Tag: news

Shortly before the White House began
dropping
bombs on Syria yesterday, the White House
confirmed that some of the estimated 100 Americans who have
gone to the Middle East to join terrorist groups like the Islamic
State (a.k.a. ISIS) have returned to the United States.

Discussing National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) activity, an
unnamed senior administration official said the FBI is looking at
“those who’ve gone, those who’ve tried to go, some who’ve come
back.”

How many are there? The administration official couldn’t say.
But, two weeks ago, Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) claimed the FBI is
watching
40 jihadists in the U.S.

Time points
out the significance of the official’s statement:

It marked the first official government confirmation that at
least some of the Americans fighting alongside the Islamist
extremist group have returned to the U.S. As late as Monday
morning, Secretary of State John Kerry said on MSNBC that “we have
over 100 fighters there from America,” leaving out any mention of
Americans who have returned.

The Hill
notes that President Barack Obama will be “chairman of a
Security Council meeting later this week, when the U.N. will seek a
new resolution demanding countries strengthen laws and programs to
prevent the flow of foreign citizens to the Middle East to join
terrorist groups.” Also, the revelation about ISIS fighters
returning to America “could prompt new security concerns about the
prospect that Americans who were radicalized abroad could do damage
to the homeland.”

However, the president has stated that there are no known ISIS
plots against the U.S. Likewise, although ISIS’s threats to the
U.S. are
getting louder, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI,
and House Foreign Affairs Committee leadership have all stated that
the terrorist group
does not pose a credible threat to the American homeland.

An estimated 15,000 people total, including 2,000 European
citizens, have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the fight to
establish a Sunni Islam caliphate. A week ago, a New York man was

charged in federal court for trying to recruit
fighters for the Islamic State.

Part of the Obama administration’s plan to prevent more
Americans from radicalizing is by reaching out to the Muslim
community. Attorney General Eric Holder
announced last week that the NCC, DHS, and FBI would all
participate in an “engagement meeting” pilot program.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who has been touching base with
Syrian and Somali communities in the Midwest, says he has “enhanced
the visibility” of “programs to engage in outreach to communities
which themselves are able to reach young men who may turn to
violence.” Unfortunately, the DHS’s strategy also includes pushing
retailers to
rat out people who buy broadly defined “explosive precursors”
(think pressure cookers, fertilizer). 

President Barack Obama gave a
prepared speech this morning about our launch of airstrikes against
ISIS within the borders of Syria. As is typical, his comments
suggest this is something we all as Americans agreed to do together
despite any sort of legal authorization for this action whatsoever.
From his
speech this morning:

Good morning, everybody.  Last night, on my orders,
America’s armed forces began strikes against ISIL targets in
Syria.  Today, the American people give thanks for the
extraordinary service of our men and women in uniform, including
the pilots who flew these missions with the courage and
professionalism that we’ve come to expect from the finest military
that the world has ever known.

Earlier this month, I outlined for the American people our
strategy to confront the threat posed by the terrorist group known
as ISIL.  I made clear that as part of this campaign the
United States would take action against targets in both Iraq and
Syria so that these terrorists can’t find safe haven
anywhere.  I also made clear that America would act as part of
a broad coalition.  And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

He mentions the bipartisan support for arming and training
Syrian rebels (or rather, the Syrian rebels who aren’t members of
ISIS, who are also rebels, but not the right rebels), which at
least passed with a vote. Later in the speech, he says:

I’ve spoken to leaders in Congress and I’m pleased that there is
bipartisan support for the actions we are taking.  America is
always stronger when we stand united, and that unity sends a
powerful message to the world that we will do what’s necessary to
defend our country.

Well, if there’s bipartisan support for these actions and we’re
all standing united, then it should be a breeze for him to get a
new authorization for the use of military force to combat ISIS in
Syria, right? But no, there’s nothing in the speech that suggests a
Congressional vote is coming.

Read the full speech
here.

A little more than 25 years after the
communist government of China massacred thousands of students
protesting for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square,
the students are back to stir up trouble, this time in Hong
Kong.

“Universal suffrage is the mission of this era and this era
belongs to the young people, so let the young ones complete the
mission. Young people will always be the pioneers,” 17
year-old Hong Kong activist Jason Wong told
Bloomberg.

Wong’s group “Scholarism” is
spearheading
a week-long boycott of the city’s universities to protest the

Chinese Communist Party’s refusal to let Hong Kong voters
directly elect their chief executive. Labeled an “extremist” by
China’s state-run media, Wong was able to muster the support
of thousands of students from more than 20 schools, as well as
more than 400 teachers, in a massive rally kicking off the
boycott.

When China assumed authority over Hong Kong from the British in
1997, the city was promised autonomy under the “one
country, two systems” model which allowed Hong Kong to remain a
fairly democratic, capitalist municipality. But in late August, the
Chinese government announced that the planned 2017 election for
Hong Kong’s chief executive would consist of
2 or 3 candidates approved by China’s one-party
legislature. 

Two years ago, Scholarism and Occupy
Central led protests of over 100,000 people in opposition
to the Hong Kong government’s plan to bring a pro-Chinese “national
curriculum” to Hong Kong’s schools. The
Straits Times describes the program:

The course material was outlined in a government booklet called
“The China Model,” which was distributed to schools. The booklet
described China’s ruling party as “progressive, selfless and
united” and criticised multi-party systems as bringing disaster to
countries such as the United States. It also made no mention of
major events that many view as integral to China’s history, such as
the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. A coalition of
groups in Hong Kong, including students, protested against the
curriculum, including staging a 10-day hunger strike on the steps
of the government headquarters. The government eventually backed
down. 

Occupy Central is
planning a massive blockade of Hong Kong’s financial district,
but this time around the Chinese government appears to be digging
in its heels early on, ruling out any chance of reversing course on
their policy of approving Hong Kong’s candidates. The
Wall Street Journal reports: 

Chinese officials “have made it very clear that it is out of
question that the decision…would be changed by Occupy Central, hair
shaving or a class boycott,” said Ms. Ip, who is also the
chairwoman of the pro-Beijing New People’s Party.

However, she said, “There’s room for discussion in Hong Kong on
the composition of the nominating committee,” suggesting there
could be a reallocation of seats on the 1,200-member panel. “There
is room for democrats to get involved,” said Ms. Ip.

While the protests have thus far been peaceful,
mass arrests at a pro-democracy sit-in last July have raised
the fearful spectre of Tiananmen Square. In an op-ed published by
the Wall Street Journal,
3 former Chinese political prisoners warned of a reprise of the
1989 crackdown on student demonstrators:

In early July, Hong Kong police detained more than 500
participants and organizers for their role in peaceful protests
that called on Beijing to deliver genuine democracy. Hong Kong’s
House News, one of Hong Kong’s most popular independent papers,
known for its support of Occupy Central, closed after its owner
released a letter saying he was “fearful” because of political
pressure from China. And last month, Hong Kong’s Independent
Commission Against Corruption raided media owner Jimmy Lai’s home
in connection with his donations to pro-democracy legislators. The
pro-democracy legislator Lee Cheuk-Yan’s home was raided on the
same day.

Chinese officials in charge of Hong Kong affairs have threatened
repeatedly that Hong Kong-based units of China’s People’s
Liberation Army will use force to suppress peaceful demonstrations.
This tragic outcome is becoming more likely.

Yesterday afternoon, a federal appeals court
tossed a lawsuit against the Obama administration filed by a
consortium of doctors opposed to the president’s delay of
Obamacare’s employer mandate.

The court did not rule that President Obama’s decision to delay
was legal. It did not rule on the merits of the delay at all.
Instead, the three-judge panel in the 7^th Circuit Court
of Appeals
said the doctors had no standing to sue, because they could not
demonstrate that they would be directly harmed by the delay.

The question of standing has always plagued challenges to the
administration’s multiple delays of the employer mandate. Even
though liberal legal scholars who support the health law have
suggested that it is likely an overstep of executive authority, it
is hard to find anyone with the legal status to sue.

The appeals court decision suggests that a similar suit against
the mandate now in the works from House Republicans will face the
same problem. President Obama’s move may be illegal, but there’s no
one who can stop him.

A few hours after the appeals court decision was released,
American forces began bombing targets inside Syria. Obama had
foreshadowed the strikes in a
speech earlier this month, and had invited Congress to
officially approve the action, in the way that one might invite a
friend over at the last minute for a long-planned dinner. The table
was already set, the meal already cooking. It was all going to
happen, whether or not Congress decided to show up. 

Congress did not approve the strikes. The administration

maintained it had the authority to wage war in Syria anyway
under the Authorization to Use Military Force passed in the wake of
the September 11, 2001 attacks.

It is, at best, a
dubious proposition. That authorization allowed the use of
military force against Al Qaeda and affiliated forces. The current
strikes are aimed at ISIS, which is no longer part of Al Qaeda,
which has
disowned ISIS.

As such, the strikes are probably illegal.

At minimum, they do not meet the standard laid out by Barack
Obama on the campaign trail in 2008, when he
told The Boston Globe that “the President does not
have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a
military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping
an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

In his recent speech on the strikes, President Obama suggested
that ISIS “could pose a growing threat beyond” the Middle East “if
left unchecked,” but also said that “we have not detected specific
plotting against our homeland.” By Obama’s own admission, ISIS does
not meet the test he himself laid out while running for
president.

But who can challenge the president’s decision to wage war? The
answer is almost certainly no one. Certainly not
elected officials in Congress. Since 1973, with the passage of the
War Powers Resolution, a law intended to restrain the executive
branch’s capacity to wage war, there have been multiple attempts by
legislators to challenge a president’s legal authority to wage war.
None have made a dent in executive authority. In four cases, as the
Congressional Research Service noted in 2012, the
courts refused to render a decision on the merits, labeling the
suits as fundamentally political in nature. Two cases were
dismissed for lack of ripeness, and two more were tossed for lack
of standing.

As with the delay of the mandate, the recent strikes are
probably illegal, and yet no one can mount a challenge. President
Obama is unchecked, and uncheckable.

Obama is the only one with the power to stop himself. Indeed,
while running for president, that’s exactly what he promised he
would do.

“The biggest problems that were facing right now have to do with
George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive
branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend
to reverse when I’m President of the United States of
America,” he
said at a televised campaign event in 2008.

A year before that, he voiced explicit support for the War
Powers Resolution. “The government of this country is not based on
the whims of one person,” he said.

The public liked Obama’s vision, and voted him into office. But
the promised reversal never arrived. And now, on too many policy
issues, in too many significant decisions both at home and abroad,
it seems all too clear that the whims of one person are what matter
most.  

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The House
Energy and Commerce Committee issued the findings of its
months-long investigation of NHTSA’s (National Highway Traffic and
Safety Administration) handling of GM’s ignition switch debacle and
they are damning!

It turns out the agency missed the true cause of why GM’s 2005
Cobalt and its sister cars were sometimes suddenly stopping and
crashing because it did not understand the workings of the advanced
airbag systems that it had itself mandated.

Yet, instead, of begging for forgiveness for its manifest
ineptitude in protecting the drivers in whose name it exists, its
chief went before Congress last week, defiant and unrepentant, and
demanded more money for more staff.

View this article.