and Embraer have already supplied aircraft similar to their LAS offering to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Perhaps even more alarming, a provision woven into Embraer’s bylaws would enable the Brazilian government to halt the manufacturing or maintenance of the warplane at any given time, with no threat of repercussions from the U.S.  This could mean anything from withholding parts to complete cessation of production.  For a country so outspoken in its opposition to America’s global foreign policy objectives and our stance against governments that commit such grotesque crimes against their own citizens as well as other nations, how can we trust that they won’t disrupt the delivery of these aircraft in pursuit of their own political motives?

The Obama Administration’s decision to outsource the production of American military equipment to Brazil is not only illogical, it creates an unconscionable threat to our national security.  Embraer and Brazil have publically stated that their immense focus on this contract is motivated by their desire to secure a U.S. Air Force endorsement of their product, which in turn allows them to more effectively market it to other nations.  If history tells us anything, Embraer and the Brazilian government that controls it will have no qualms about selling our enemies the same aircraft they will be providing to our Air Force.

It is morally and economically untenable that United States government would prefer a Brazilian supplier that is publicly opposed to the very cause for which we need the equipment.  Awarding this contract to a historically unfriendly foreign sovereign suggests that the Obama Administration is not only careless in its foreign policy judgment, it’s reckless in the equipment it selects to carry out the mission.

In my weekly spot last Thursday on the terrific WKRG-TV, channel 5 news in Mobile, I explain why, just possibly, this battle over the “sequester” might end better for Republicans politically than did the Gingrich “government shutdown” battles of 1995-1996. It could be that Barack Obama has overplayed his hand, and overplayed his warnings.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez. 

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Earlier this week, the federal government reported that our economy contracted for the first time since the last recession.

Today it reported that unemployment rose to 7.9% last month, up from 7.8% the month before.

Analysts had expected the rate to remain at 7.8%, already a terrible number nearly four years after the last recession ended.  Moreover, the 157,000 new jobs added fell below analysts’ expectations of approximately 170,000, which itself is significantly below the 200,000 per month necessary to keep pace with population growth and substantively reduce the festering unemployment rate.  So Obama II inherits a higher unemployment rate from himself than Obama I inherited from Bush, but with the added burden of $6 trillion wasted deficit spending.

This has ominous broader implications, as noted by The Wall Street Journal:

The labor market looks anemic 3½ years into an economic recovery.  At last count, there are 134 million employed Americans, or four million less than the month before the recession began.  At the same point after the prior recession in the early 2000s, despite what was then called a jobless recovery, there were 5.3 million more workers…  Whether it is retirees, the unemployed, “discouraged” workers or people claiming disability that explain the difference, though, the ratio of “makers” to “takers” in society has dropped.  That has implications for tax revenue and spending and helps explain why, following weak growth data on Wednesday, this is the slowest economic recovery in modern times.”

Hardly the “Forward” that Obama promised.

Actually, if anything, Hume was too nice to her. On the Fox News Sunday show yesterday, he said she qualifies as a “competent” Secretary of State, but in no means a “great” one. It’s a segment well worth watching, because Hume makes a solid argument. That said, I think she has been only a small step above a disaster. Even acknowledging that bad things happen all over the globe that no Secretary of State can really be blamed for, the sad reality is that in almost every region of the world, American interests are now in worse shape than they were four years ago. Much of the blame should be laid at the feet of Barack Obama: After all, it is ultimately his policies, not Clinton’s, that are being pursued. But there is no evidence at all that Clinton in any way deviated, even in private, from Obama’s bad policies, and in many respects it seems obvious that Obama basically followed her lead.

So, where do we stand? In the Middle Easat, almost certainly worse than before. Turkey has gone further down the road towards open and troublesome Islamism. Egypt is a disaster. Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon, and not only has failed to moved closer to the West, but has crushed a real, potentially powerful “freedom movement” while the Obama-Clinton team lifted not a finger. Libya actually might be slightly better (more US-friendly and ultimately safer) than it was under the mercurial Ghadafi, but compared to about 2005, when Ghadafi was completely cooperating with us, Libya is more dangerous to us — more unstable, more unpredictable long term. (This is completely aside from the 9/11 assault there that killed four Americans.) And even the overthrow of Ghadafi was a mess, with the US administration doing the diplomatic and military hokey-pokey — one foot in, one foot out, a foot back in and shake it all about — rather than dealing cleanly with the situation. Finally, of course, Syria is a disaster area, with more than 60,000 dead.

Most importantly in the Middle East, our ally Israel feels more isolated than ever. This is terrible.

In Africa, meanwhile, al Qaeda is resurgent. Algeria and Mali are especially worrisome.

Then there is Russia. The “re-set” failed spectacularly. Russia is more recalcitrant, less US-friendly than it has been since about 1992.

Eastern Europe? Our would-be friends there rightly feel insulted, stabbed in the back, and abandoned.  Western Europe? Well, the US image or influence there is about the same as when Hillary first walked into Foggy Bottom, but the state of Western Europe’s affairs is horrendous, with 26% unemployment in Spain and economic difficulties throughout.

The Far East? No progress against North Korea. Continuing militarily provocative actions from China.

How about the Western Hemisphere? Nothing good. Ecuador has joined Venezuela as uber-leftist anti-US agitators. Brazil has moved leftward and more corrupt, even as Obama has sucked up to it repeatedly. Argentina is again making noises about owning the Falklands (!).

Everywhere we look, the United States interests are no better off, and often worse off, than when Clinton took the reins at the State Department. As Hume rightly said, there have been no triumphs — but there have been spectacular failures, such as the murder of four Americans in Libya and the ascension of Mr. Morsi in Egypt.

Combined with Clinton’s repeated evasions of real answers, and of real responsibility, for the Benghazi fiasco, this record is one of failure. It would be a good thing if Mrs. Clinton’s retirement from State would turn into a retirement from public service altogether.

The New Republic is out with a new interview with BHO, the man in the Oval Office. It pains me too much even just to copy and paste the worst parts of it… so I won’t. But please read it yourself. The whole thrust of it is that he — yes, Mr. Obama — is the one always going the extra mile for compromise; that he and Nancy Pelosi (!) and Harry Reid (!) again and again have taken the “tough” steps toward compromise that the country needs, but that the Republicans are just so darned intransigent and a lot of them don’t even really care about what’s good for the country.

The man is either delusional or despicable dishonest, or both. Either way, his attitude is as disastrous for the country as his performance has been. He’s so sanctimonious, so solipsistic, so self-aggrandizing that it’s sickening. What a godawful creature he is.

Tim is right that today’s DC Circuit Court ruling on the NLRB appointments is “a humiliating rebuke for [Barack] Obama.” It also reads well, with solid textual analysis supporting its interpretation of the “Recess Clause.” That said, its holdings are so sweeping — both as to what constitutes “the Recess” of the Senate and as to what it means that a vacancy can be filled by such appointment (only) if it “happen[s]” during the Recess — that while they certainly make sense in law and logic, they may go so far as to violate enough existing practice as to make the full circuit en banc or the Supreme Court to reject the full scope of the ruling. Being a realist, I can certainly see a final result that narrows the scope of this ruling (and of it definition of “Recess” and “happen”), but that still throws out Obama’s appointments and still upholds the main thrust of today’s ruling, which is that there are serious limits to the “Recess appointment” power.

But allow just a little further prediction. When the high court so rules, and Obama’s “humiliation” is confirmed, The One in the Oval Office will have a conniption fit. As it so happens, such a high court ruling will probably be just one in a series of about five or six key decisions in the next 18-24 months that will go directly against Obama administration arguments, actions, and abuses. Look, therefore, for Obama to resurrect his constitutionally dangerous, full-frontal assault against the Supreme Court and the courts in general, trying to undermine their very legitimacy. In fact, so unhinged may be Obama’s power lust that he might even try to openly defy an explicit Supreme Court ruling, maybe even citing Andrew Jackson’s infamous (perhaps apocryphal) statement from Worcester v. Georgia that the chief justice “has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

In short, I see in this and other developing cases the potential for serious constitutional crisis, brought on by Obama’s authoritarian impulses. I hope I’m wrong.

It’s sad commentary on our current political state that the Obama Administration must be reminded that the Senate has to actually be in recess for it to attempt a “recess” appointment.  One would expect a former law professor to possess a better working knowledge of the Constitution, but alas.

In a welcome and important ruling this morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – effectively the nation’s second-highest court – held that the Obama Administration acted illegally when it attempted to place three new members on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) without Senate consent.  Under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, a President may appoint “Officers of the United States” subject to “Advice and Consent of the Senate.”  It adds, however, that, “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”

Here’s the problem.  In a scheme to avoid confirmation hearings and votes, Obama attempted to place three members on the NLRB while “the Senate was operating pursuant to a unanimous consent agreement, which provided that the Senate would meet in pro forma sessions every three business days from December 20, 2011, through January 23, 2012.”  Thus, the Senate wasn’t in “recess.”  In fact, other acts by the Obama Administration acknowledge that fact.  As just one example, that period is when the reduced payroll tax was extended with Obama’s approval.

Accordingly, the Court didn’t take kindly to Obama’s maneuver:

An interpretation of ‘the Recess’ that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction.  This cannot be the law.”

This is a humiliating rebuke for Obama, and it invalidates all NLRB actions dependent upon those illegal appointments.  Moreover, it effectively invalidates actions by other administrative agencies similarly dependent upon such appointments.  The concept of “a nation of laws, and not of men” has been vindicated today.

The thrill is gone, apparently.

According to a Gallup poll released today, fewer Americans watched yesterday’s inaugural ceremony or news coverage of it than they did George W. Bush’s second inaugural in 2005.  Only 38% said that they watched yesterday’s ceremony, down from 40% in 2005, and only 27% “watched, listened to, or read news reports about the inauguration ceremonies” yesterday versus 33% in 2005.  Moreover, Americans are less hopeful based on what they read or heard about Obama’s second inauguration than they were after Bush’s.  Just “37% of Americans said they are now more hopeful about the next four years after Monday’s presidential inauguration ceremonies,” compared to 43% in 2005.  Some 27% said that yesterday’s inauguration made them “less hopeful,” two points worse than in 2005.

The change he brought turned out to be less hope.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez. 

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

This really isn’t a big deal, but it still rankles. Today, Barack Obama included a line in his speech that was almost a direct quotation from Ronald Reagan, but he gave no attribution. When Reagan uttered it, it was an original and interesting turn of phrase.

Here:

“Whether we come from poverty or wealth; whether we are Afro-American or Irish-American; Christian or Jewish, from big cities or small towns, we are all equal in the eyes of God. But as Americans, that is not enough, we must be equal in the eyes of each other.”

Obama today: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.“

On this date in 1919, Prohibition became the law of the land via the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  We all know how wise and effective that proved.

Today, Barack Obama unveils his new gun control agenda to the nation, using an audience of children as props.  Even had they realized the coincidence, we suspect that the White House wouldn’t recognize the irony.

I and others have rightly blasted some of Colin Powell’s cheap shots in his Meet the Press interview yesterday, but I missed one of them until just now. He accused Republicans of deliberately “making it hard for these minorities to vote, as they did in the last election.” He also said “the courts struck most of that down.” Both parts of that allegation are incorrect. As Hans von Spakovsky(among others)  has repeatedly noted, there is no evidence that any voter ID laws have disenfranchised legitimate voters, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. And courts have repeatedly found voter ID laws to be perfectly reasonable, legitimate, and constitutional, with the DC Circuit issuing yet another ruling just last week in favor of such laws and against the Obama administration. Of course, when the Supreme Court itself heard a challenge to voter-ID laws, it ruled 6-3 in favor of the law’s constitutionality.

Now, let’s move on to Powell being aghast at Sarah Palin’s use of the expression “shuck and jive.” Granted, as soon as I heard Palin use it, I realized she had made a big error. I do think the term can carry racial connotations. What’s key here is the context. If you use the expression to describe a black man currying favor with whites, that’s a rather insensitive remark, to say the least. But if Powell is so concerned about governors using the term, he really ought to make sure he denounces current New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And if he’s of the opinion that the statement of one governor (or former governor) is ipso facto evidence or even proof of a deep racial insensitivity on the part of the governor’s whole political party, then surely Powell today will clarify his remarks by blasting Cuomo’s Democratic Party as well. After all, Cuomo’s remarks were more directly descriptive of the sort of behavior that creates a racial/racist caricature than Palin’s ever were. “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference,” he said, adding “all those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you are in someone’s living room.” As the original “shuck and jive” slander specifically referred to minstrel-show-like movements, Cuomo’s use of the term hit far closer to the racist home than Palin’s ever did.

And, as many others have noted, Obama’s own press secretary used the term “shuck and jive” as well. So why hasn’t Colin Powell denounced him?

(NOTE: One of those videos to which I linked had an extended piece on the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate. I do NOT, NOT, NOT, endorse anything having to do with those allegations. It was just the only link I could find in a QUICK search that included both parts of the interview that I address in this post.)

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez. 

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

The indispensable U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, has put out a wonderfully strongly worded press release blasting the government of Tunisia for releasing a prime suspect in the Benghazi terrorist assault and, more importantly for our purposes, blasting the terrorist-coddling (my words, not his) Obama administration for not only failing to exert enough pressure on Tunisia to do otherwise, but for refusing to comment on this outrage and for refusing to cut off aid to Tunisia.

To quote Wolf on what happened:

Ali Harzi, a key suspect in the September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate and annex in Benghazi, was released by Tunisian authorities today.  I have every reason to believe that Harzi was involved in the attack, which took the lives of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, and resulted in the destruction of two U.S. facilities.  For months following the attack, the Tunisian government blocked the FBI from interviewing Harzi.  Now Harzi walks the streets of Tunisia a free man – facing no consequence for his role in the Benghazi attack.

Furthermore:

Last month, I asked the Obama Administration to cut off aid to Tunisia.  I am very disappointed to learn that the State Department is once again ducking this issue and today refusing to comment on Harzi’s release.

“The release of this key suspect, nearly four months to the day following the attack, further underscores the need for a House Select Committee to fully investigate the attack and the U.S. response in the days, weeks and months following.

Wolf is absolutely right that a special “Select Committee” is called for. Its first witness should be Hillary Clinton; its second witness should be John Brennan; its third witness should be the usually honorable Leon Panetta. Wolf said that next week he will reintroduce his resolution to form such a select committee. Meanwhile, the establishment media should interrupt its Nina Burleigh act on Barack Obama long enough to demand to know why Tunisia is still getting use of American taxpayer dollars, in light of (and in contradiction to) Obama’s multi-repeated promise that his “biggest priority right now is bringing [the attackers] to justice.”

Not even Jimmy Carter was so feckless when it came to upholding American honor, and protecting its assets and people, abroad.

As only he can do — sounding polite and reasonable while building a devastatingly critical case — Fred Barnes lights into the establishment media for its lily-livered lapdog act while not just kissing or licking, but slobbering over, Barack Obama’s ring. He won’t say it, but the case he lays out makes it clear that the media vis-a-vis Obama approaches the position Nina Burleigh offered vis-a-vis Bill Clinton. (Google it.)

One sample Barnes paragraph (among many):

Compare Obama’s coverage with that of President George W. Bush. The difference is startling. There was no fear of affronting Bush. He faced relentless scrutiny of his tactics in the war on terror: wiretaps, renditions, Guantánamo, the Patriot Act. The media raised questions about his motives, the constitutionality of his policies, and his brainpower. White House press conferences became tense and hostile events when national security issues were broached.

Obama’s adoption of these same policies has drawn minimal attention, much less the kind of media wrath that Bush endured. Last week, for example, Obama signed a bill extending the use of warrentless wiretapping to gather intelligence on America’s enemies. Bush was harshly criticized by the media on this very issue. Obama got a pass.

It really has been a shameful performance by the media. One might even say (read Barnes’ treatment of this issue) that the media has deliberately been putting “party before country.” But that might not really be true. I think a lot of the establishment media don’t know the difference.

The unemployment rate when Barack Obama became President was 7.8%.  Four years, four trillion wasted deficit dollars and thousands of federal regulatory pages later, the unemployment rate remains… 7.8%.

Moreover, the Labor Department reported this morning that we added a lackluster 155,000 new jobs last month, and the labor participation rate (the percentage of Americans actually in the workforce) showed no improvement and remains at a generational low of 63.6%.  In fact, considering that the number of women working outside the home has increased during the past three decades, workforce participation is in that sense even more depressing.

By way of perspective, through good times and bad since World War II, unemployment has averaged 5%.  And facing an even deeper recession, Ronald Reagan’s agenda of lower taxes and smaller government saw unemployment plummet from 10.4% on the date his tax cuts took effect to 7.0% two short years later, and continued its steady decline to 5% during his administration.

Accordingly, this morning’s unemployment report confirms the “New Normal” under Obama and his wasteful policies.

Erick Erickson of Red State on how to visualize the massive cost of regulations emanating from the Obama Administration:

Republicans have an easy story to tell if they would. Every day the Obama Administration issues new regulations on businesses. Some of those regulations are put in place on behalf of one corporate interest against another. Some are put in place because rich players can spread the money around to benefit themselves.

The Georgia Dome covers 8.89 acres, has seven levels, and has 1.6 million square feet of space on all seven levels. It’s roof is 290 feet high. Imagine the Georgia Dome. Now imagine filling up the Georgia Dome with ping pong balls from floor to ceiling. Now imagine one of those ping pong balls — only one — is red.

That one red ping pong ball would represent the parts per million of mercury the Obama Administration wants power companies to remove from coal burning plants. No company can certify the removal because it is so infinitesimal. But because of that regulation, coal power plants are shutting down around the country and energy costs will go up. Those costs will affect American families both in price and in lost jobs.

That is but one of many regulations. There are the healthcare regulations. There are energy regulations. There are all the other regulations. The GOP controls the House of Representatives of the United States. It can tell these stories. It can work to repeal the regulations. It must.

The snippet above is taken from Erikson’s post-mortem of the fiscal cliff deal titled, “A New Agenda.”  The entire piece is well worth a read.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez. 

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.