But he just won't admit it.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123734209584965205.html


Prisoners of W--


By now, President Obama's lather-rinse-repeat approach to the legal war on terror is familiar: He lambastes his predecessor, then makes cosmetic changes that leave the substance of Bush policy intact. But Mr. Obama's decision last week to renounce the term "enemy combatant" is almost a parody of this method, given that the "new standard" for detaining terrorists is identical to the old one.

Strunk & White counseled simplicity in prose, so whoever wrote the Justice Department's filing with the D.C. District Court learned his elements of style elsewhere. To avoid using enemy combatants, we instead get "individuals captured in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations," or "members of enemy forces," or "persons who [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

These gyrations are bizarre because the brief is actually a solid legal argument for detaining e---- c---------. Justice argues that the U.S. has the right to hold indefinitely, without legal charges, those who "substantially supported" al Qaeda or the Taliban, reserving the right to define what qualifies as "substantial" in each case. It also extends its writ to people who support terror networks away from the battlefield, such as financiers.

The concept of the unlawful enemy combatant is deeply rooted in international law and custom, including the Geneva Conventions. It refers to those who violate the laws of war by killing civilians or fighting out of uniform, and thus are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status. The Justice brief cites the Supreme Court's 2004 Hamdi decision, in which a plurality of Justices held that capture and detention is "so fundamental and accepted an incident to war" as to be an afterthought.

The one difference between the Bush and Obama detention standards concerns core executive powers. The Obama team argues that its authority flows from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Act, which Congress passed after 9/11 and authorizes the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to prosecute "nations, organizations, or persons" associated with the attack. Here, again, there is less than meets the eye. Bush lawyers also cited this act of Congress, but in addition they asserted inherent war power under the Constitution.

Eric Holder's Justice Department does not assert Commander in Chief prerogatives, but it doesn't disavow them either. Justice knows it doesn't need the argument given Hamdi and that it appeases the anti-antiterror left not to echo every Bush claim. The risk is that Mr. Obama could one day face a more isolationist GOP Congress, run by a Tom DeLay or a Senator William Borah that is unwilling to endorse the President's national-security policies. Then Justice will not be able to cite its own precedents as the courts intrude on executive war powers.

We're delighted that Mr. Obama has come around on one of the most rancorous controversies of the last eight years. Even so, Mr. Obama's supporters must be suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, because on the range of Bush antiterror policies that Mr. Obama has largely preserved -- interrogation, surveillance, rendition, state secrets, now detention -- no one seems to be vilifying him with the same intensity.
Or maybe the problem with President Bush's policies was that they were President Bush's policies.

Just an observation from an uninformed citizen, but is the writer of the piece upset about the manner, means or prioritization being exercised by the White House in it's "rennovation and restoration" project?

Imagine this analogy . . . the current administration is moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and finds that, despite the great curb appeal, the previous tenant has left the place in serious need of repair and calling it a "fixer upper" would be too kind. Major renovation is required. Concepts and plans drawn, budgets examined, cost benefits looked at, even "value engineering" applied.

In the meantime, while the bigger parts of the project are being attended to, does the homeowner ignore the lesser items, the "low hanging fruit" so to speak?

As far as the War on Terror, I think Mr. Obama's actions so far may qualify him as Bush Lite. IMO, this is not a bad thing since I believe Mr. Bush was mostly right in that area.

Now concerning fiscal irresponsibility, failure to RTFM (ie the Constitution of the United States), and total abandonment of the concept of limited government, I think it would be more proper to say the Mr. Bush was a lite version of Obama.

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Buying cars as an investment is almost as bad as hookers and blow, but you get a small residual back from the car when you off load it.-AlbertaBeef from CVN

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion 326,xxx miles
07 Kawasaki Ninja 650 18,xxx miles

The Wall Street Journal is now just another arm of Fox News, ever since their purchase by Rupert Murdoch. Used to be a good paper, now it's just another screecher. They ought to make Glenn Beck the publisher at this point.

Beck's too hyper for newspaper. Too bad Bill Buckley isn't around anymore.

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Buying cars as an investment is almost as bad as hookers and blow, but you get a small residual back from the car when you off load it.-AlbertaBeef from CVN

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion 326,xxx miles
07 Kawasaki Ninja 650 18,xxx miles

I won't speak for the WSJ editorial board. But on this point (presidential powers in detaining "enemy combatants") , Obama doesn't seem to think "renovation or restoration" is necessary. His DOJ is making much the same arguments in briefs that Bush made, no? At, least that's what this seems to convey. I think the piece takes a swipe at the pres. (it's easy), while agreeing with him (mostly) in principle, as they have done previously on defense and presidential power issues. I also add that the president's position sits well with me.

As to the analogy, I'm not sure I entirely grasp yout point, MTI. Are you suggesting he's ignoring this "lesser fruit" temporarily, to return to it later? Wouldn't that be a curious position to take in court briefs?

So do I.

It's a preposterous idea. I don't know if you've noticed, but there is a revolution going on in this country, and Obama is leading it.

Ask Thomas Frank if he agrees with you.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123734059279564981.html

The worst part is that they're not just partisan hacks, they're really bad at it. At least throw something up with less errors than a 5th grade essay. Geez.

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1984 300TD

I much prefer the NY Times which is objective and honest.

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"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." Mark Twain

You know what really irritates me about liberals? (Besides the fact that they're spineless little girls in pretty dresses who can't play rough because it musses up their hair...)

They always think liberalism fixes the problem -- even when it was liberalism that caused the problem in the first place!

Case in point, the Financial Meltdown of 2008 (and counting). To hear liberals tell it, it all goes back to Ronald Reagan -- who with his seductive "B-actor" charm fooled America into thinking that by slashing taxes, regulation, and government spending we could unleash free enterprise and create a new wave of prosperity.

Sure, liberals concede, that seemed to work for, oh, the better part of three decades, but now we're paying the price for all that "greed." The solution? A return to the pre-Reagan policies of Jimmy Carter, LBJ, FDR... Speaking of which, what will victory look like in the "War on Poverty"? When are they going to produce an "exit strategy" from that quagmire?

Unfortunately, the facts -- as always when you're talking about liberal theories -- tell a different story. A story in which all the major villains, it turns out, have one thing in common: government.

That's right. From the "Community Reinvestment Act" that pressured banks into affirmative-action lending, to those "government-sponsored enterprises" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- who bought up all the resulting subprime loans and repackaged them as "investment grade" securities -- the greasy thumb-prints of government were all over this fiasco from beginning to end.

But those, as I say, are facts. And facts have no place in the fantasy world of Democratic policy-makers. Nor does history -- true history, that is, as opposed to the public-school propaganda that teaches, for instance, that FDR's New Deal got us out of the Great Depression, when in reality it only deepened and prolonged it.

But the question remains: What can those of us in the fast-dwindling, Reality-Based Community do to survive financially as the Obamacrats prepare a "New New Deal" that threatens to outspend the original by about ten thousand to one?

Personally, I don't have a clue. But thank goodness I know of someone who does.

His name is Mark Skousen, Ph.D., editor of the investment newsletter Forecasts & Strategies -- and he just might be the smartest financial advisor working today.

Don't let that "Ph.D." fool you -- this is no pointy-headed leftist like Obama's economic team who seem to think that all the economy needs in order to flourish are more liberals running the economy.

Skousen, after all, launched his career by predicting during the 1980-82 recession -- and to the scornful laughter of nearly all the other so-called experts -- that "Reaganomics will work."

Boy, did he get that right. And boy, has he gotten it right ever since:

Like when he issued a "sell everything" recommendation to his Forecasts & Strategies subscribers just 41 days before the stock market crash of 1987 -- then told them to get fully invested again several weeks later, just in time for the recovery.


And when he called the Gulf War of 1990 "a turning point for U.S. stocks" -- and the Dow subsequently began a bull market that didn't end for nearly 10 years.


And when he told his subscribers in 1995 that the NASDAQ would double, and then double again -- which is exactly what it did.


And when, just weeks before the NASDAQ collapsed in 2000, he warned his subscribers that tech stocks were dangerously overvalued.


And when, in 2006 -- more than two years before the financial meltdown -- he warned subscribers that "we clearly are headed for fiscal disaster," and showed them how to protect themselves.
What's Skousen's secret? I think it begins with understanding the real laws of economics -- not the warmed-over Marxism that passes for "new thinking" to Obama's media groupies.

And here's the best thing about Mark Skousen. He knows how to make you money no matter how bad things get in the financial markets and the economy overall.

After all, he points out, the late billionaire John Templeton -- whom Money magazine called "the greatest stock-picker of the 20th century" -- began to build his vast fortune in the depths of the Great Depression.

Maybe you're not looking to be a billionaire. Maybe you're just looking to keep your head above water while the Obamacrats do their best to sink the economy. Either way, Mark Skousen can help -- and I urge you to give his Forecasts & Strategies a try.

The cost? Less than the tip on a John Edwards haircut -- in today's dollars, that is. After Obama gets done driving down the value of the dollar it wouldn't be enough to buy Governor Rod Blogojevich a haircut.

I read the part where he called me a spinless little girl in a dress.....

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Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 82 240d, 83 300TD with five speed, 03 Dodge 3/4 ton with cummins six speed; I have had about 33 benzes. I am building a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup street rod at the moment in which I plan to install a 617 and a five speed manual.....or a 64 stude v8.

iam so happy for you

Calling names and being generally nasty is not going to change any hearts or minds.

So what is the point of discussing these important (or unimportant) issues if changing minds is not it?

If its just blowing off steam, I suggest doing fifteen or twenty pushups.

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Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 82 240d, 83 300TD with five speed, 03 Dodge 3/4 ton with cummins six speed; I have had about 33 benzes. I am building a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup street rod at the moment in which I plan to install a 617 and a five speed manual.....or a 64 stude v8.