The Iranian people are once again in what, at least to the outside world, seems just short of full-scale revolt. Some dramatic video out of Iran today, none more so than this violent four-minute clip showing a crowd of people cutting down three men that are being hanged in the street by some kind of police force. They seem to succeed before the police open fire -- the video is graphic. The New York Times has multiple reports of government forces firing into unarmed crowds.

Just three months ago, Hilary Clinton was asked if the protests this summer following Iran's rigged election had "changed the Administration's calculation" in attempting to engage the regime. Her answer: "Well, no, but there's a lot of ongoing instability and jockeying for power. But that's up to the Iranians, so what we are doing is dealing with the people who hold the power now." Maybe another bloody regime crackdown will make a difference. Or maybe the Obama administration will send John Kerry to meet with A'jad while his thugs hang people in the streets.

We've noticed some fairly bizarre twitterings from the official feed for the U.S. Army's Africa Command. Among them is a tweet sending @USArmyAfrica followers to an article on the website of truther in chief Alex Jones titled "Foiled Terrorist Bombing in Detroit: An Excuse to Expand the Bogus War On Terror." Another tweet this morning sent followers to an article titled "Oil lust or war on terror? Nigerian airplane bomber raises some questions," the lede of which reads:

The news of a bomber wanting to take down a Delta airplane this morning raises some questions, not just some questions but a entire pandora's box of questions. For one, why is there no cameras in or on airplanes? Not that we want them but if society is already so watched, every move you make is watched by someone sitting in a dark room why is there no cameras on these airplanes. If in fact there are cameras why dont we see the footage? Probably because there are no cameras or we are not supposed to ask these questions.

The second question this even raises is that; Does the US want Nigeria's oil?

Maybe someone, somewhere is asking those two questions. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has another question: who is updating the US Army Africa twitter feed? Has it been hacked by some crackpot truther, or is the public affairs officer in charge of updating that feed not convinced that jet fuel can melt steel? Another question we have for Africa Command is what value a Twitter feed has for a continent where more than half the population doesn't even have access to electricity let alone high-speed Internet (the feed has just 2,483 followers) -- and for those Africans who are following the feed, what message does the US Army Africa hope to send them with links to conspiratorial websites that impute the worst possible motives to the American government in general and Africa Command in particular?

I've left messages with the US Army Africa public affairs office requesting comment and will update this post as soon as they get back to me. You can view the US Army Africa official Twitter feed here.

On CNN this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that prior to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, “the system worked.” As recounted by Politico’s Jonathan Martin, she then added that there was “no suggestion that [Abdulmutallab] was improperly screened.”

The would-be Christmas Day bomber boarded a plane with an explosive device that may have been capable of destroying an airliner, and yet “the system worked”?  One wonders: What would it take for the “system” to fail? And if Abdulmutallab was not “improperly screened,” then what is the point to screening anyone at all?

As far as we can tell according to the press accounts thus far, there are two reasons Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt at mass murder. Neither reason has anything to do with the “system.” 

First, Abdulmutallab’s explosive device may have had a faulty detonator. Second, alert passengers pounced on Abdulmutallab, thereby preventing him from trying to rectify the problem, but only after Abdulmutallab had already started a fire on the plane.
Again, neither of these reasons for Mutallab’s failure has anything to do with the “system.”

In fact, contrary to what Napolitano says, there are an increasing number of “suggestion(s)” that the “system” failed miserably.  Abdulmutallab’s father says he contacted the U.S. embassy to warn American officials about his son’s radicalism weeks ago. If true, and he still wasn’t prevented from getting on an American-bound airliner, then this was a “system” failure. According to this accountfrom CBS News, U.S. officials knew about Abdulmutallab for two years and while he was not on the no-fly list (a failure in and of itself), he was “on a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organization.”

So, how did the “system” work if U.S. officials were warned about Abdulmutallab by his father, after knowing about him for two years, and yet didn’t manage to do anything to stop him?

There’s more. According to the New York Times:

Dozens of investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were working Saturday to understand exactly how a passenger managed to get PETN and a syringe of chemicals aboard the flight. Intelligence agencies were studying intercepted communications to see whether clues were missed and to assess whether the incident could presage more attacks.

PETN is the explosives compound similar to those used by al Qaeda agents in past attacks. That Abdulmutallab was able to get it onto the plane was certainly a “system” failure. The syringe full of chemicals (which may have included PETN) should have set off alarm bells too.

And note the second part of the excerpt from the Times account above. Intelligence officials are combing through intercepts to see if any “clues were missed.” How does Napolitano already know that these intercepts don’t add up to anything?

The bottom line is that a terrorist with admitted ties to al Qaeda and a comparatively “sophisticated” explosive device in his possession got aboard a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. No official in the American government stopped him. Vigilant passengers and perhaps a faulty detonator did.

There is no way Napolitano or any other official can honestly claim “the system worked” given those circumstances.

The would-be bomber of Delta flight 253, Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, appears to have been acting in concert with al Qaeda elements in Yemen. The Obama administration's plan to close Gitmo hinges on sending some 100 Yemeni terrorists back to their country of origin where they will be "rehabilitated," but opponents of the Gitmo closure have repeatedly pointed out that there couldn't be a worse place to send these detainees than Yemen. That case is now bolstered by the fact that the bomb Abdulmutallab detonated, and the plan to detonate it, were both put together in Yemen. It is an inconvenient fact for President Obama, but not the only inconvenient fact to emerge from this incident. How often we have been told to look at the "root causes" of terrorism, or as Obama put it in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks:

We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

But this act of terror wasn't born of poverty and ignorance. Abdulmutallab, like so many other al Qaeda terrorists, was born into great privilege, the son of the former economics minister of Nigeria who went so far as to warn the American embassy of the risk his radical son might pose. We've seen this over and over again. It isn't the poor and hungry who turn to international terrorism -- they're too busy trying to put food on the table for their families.

Unfortunately for President Obama, events are increasingly coming into conflict with his own views on Islamic terrorism and with the policies he has put forward to contain it. One can only hope that he draws the correct lesson from this latest attack and thinks better of sending 100 would-be Abdulmutallabs back to Yemen to rearm and rejoin the jihadist war against America.

From the article now up on the Washington Post website:

"But authorities are -- for now -- operating on the theory that he acted alone, according to an American law enforcement source.

"'At this point, there's nothing to suggest that he was part of a wider conspiracy involving others,' said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to interfere with an ongoing and active investigation."

It's already likely--based on other reporting--that his premise is incorrect. But it's amazing how deep the wishfulness is among "authorities"--especially, I think, the FBI--that all these guys be found to be acting alone. It turns out, in case after case, that these individuals are in some kind of contact with al Qaeda types abroad. But that would make this more of an ongoing war, less of a law enforcement problem--so the law enforcement authorities try to wish the facts away.

Parts of the Bush administration, at least, pushed against this wishfulness. One hopes there are people in the Obama administration who, once repeatedly mugged by reality, will learn the appropriate lessons--and act on them.

We are still in the early hours of the investigation into an attempted terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight leaving Amsterdam. So, any analysis at this point is by definition preliminary. Be that as it may, here are some initial observations and questions.

The first question that will be asked is: Was this the act of a so-called “lone wolf” extremist or a terrorist acting in concert with the al Qaeda terror network?

Early press accounts suggest a partial answer.

The suspect, Nigerian-national Umar Farouk Abdul Mudallad (or Mutallab, depending on the transliteration), has reportedly “said he received instructions and training from al Qaeda operatives based in Yemen ahead of boarding the Detroit-bound flight Friday.” Early this afternoon, CNN reported that Mudallad told his family that he was leaving for Yemen two months ago and that they couldn’t reach him. Based on these reports, it appears that Mudallad had the opportunity to mingle, at the very least, with al Qaeda operatives based in Yemen.

There are also reports that Mudallad may have become involved with extremists in London, where he went to school. This is potentially important because al Qaeda and allied organizations have a significant presence in London, which has proven to be a fertile recruiting ground. Thus, the great city has earned the nickname “Londonistan.”

There is a big picture point to all of these reported ties – even if we do not yet know what, if anything, they add up to.

Every time an incident such as this occurs, there are a number of public analysts, law enforcement officials and intelligence professionals who are quick to label it a “one-off event” with no substantive ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network or any other professional terrorist organization. This happened, for example, in the case of the Fort Hood shooter. The FBI and others were quick to downplay any ties between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and known terrorists. Within days, however, it emerged that Hasan received spiritual guidance, at a minimum, from a leading al Qaeda cleric. This should have greatly undermined the “Hasan is not a terrorist” storyline that emerged, but it still stuck.

We still don’t know the extent of Hasan’s ties to al Qaeda, but it is clear that the rush to label him a “lone wolf” terrorist disconnected from the broader terrorist threat clouded the FBI’s early investigation.

Mudallad’s early admissions should stop a similar storyline from developing here. It is possible that Mudallad’s admitted link to al Qaeda in Yemen is a ruse, or over reported in the early accounts. But investigators have to come up with good, sound reasons to discount it.

The next question that arises, then, is: What are Mudallad’s ties to al Qaeda, exactly? Did al Qaeda train Mudallad, and/or show him how to attempt such an attack?

One of the key pieces of evidence investigators are reportedly exploring is the type of explosive Mudallad tried to detonate. In the past, al Qaeda has repeatedly used TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) explosives in its attacks and plots against airliners. This is the type of explosive that the infamous shoe bomber, Richard Reid, used in late 2001. If Mudallad tried to use a similar device, then this is a pretty good indication (although not necessarily conclusive) that al Qaeda showed Mudallad how to go about blowing up a plane.

Furthermore, if Mudallad’s admission is true, then this means that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) played a role in the plot, and perhaps even orchestrated it. AQAP is headquartered in Yemen and was formed after al Qaeda’s two Arabian branches – one in Saudi Arabia, the other Yemen – merged. U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly pointed to AQAP as the strongest al Qaeda branch outside of South Asia. If Mudallad is being honest when he says that he was in touch with al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, and is not just a “wanna be,” then it is AQAP he is talking about.

Some of the most senior positions in AQAP are held by former Guantanamo detainees. Said al Shihri, AQAP’s #2 leader, is a former Gitmo detainee. Al Shihri was reportedly involved in al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen in September 2008. AQAP’s leading ideologue is Ibrahim Rubaish, who is another Gitmo alum. Rubaish is responsible for providing theological justifications for al Qaeda’s terror. Did al Shihri, Rubaish or some other senior AQAP leader play a role in Mudallad’s attempt at mass murder?

We don’t know, but it is one angle to this story that is worth keeping an eye on. By the way, the Fort Hood shooter’s cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, is another senior AQAP-affiliated cleric. Awlaki’s home in Yemen was recently the target of an airstrike that had senior AQAP personnel – including Awlaki (who reportedly survived) and al Shihri – in its crosshairs.

We can only speculate about who within AQAP assisted Mudallad – if in fact he did receive assistance from AQAP. But it is not speculative at all to note that if AQAP did support Mudallad’s plot, then this puts an exclamation point on security concerns about Yemen.

Mudallad’s story raises the possibility that AQAP is playing a larger role in promulgating international terrorism – not just fighting an insurgency that threatens the government of Yemen. This is a sign of strength, indeed.

Finally, all of this could also further complicate the Obama administration’s attempts to close Guantanamo. Around 90 or more of the remaining 198 detainees are Yemeni. The Bush administration did not repatriate many of them to their home country because of security concerns. The Obama administration has similarly been reluctant to transfer large numbers of detainees because the Yemeni government has an abysmal track record when it comes to keeping tabs on known al Qaeda terrorists.

President Saleh’s regime is also notoriously duplicitous, and works with al Qaeda and like-minded jihadist organizations at times. Thus far, the American government has not wanted to risk transferring or releasing the Gitmo Yemenis to Saleh’s custody because it could easily lead to their rejoining the jihad in short order.

The Yemen part of Mudallad’s story is, therefore, of paramount importance. It is too early to tell how important this aspect is, but we should be gravely concerned - to say the least.

About a month and a half ago we noted that President Obama's choice to serve as the administration's "anti-Semitism czar" was Hannah Rosenthal, a J Street board member who had herself been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League. Being rebuked by the ADL (and being a J Streeter) did not bode well for Rosenthal's tenure. A month later and Rosenthal is already causing headaches for the administration. Surprise, surprise, the anti-Semitism czar's first target is none other than the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren (who -- sources tell me -- is Jewish). What was Oren's offense? Slighting Rosenthal's friends at J Street:

Remarks by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, against the liberal Jewish lobby J Street were "most unfortunate" according to Hannah Rosenthal, head of the U.S. administration's Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism....

Rosenthal, who also served on the board of directors of left-wing group Americans for Peace Now, said she believed Oren "would have learned a lot" if he had participated in J Street's conference.

An official with a leading Jewish organization in Washington emails to say that "this is a matter of deep concern and raises real questions about her ability to do the job. There is no precendent that I can recall for a US official -- let alone a diplomat -- to so recklessly criticize another nation's ambassador from any country, ever, like this. While it seems obvious she was not reading from a State Department speech, it begs the question -- is she expressing offical American policy? If not, one would certainly hope the administration would say so. How would one know otherwise? People are outraged and they are telling the White House that, I am sure."

Are there not enough anti-Semites to keep Rosenthal busy even for a month before she starts attacking the Jews? It's as if Melanne Verveer had attacked Ayaan Hirsi Ali during her first month on the job, or if Carol Browner had gone after the head of Greenpeace. Still, I'm less interested in whether Rosenthal was acting in an official capacity when she attacked the Israeli Ambassador, but whether she was carrying out her official duties to combat and monitor anti-Semitism while she attended the J Street conference -- and when can we expect her report.

TPM reports:

With Democratic senators united on the health care bill today, their campaign arm has settled on an attack plan for 2010: Republicans would "repeal" it if they win control.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, aggressively challenging incumbent GOP senators and vying for open seats, will paint the Republicans as only interested in obstructing.

So, the Democrats' attack plan is to tell voters that the GOP will repeal the budget-busting, tax-hiking, Medicare-cutting, abortion-funding, big insurance and big pharma giveaway that only has the support of 35% of voters. Brilliant!

Conservatives have been saying that if Obamacare passes Republicans should run on the platform of repealing this monstrosity. The Democrats really think it's a smart attack plan to send the same message?

Does this count as an in-kind contribution to Republican candidates?

In the generous and forgiving spirit of Christmas, let me recommend an article from The Huffington Post. It's an interesting piece by Miles Mogulescu, on "The Democrats' Authoritarian Health 'Reform' Bill and the Ascendency of Corporatism in the Democratic Party," and suggests an increasing degree of left-right agreement in diagnosing and disdaining President Obama's corporatist liberalism.

Here's the nub of Mogulescu's argument:

"Democrats in Congress, under the leadership of Barack Obama, have now...made health care neither a right, nor a privilege, but an obligation for individual citizens and a government-mandated profit center for private corporations. For the first time in American history, Democrats are about to pass a bill that uses the coercive power of the federal government to force every American -- simply by virtue of being an American -- to purchase the products of a private company. At heart, the Democrats' solution to 48 million uninsured is to force the them to buy inadequate private insurance -- with potentially high deductibles and co-pays and no price controls -- or be fined by the federal government.... In effect, this represents an historic defeat for the type of liberalism represented by the New Deal and the Great Society and the ascendancy of a new type of corporatist liberalism.... As it increasingly appears that Obama is the President of Wall Street, and not the President of Main Street, he is losing not only the left but the center. It's a myth that the path to winning the popular center in American politics is moving to the corporate center. If the only political choice given to American voters is using their taxes to help big government subsidize wealthy corporations, or the Republican message of shrinking the size of government and cutting their taxes, many who voted for Obama will return to the fold of the seemingly brain-dead Republican Party. Obama will likely face an even more conservative Congress after the 2010 election and even, like Jimmy Carter, could end up as a one-term President."

And Mogulescu concludes:

"I worry for the future not only of progressives and Democrats, but of the country. President Palin in 2012?"

To which I say: From the Huffington Post's website to God's ear!

Merry Christmas!

From the Washington Post:

Yemeni forces killed at least 30 suspected militants in an air strike early Thursday morning on an alleged al-Qaeda hide-out in southeastern Yemen, the second such assault in the past week, according to Yemeni security and government sources.

The strike appeared to target the home of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the extremist Yemeni-American preacher linked to the suspected gunman in the Fort Hood army base attack in November.

A Yemeni government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Qaeda leaders were believed to be meeting at the house. It was unknown whether Aulaqi was present at the gathering, and, if so, whether he died or escaped, the official said.

The rest of the piece goes on to explain that no one knows for sure yet who exactly was killed in the strike. In addition to Aulaqi, the top leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have been present. This includes Nasir Wuhayshi (an al Qaeda bigwig with direct ties to al Qaeda central’s leadership in northern Pakistan) and Said al Shihri (who is reportedly AQAP’s #2).

If the name Said al Shihri rings a bell it is probably because there were a significant number of reports on al Shihri’s rise earlier this year. Al Shihri is now among Guantanamo’s most famous alumni.

But, let’s get back to Aulaqi. When Aulaqi’s ties to Major Nidal Malik Hassan first surfaced in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting, the FBI was quick to pooh-pooh them. The Bureau claimed that Hassan’s numerous emails back and forth with Aulaqi were consistent with Hassan’s research. (Maj. Hassan was reportedly researching the psychological effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

This was transparently false. There is no legitimate reason for a Major in the U.S. Army to contact a leading al Qaeda cleric with ties to the September 11 hijackers (Aulaqi assisted at least two of them en route to their day of terror as a “spiritual advisor”). Aulaqi does not have anything legitimate to say about the psychological effects of combat on U.S. troops other than, as a leading al Qaeda ideologue, he is all for them. Also, we’ve come to learn that Hassan said something to the effect that he couldn’t wait to join Aulaqi in the afterlife.

Got that? Major Hassan -– who professed his admiration of suicide bombings and offered a theological justification for them in a June 2007 presentation at Walter Reed Hospital -– told a top jihadist ideologue, who preaches the virtues of suicide bombings, that he couldn’t wait to be reunited in the next life.

Meanwhile, the FBI concluded: “Nothing to see here, move along.”

This latest reported airstrike, whether it killed Aulaqi or not, further demonstrates the underlying absurdity of the FBI’s “analysis” of Hassan’s ties to Aulaqi.

Anwar al Aulaqi has played a prominent role in al Qaeda’s war against the West and America – so much so that his home was an appropriate military target. And if that strike killed any of the al Qaeda leaders who were reportedly meeting there, then it was a successful one in terms of depleting the terror network’s ranks.

The dichotomy could not be any plainer: The U.S. military, which bungled its own evaluation of Major Hassan, is at war with al Qaeda and its allies. For years, the FBI couldn’t put together a prosecutable case against one of America’s more effective enemies. For those who believe terrorists can be defeated primarily, or even exclusively, by our law enforcement agencies and in the courts, the story of the FBI's investigations into Anwar al Aulaqi is a striking rebuttal.

The Washington Independent's David Weigel writes:

There is a right way to cover Sarah Palin and her PR strategy. Greg Sargent, Ben Smith and Matt Gertz double-check Palin’s claim (made on Facebook) that her infamous “death panel” post was a “metaphor” for how health care would be denied to the old or infirm. In the original post, it was pretty clear that Palin was talking about end-of-life counseling, not rationing.

Let's take a look at what Palin actually wrote in her original August 7 post:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

It is perfectly clear that Palin is talking about rationing in general. She specifically made the argument that the government's refusing to pay the cost of health care will lead to rationing care, and she also wrote that her "baby with Down Syndrome" could be affected by such rationing. How would "end-of-life counseling" for the elderly cause the death of a disabled baby?

Remember when the left went hysterical, er, became more hysterical than usual, when Sarah Palin used the phrase "real America"?

Harry Reid's office just sent out his remarks with the subject line:

REID: REAL PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE URGENCY FOR HEALTH REFORM

So, according to Harry Reid, only 36 percent of Americans count as "real people"?

Is Rep. Louise Slaughter serious, or is she just trying to get some leverage so she can get her own kickbacks?

"Supporters of the weak Senate bill say 'just pass it -- any bill is better than no bill,'" Slaughter wrote. "I strongly disagree -- a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills."

The New York Democrat also sounded a note similar to what Republicans have said (though for different reasons): Scrap the current healthcare bill, and start over.

"It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board," she said. "The American people deserve at least that."

Robert J. Lieber and Amatzia Baram in Foreign Policy, on the Iranian threat: "Contrary to the assessments of those who foresee a best case scenario of stable deterrence, a nuclear-armed Iran will usher in a new era of instability in the Middle East -- with consequences that nobody can accurately predict, much less contain."

Lieber's excellent book, The American Era, can be found here.

And while you're reading, check out Robert Kagan's latest, "The Perils of Wishful Thinking":

One gets the sense that the Obama Administration is fashioning a global strategy for a world that no longer exists, or, more accurately, that never existed. The post-1989 expectation was of a world in which geopolitical competition had given way to geo-economic cooperation. The old laws of great power politics, as Morgenthau understood them, had been rewritten by the universal triumph of liberalism. It was to be an age of convergence. All that was required was an America wise enough to guide the world toward agreement on the important matters on which all the powers must naturally agree. According to the Obama Administration’s narrative, George W. Bush then came along and destroyed this great opportunity with his belligerent and unilateralist policies. Now that Bush was gone, the world could resume its convergence under the inspirational direction of the new American President.

Missing from this narrative are two major developments of the past decade: the re-emergence of great power competition involving the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan and others; and the surprising resilience of autocratic capitalism as a viable alternative to liberal, democratic capitalism. In Russia the combination has produced a great power nationalism and revanchism that make cooperation difficult and at times impossible. Russia’s insistence on a geopolitical sphere of interest in its former imperial domain makes it hard to avoid “zero-sum” situations in Eastern and Central Europe and the Caucasus. Russian and American interests diverge in Iran, where Moscow’s understandable desire for money and influence, which would be undermined by any genuine Washington-Tehran rapprochement, may well trump the common interest in non-proliferation. Great power politics intrudes even on that most hallowed of common interests: climate change. The Chinese, who perceive the United States as bent on preventing their rise to dominance in East Asia, cannot help but see Western pressures for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as part of this effort—no matter how hard the Obama Administration tries to offer reassurance.

Obama has given every indication that he is more interested in domestic than in foreign policy. He sees his mission as building a "New Foundation" for the United States that bolsters the welfare state and begins to cut defense spending. Thus the first year of his presidency focused on domestic issues such as health care, cap and trade, regulatory reform, and the budget. Something tells me that year two will be dominated by foreign affairs, and by the mounting Iranian nuclear crisis in particular.

In remarks on Monday, President Obama said:

The Congressional Budget Office now reports that this bill will reduce our deficit by $132 billion over the first decade, and by as much as $1.3 trillion in the decade after that. So I just want to be clear, for all those who are continually carping about how this is somehow a big spending government bill, this cuts our deficit by $132 billion the first 10 years, and by over a trillion in the second. That argument that opponents are making against this bill does not hold water.

Obama's statement was based on the CBO's December 19 analysis of Harry Reid's manager's amendment. Which analysis, one should note, was not some sort of incontrovertible, God-like pronouncement from on high; indeed, the CBO acknowledged in its December 19 letter that

These longer-term calculations assume that the provisions are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades. However, the legislation would maintain and put into effect a number of procedures that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. Under current law and under the proposal, payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare would be reduced by about 21 percent in 2010 and then decline further in subsequent years. At the same time, the legislation includes a number of provisions that would constrain payment rates for other providers of Medicare services. In particular, increases in payment rates for many providers would be held below the rate of inflation. The projected longer-term savings for the legislation also assume that the Independent Payment Advisory Board is fairly effective in reducing costs beyond the reductions that would be achieved by other aspects of the legislation.

These are fairly large assumptions! Congress does not have a good record at cost control, to say the least. Entitlements tend to grow more expensive over time, not less. And the "payment rates for physicians services in Medicare," the so-called "doc-fix," has never happened.

Meanwhile, as the Dude would say, "New information has come to light, man":

Savings from Medicare touted by Democrats as a means to pay for the Senate health care bill were double-counted and the legislation will increase the deficit, not decrease it, a senior Republican senator said Wednesday, citing a new letter from the Congressional Budget Office.

As the Senate prepares for a crucial vote before final passage of a massive overhaul bill that Democrats argue will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years, Sen. Jeff Sesssions, R-Ala, said the nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare actually will add $300 billion to the deficit.

From the CBO's letter to Sessions (not yet posted online):

The improvement in Medicare’s finances would not be matched by a corresponding improvement in the federal government’s overall finances. CBO and JCT estimated that the PPACA as originally proposed would add more than $300 billion ($246 billion + $69 billion + interest) to the balance of the HI trust fund by 2019, while reducing federal budget deficits by a total of $130 billion by 2019. Thus, the trust fund would be recording additional saving of more than $300 billion during the next 10 years, but the government as a whole would be doing much less additional saving.

CBO has not undertaken a comparable quantitative analysis for the PPACA incorporating the manager’s amendment, but the results would be qualitatively similar. The reductions in projected Part A outlays and increases in projected HI revenues would significantly raise balances in the HI trust fund and create the appearance that significant additional resources had been set aside to pay for future Medicare benefits. However, the additional savings by the government as a whole—which represent the true increase in the ability to pay for future Medicare benefits or other programs—would be a good deal smaller.

The key point is that the savings to the HI trust fund under the PPACA would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs.

This sort of double-counting happens quite a bit in government budgeting, of course. But it further damages the claim that health care reform is also entitlement reform and deficit reduction combined into a single big-government package. Expect senators Sessions, Kyl, and Gregg to highlight this issue over the coming days. And ask yourself: How big will the deficit be not only in 2010, but when Obama stands for reelection in 2012?

Last week a federal judge in Georgia ruled that legally carrying a concealed firearm is grounds for being detained by police. 

In the case in question, Christopher Raissi, who has a concealed carry license, was spotted by police holstering a firearm as he exited his car and headed toward a MARTA station. Once he was inside the station, police surrounded him. From the Atlanta Gun Rights Examiner:


"The officers then seized his firearm from his holster and began questioning him [...] After seeing Raissi's firearms license and driver's license, the officers ran background checks on Raissi and held him, according to Raissi, for half an hour. The officers transported Raissi to a locked area out of the public eye before finally releasing him and returning his firearm and other property."

Granted, the police probably had enough cause (or at least enough to pass most judges' muster) to stop Raissi and ask to see a concealed carry license. But when a citizen is going about his or her day and acting completely within the law, that should not be grounds for being detained at length. 

Nevertheless, in the ruling the judge declared that Raissi's license was only an "affirmative defense to, not an element of" the crime:

"After Raissi concealed his handgun and started walking to toward the MARTA station, he had committed all of the acts required for the crime of boarding with a concealed weapon and the crime of carrying a concealed weapon."

In other words, the judge declared that Raissi was effectively committing a crime up until the point when he showed officers his firearms license. This apparently gave police justification to disarm and detain him.

 Which is a fine, fine precedent to set when it comes to a civil liberty. 

On an aside, Georgia changed its law last year to allow licensed concealed carry in the MARTA system. The Atlanta Gun Rights Examiner recently noted that since the change, homicides in the system dropped from two to zero over the previous year. Armed robberies dropped from 94 to 71.

Save a “specialist in sustainable living” or the dog? No contest.

Even if it turned out to be not the usual ginned-up bogus climate pre-apocalypticism being peddled as science by the world’s eco-terrorists (in this case, two sustainable-living specialists from New Zealand), but rather a true fact that her “carbon pawprint . . . is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle,” I'd definitely choose the dog.

The Vales . . . analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year. . . . Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car. . . . And pets' environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.

As it happens, my dog is not medium-sized, she is large-sized--very--and her carbon footprints, which have covered the hectares in her three years of glorious life (so far), may have devastated a fair share of wildlife and polluted a good number waterways already; and so, I am guessing, must my extra-large-sized gas-guzzling 4x4 sports utility vehicle--the one that's allowed me to get out of my house despite the two feet of snow covering my driveway right now from a blizzard which may yet prove to have been related to global warming. Or not.

The New York Times reports:

Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.

As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.

While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.

But in interviews this week, officials estimated that it could take 8 to 10 months to install new fencing, towers, cameras and other security upgrades before any transfers take place. Such construction cannot begin until the federal government buys the prison from the State of Illinois.

The federal Bureau of Prisons does not have enough money to pay Illinois for the center, which would cost about $150 million. Several weeks ago, the White House approached the House Appropriations Committee and floated the idea of adding about $200 million for the project to the military spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year, according to administration and Congressional officials.

But Democratic leaders refused to include the politically charged measure in the legislation. When lawmakers approved the bill on Dec. 19, it contained no financing for Thomson.

More here.

Sarah Palin takes aim at the health care bill's provision to make it out of order for future Congresses to repeal or amend the section creating the Independent Medicare Advisory Board, which, writes Palin "is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing":

Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:

“It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.”

Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

A TWS reader e-mails:

“Hey Mr. Kristol, is there some supersecret plot to ignore the Massachusetts Senatorial election scheduled for JANUARY 19, where an actual REPUBLICAN has a chance to become the 41ST member of the Republican caucus, which might find it in its interest to...persuade a certain Senatorial election committee to pay attention to the race or send money or have actual prominent Republican types come to the state to campaign for the very telegenic State Sen. Scott Brown, who's running against an undistinguished mouse of a Dem Party apparatchick who's so pro-abortion she's almost promising to do the procedure herself and doesn't carry the last name of Kennedy?

Just askin'!”

He signs himself, “Perhaps Inordinately Hopefully Yours.”

He is perhaps inordinately hopeful. But he’s right: the health care bill wouldn’t come back to the Senate from the House (if a new version passes the House—which as I argued earlier, isn’t a laydown) until after January 19th. So a 41st Republican senator could stop Obamacare.

Now, of course the Democrat Martha Coakley is the overwhelming favorite. But someone might want to commission a poll in Massachusetts to see what might happen if the Senate race could be made a referendum on Obamacare. Brown and Coakley debated last night, and they clashed on the health care bill. But so far as I can tell, Brown didn’t emphasize that by electing him, the voters of Massachusetts have a chance to save the country from Obamacare. What if there were a massive independent expenditure that made that point? I bet Obamacare isn’t popular even in Massachusetts. And it would be novelistically satisfying if the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat on the issue of government-run health care, thereby dooming...government-run health care.

On Wednesday morning, Beijing time –- Tuesday evening EST -- Liu Xiaobo, the writer and activist, will be put on trial for “inciting state subversion.” The trial date was announced last weekend and the timing is not accidental. Many top envoys from democratic countries are away observing the Christmas holiday. While some governments including the U.S. have asked to send observers to the trial, these requests are routinely denied, just as the request to free Liu has been. Ding Zilin, head of the Tiananmen Mothers group, also a signer of Charter 08, has called on her fellow signers of the Charter to assemble at the court house in support of Liu. Many of the best known Chartists have already been warned not to attend, and put under surveillance. In a small gesture, friends and supporters of Liu Xiaobo will gather at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m., at the same time that Liu will be brought to trial.

Also in the past few days, 20 Uighurs seeking asylum in Cambodia were repatriated to China. Cambodia acquiesced to Beijing’s pressure and the offer of $1.2 billion in economic aid, rather than live up to its obligations under international law. A statement released by the State Department said “this incident will affect Cambodia's relationship with the U.S.” What about the U.S.’s relationship with China, which has been pursuing Uighurs abroad and pressuring countries to repatriate them, not just from Cambodia?

At least here, with respect to Cambodia, the administration has committed itself. The Obama administration has said little publicly about Liu Xiaobo generally and nothing since the trial date was announced. Liu’s name was put on a list of human rights activists and dissidents given to Chinese officials during President Obama’s recent visit to China. This “quiet diplomacy” has built in limitations. It protects America from committing itself to a result, which, if not met, would require consequences. The administration is immune to pressure, self-imposed or otherwise, to achieve success. It seems unlikely that Liu’s continued imprisonment and Hu Jia’s and Chen Guangcheng’s and the others’ will have consequences U.S. relations with China. This is the meaning of “engagement.”

Senate leaders Reid and McConnell have agreed that the first order of business when they get back will be to take up, on January 20th, the debt limit increase needed for next year (they’ll pass a small—$290 billion!—increase Thursday to tide them over for a month). The agreement allows for several amendments, including a Murkowski amendment blocking the EPA endangerment regulation. As Steve Hayward details in his story this week, this is a regulation ripe for overturning, and will be a tough vote for some Democrats (but the amendment will need 60 votes to pass). Then there’s the debt limit itself, which Republicans won’t help Democrats pass. Then health care could come back from the House and be next up—another fun vote for the Cash for Cloture Democrats. Also, some people will note that January 22nd, the Friday of that week, is the date by which the administration was supposed to have closed Gitmo—so let’s have a debate about the wisdom of moving Gitmo to Illinois, and the KSM civil trial in NY.

Should all be a good warm-up to the president’s State of the Union on the January 26th. A suggestion for the Republican response: Not an elected official. Instead, some ordinary citizen—perhaps a family practitioner doc who voted for Obama, is appalled by the health care bill, is also upset by the Gitmo decision and all the taxes, spending and bailouts, and in sum is deeply disappointed in Obama’s performance and that of the Democratic Congress.

Nidal Hasan's lawyer complains his client’s religious rights are being violated by a requirement that “all communication during visits be in English or be delayed until an interpreter is present.” The Fort Hood jihadi was engaging in an Arabic prayer session over the phone--something we assume (or pray, at any rate) he has been forced to resort to entirely, post-email exchanges with his terror mentor Anwar al-Awlaki--when he was interrupted and disconnected by the Army.

But really, why not let him communicate in a language most of his jailers are unlikely to understand? It’s the season for forgiveness, as Jimmy Carter pointed out to the Jews the other day, rather religiously,
in Hebrew. And anyway, isn’t Mr. Hasan, like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

What becomes of the end-of-year sanctions deadline, set down--together with all of brave UN-ified Europe--by Mr. Obama's towering foreign-policy geniuses to incentivize the Iranians to lay down their arms, now that that country’s illegitimate president has thrown down the gauntlet instead? "We told you that we are not afraid of sanctions against us and we are not intimidated," says Mr. Ahmadinejad. "The people of Iran and the government of Iran are 10 times stronger than last year.” Do we send Robert Gibbs out to warn them or do we give them an extension and invite them back to the negotiating table--again?

And what becomes of our human-rights policy, set down--in language remarkable for its passionlessness--in a tour d’horizon by the U.S. secretary of state, with the mullah masters of Tehran proving ever more obdurate as the post-election revolt against them refuses to die, overseeing the beatings and slaughter of demonstrators in broad daylight and the executing of them in prison, the murder of doctors who refuse to doctor autopsy reports on dead protesters, and the holding of American hostages? Do we shake our finger at them and tell them their brutality is “appalling," and beg them to meet with us--again?

Is there possibly something more to be said to a dictatorship armed with the bomb and brutalizing to its own citizens that could shake the despots and hearten the dissidents, if even only a little? Natan Sharansky would assure us there is.

Gregg Easterbrook:

Only in Washington could you have one guy calling the running plays (Sherman Smith), another guy calling the passing plays (Sherman Lewis) and a third guy calling the fourth-down plays (Jim Zorn). Maybe what the Redskins need is an even more top-heavy coaching staff -- a guy who calls only screens, a guy who specializes in calling curls, a guy who calls only counter plays to the right on first down in the third quarter. Only in Washington could it seem to make sense to address a problem by putting more people at the top and giving them confused, overlapping responsibilities. Bear this in mind as you hear that more rules and more bureaucracy are the solutions to health care and greenhouse-gas problems.

Easterbrook's new book, Sonic Boom, is out next week.

Cost writes:

Bottom line: while we shouldn't expect any MSM pundit discussions about how Griffith's departure is a sign of the "narrowing" of the Democratic Party, this is still a noteworthy development. Just as the Republican Party's rightward and Southern shift has placed a burden on moderate Northeastern Republicans, so the Democratic Party's leftward and Northern shift has put pressure on moderate Southern Democrats. Now that the liberal Democrats are in charge - pushing their agenda and taking responsibility for the state of the Union - this pressure has become more salient. Griffith may or may not be the only Democrat to make an actual jump to the GOP, but his departure from the Democratic Party underscores the tension between the liberal leadership and many Southern moderates as the House prepares for a big health care vote.

As Cost writes, "The decades-long geographical and ideological sorting of both parties is ongoing." And as the northeast becomes more liberal (and hence Democratic) and the south becomes more conservative (and hence Republican), the real battles will be in purple places like the Mountain West.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine took a surprise call on WTOP this morning:

The voice is pretty convincing. And I would say, too, that Kaine -- who has probably spent a lot of time on the phone with the president -- doesn't blink an eye when he says "Hello, Mr. President."

UPDATE, 3:00 P.M. Just so there's no confusion, WTOP confirms "Barry from D.C." was President Obama.

Two Miami-based members of Congress revoke their endorsements:

Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart have pulled their endorsement of Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate.

Lincoln offered few details as to why, just that Crist had "left us no alternative and he knows why."

Via Ed Morrissey, this is why Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have to lie and say there's no taxpayer-funding of abortion in the health care bill:

As the Senate prepares to vote on health care reform, American voters "mostly disapprove" of the plan 53 - 36 percent and disapprove 56 - 38 percent of President Barack Obama's handling of the health care issue, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Voters also oppose 72 - 23 percent using any public money in the health care overhaul to pay for abortions, the independent Quinnipiac University poll finds.

Is Congress really going to pass a bill supported by 36% of Americans?

A Senate aide writes in an email that it appears that Harry Reid slipped in the provision to make it out of order for future Congresses to amend or repeal the Medicare cutting legislation after the bill was passed by the Finance Committee:

The Independent Advisory Board for Medicare was under jurisdiction of Finance Cmte. After looking at the legislative language for the Finance bill, I cannot find similar language as is included on Page 1020 of the new Reid bill in relation to Medicare advisory Board.