SUPREME COURT – Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday tore into President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments to staff government agencies when the Senate is unofficially on recess.

During oral arguments, Scalia shot back at an argument by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli that the Constitution’s recess appointments clause is ambiguous enough to validate Obama’s temporary appointments.

“It’s been assumed to be ambiguous by self-interested presidents,” Scalia said, to “oohs” and laughs in the court room.

Scalia argued emphatically that the text of the Constitution does not permit presidents to appoint individuals to government agencies during pro forma sessions — when the Senate technically gavels in and out to fulfill a constitutional requirement, but does not conduct any business. He suggested the power ought to be restricted to official recesses. (more…)

We received this account via email – from a reliable source.  However, we have no way to actually authenticate the first hand account and out of an abundance of caution we will not publish the author.   Presented as received:

My wife and I are on Oahu for our annual Hawaii trip with good friends and two granddaughters enjoying the hospitality of the Hawaiian people on this lovely Island. Being retired military allows us the privilege of using the military facilities and especially the highly desirable golf  courses.

Yesterday , Jan 4, we had a tee time of 12:04 to play golf at Kaneohe Marine Corps on Oahu. We arrived early because we were advised the President was possibly going to play but also that he was leaving to fly back to D.C. that same day.

We checked in and were second off and waiting for carts when we were advised that he really may be coming but there was no count of when or how many in the party. We then got body scanned, our golf bags searched and briefed on the proper behavior expected. He and his party finally arrived at 1:00 and he then hit balls on the range and then drove right in front of us on his way to the first tee hollering Happy New Year to the small group( 50 or so) golfers waiting to play. (more…)

Really Mr. Gates?    Really?    You were surprised and disturbed by this?

[…]  “The temptation to stand up, slam the briefing book shut and quit on the spot  recurred often,” Gates writes. “All too frequently, the exit lines were on the  tip of my tongue: ‘I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American  citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like  that. I quit. Find somebody else.’

It was, I am confident, a fantasy widely  shared throughout the executive branch. And it was always enjoyable to listen to  three former senators — Obama, Biden and Clinton — trash-talking Congress.” (more…)

We’ve come a long way from Obama’s “open hand” Cairo speech in 2009.

(CNN) – From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.

Indeed, al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.

The focus of al Qaeda’s leaders has always been regime change in the Arab world in order to install Taliban-style regimes. Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri acknowledged as much in his 2001 autobiography, “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet,” when he explained that the most important strategic goal of al Qaeda was to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world, explaining that, “without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing.” (more…)

It appears the strategy to deflect away from the brutal outlines in Robert Gates’ book is to frame Gates as an angry man with an axe to grind.   Top Ten Takeaways from “Duty” (Via WallStreetJournal)

1. Contempt for Congress Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings. “I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.” Mr. Gates said he fantasized about storming out of hearings and quitting. “There is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that,” he writes of his fantasy.

2. Contempt for Vice President Biden Mr. Gates expresses particular dissatisfaction with Vice President Joe Biden. He describes Mr. Biden as a “man of integrity” who “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Specifically, Mr. Gates said he opposed Mr. Biden’s proposed limited strategy in Afghanistan to focus on counter-terrorism: “Whac-A-Mole hits on Taliban leaders weren’t a long term strategy,” he writes. (more…)

As we have continued to outline “The Real Libyan Story” serendipity has risen and provided affirmation for over three years’ worth of research and presentations. 

In his soon to be released book “Duty” Robert Gates specifically outlines the influence of Samantha Power in establishing U.S. policy.   A policy of complete failure which has given rise to al-Qaeda’s growth.

Perhaps against the backdrop of a USA Today article published yesterday showing the rise of al-Qaeda, the sheer weight of empherical evidence is going to overwhelm the false claims of Team Obama/Clinton.

(Washington Post)  [S]imilarly, in a battle over defense spending, “I was extremely angry with President Obama,” Gates writes. “I felt he had breached faith with me . . . on the budget numbers.” As with “don’t ask, don’t tell,” “I felt that agreements with the Obama White House were good for only as long as they were politically convenient.”

Gates acknowledges forthrightly in “Duty” that he did not reveal his dismay. “I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as [Hillary] Clinton, [then-CIA Director Leon] Panetta, and others) saw as the president’s determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations. His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost.” (more…)

(Via Washington Post)   Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.”

He writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”  (continue reading)

The origin of the Arab Spring did not begin on December 17th, 2010 in Tunisia with the self-immolation Mohamed Bouazizi.

Bouazizi’s decision to douse himself with gasoline and light himself on fire was an outcome of an economic and social reality in Tunisia at a very specific moment in time – the origin for that event happened many years earlier in Europe.

Understanding the earlier origin helps to set the stage to understand Libya in 2011,  the rise of al-Qaeda, and Obama’s short-sighted folly leading NATO intervention.

A basic tenet of humanity is freedom, a natural yearning to be free.  To be able to move, decide, act and strive, is as natural as the flow of water through the path of least resistance.

When Europe formed a collective Union there were multiple political, social, and socio-economic factors which aligned to create an environment where the formation was constructed.

A tireless movement of Fabian Socialists with a history of long-term strategy were behind the rise of the EU as a collective union.  (more…)

Empirical evidence be damned.

The Milli Vanilli band director says definitions of success – regarding concert attendance – are contingent upon how they define success in attendance at any given moment. They don’t have to sell out a venue to be considered successful. They may determine that success is more appropriately defined as a merely a few enlightened concert goers who are enjoying the show.

The Kool-Aid concession tastes the same regardless of how many participants partake in the drinking of it.  So just shut up, watch the show, and we’ll tell you when to clap.

(more…)