John Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran and President Obama's Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (whew!) since January 2009, appeared on Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday (FNS) show -- and definitely was an apparently more credible spokesperson than Nincompolitano. So, let's take a little closer look first at who John Brennan is, beyond just his current title (which is, admittedly, in and of itself, long, impressive and almost intimidating).

Brennan was interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center immediately after its creation in 2004 through 2005, and since 2005 has served as CEO of The Analysis Corporation.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was, at the direction of former President Bush, originally Brennan's project -- his "baby" -- to start up and get running, is the primary federal government organization for analyzing and integrating all intelligence possessed or acquired by the federal government pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism (except for intelligence specific to domestic terrorism and domestic counterterrorism, which is the province of Nincompolitano at DHS (God help us!) and the FBI. However, consistent with applicable law and direction from the president, the NCTC may also receive intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic counterterrorism from any federal or SLT (state, local or tribal) government, or other source(s), necessary to fulfill its responsibilities and retain and disseminate such intelligence. In other words, the NCTC (a) serves as the central and shared knowledge bank on known and suspected terrorists and international terror groups; (b) ensures agencies, as appropriate, have access to and receive all-source intelligence support needed to execute their counterterrorism plans or to perform independent, alternative analyses; and (c) ensures that such agencies have access to and receive intelligence needed to accomplish their assigned activities.

In short, after Bush directed removal of the turf-protecting "wall" between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI on one hand and the CIA and other intellligence-gathering agencies on the other, the "wall" which had been advocated by Clinton's Attorney General Janet "Waco" Reno (is the name Janet just a curse of some kind -- Janet Reno and Janet Nincompolitano?) and which actually prevented the sharing of domestic- and foreign-gathered intelligence, the NCTC was (is) supposed to be that central outfit, that "clearing house," to "connect all the dots." Remember "connecting the dots"?

Well, um, then.....hmmm.....maybe an "oopsie" is warranted here. Doesn't that mean that even as Brennan sat there on FNS, giving the latest Team Obama spin to the whole Christmas Day terrorist attack fiasco, he knew it was his "baby," the NCTC, which at least had a part in obviously NOT connecting the dots this time? Hey, just askin' - just sayin'.

W-E-L-L-L, seems like there's another reason Brennan would want the NCTC to do a good job -- and perhaps to have even some more turf to protect if it didn't. Not only was the NCTC his "baby," but it seems that TAC, of which he was and still is the CEO, is a mainstay in helping the NCTC to do its job properly. So, (a) he's paid as the presidential advisor in the very subject area in which (b) the NCTC (which he "invented") is responsible for connecting the dots (but this time looks like it didn't very well) and (c) is paid as the CEO of the civilian defense contract company which gets lots and lots of government (read: taxpayer) money for helping NCTC do that -- connect the dots, that is. Hmmm, just call me cynical, but can we all say "possible, multiple conflicts of interest"?

By the way, just extra info, from 2007 until 2008 when he was picked as Obama's advisor, Brennan also served as Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), a non-profit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(6) professional organization for members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, based in Arlington, Vriginia. It was assumed by some insiders that Obama would appoint Brennan the next Director of the CIA, but Brennan withdrew his name from consideration in November 2008, over concerns that his nomination would be a distraction, due to his previous associations with controversial harsh CIA interrogation techniques. Well, I personally count that as a "plus" for the guy, but that's just me. Answering the question -- to waterboard or not to waterboard? -- is easy for me. Since it doesn't physically harm the "boardee," I say always err on the side of waterboarding. Who knows, you might find out something not only important but also terrorist-thwarting and/or life-saving.

Anyway, Brennan did his best to put the Team "O" twist on the whole bungled bombing by the Nigerian over Detroit thingy. And, after listening to him, at least his worst would be better than Nincompolitano's best -- but he still didn't "sell" me.

I don't know what it is, if it's (a) just that Team Obama members, even the smart, experienced ones, are just delusional enough from drinking too much of the liberal Kool-Aid that they really believe what they're peddling (at least that would mean, technically, that they're not pathological liars), or if it's (b) just that, in their arrogance and elitism, they just think the rest of us are too stupid, or are simply not paying enough attention, to know any better than when they're trying to sell us snake oil.

Now, I've already laid out how experienced and evidently intelligent Brennan is, but some of what he said on FNS made me wish Chris Wallace had a little, flashing sign, saying "Idiot" or "Liar," which he could have had light up behind Brennan's head a few times. That's okay, though, because I supplied my own mentally, while I watched and listened to him spin and spin and spin. And with such a straight face, too. I guess they teach you how to do that at the CIA and in the intel biz, though.

However, not only as an old soldier but also as one who worked in law enforcement and who also has a law degree, one thing really struck me. As Wallace was pressing Brennan on the issue of "is it terrorism and an act of war, or is it simply criminal and a law enforcement matter," Brennan said, in supposed defense of losing the chance to really interrogate the "subject" by arresting him, Mirandizing him and giving him a lawyer who told him to clam up, that we could still get information from him by offering him a plea bargain.

Uh, wait. Did he say a PLEA BARGAIN?! Time out. I'm hyperventilating. One, take a breath.....two, take a breath.....three, take a breath.....four, take a breath.

WHAT! No, what I really mean is WTF!!

The last time I was this incredulous was when Obama's Attorney General Eric "pick and choose who to prosecute" Holder was before a Senate committee defending "his" (who's his boss?) decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM) and cohorts in a New York City civilian criminal court, instead of in a military tribunal at Guantanamo. So, let's side-track into that for a little bit.

When asked if KSM (a) had already pled guilty, (b) had agreed to be tried by military tribunal, (c) had indicated that he wanted to be martyred, and (d) his military tribunal trial was imminent, why Holder at that time decided to transfer KSM's case, Holder bizarrely answered that it was not KSM who would decide where and by whom he would be tried, but it was he, Holder, who would decide.

So, lemme see now, KSM was (a) already being detained at Guantanamo, (b) where no additional security measures would have to be instituted or paid for (unlike in NYC, where it will cost somebody millions), (c) where we have already spent millions of taxpayer dollars building a state-of-the-art trial facility, (d) where we could have ensured no public revelations or compromise of national security info, techniques or personnel but (e) where KSM could still get a fair trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) as an enemy combatant, and (f) where he was already squared away and in a hurry to be hanged as a martyr -- and yet you, mean ole Mr. Holder, wanted to "rob" him of all that and give him rights similar to a U.S. citizen, instead? Well, take THAT, KSM! Who do you think you are? We'll give you rights and privileges you're not entitled to if we want to, so there!

When pressed on what would happen if, by some stretch of the imagination, the federal court's civilian jury should find KSM, et al., not guilty, Holder just repeatedly insisted that would not happen. When asked how he could be so sure, Holder reverted to what I call "the Obama because I say so, it is so" rationale. Rationale? Well, it's not a very rational rationale, but you get the idea. Anyway, I can see a prosecutor being confident of his case and sure of a conviction, but nothing's ever really sure in a criminal trial, much less what a jury might do. So, either Holder knows something he's not telling which ensures KSM's conviction will be a slam dunk -- and, if so, why go through a show trial, unless simply for political theater (ah, yes there is that, isn't there?), or as a minimum, Holder -- as well as Obama by his subsequent nationally televised comments of confidence about a conviction -- has at least potentially poisoned the jury pool, if a fairly impartial and objective jury could have been found anywhere around NYC in the first place, and/or given rise to a competent defense attorney's appeal of any conviction. And both Obama and Holder are lawyers, one from Hah-vahd and the other from Columbia, no less. You would think they would know these things. I do, and my JD is just from Mercer University's little ole Walter F. George School of Law.  
 
As to Mr. Brennan and his plea bargain idea, I'm pretty sure we've had a long-standing, pretty firm policy of NOT negotiating with terrorists. And isn't plea bargaining negotiating? Well, of course it is. I guess that's just another policy of Bush -- and Clinton, and Bush, and Reagan, and Carter, and Ford, and ... -- that we are going to just change and/or ignore now in the new and enlightened era of Obama.

Obama and his harem of henchmen and handmaidens need to learn that while all terrorists are criminals because of their lesser included criminal acts, not all criminals are terrorists. Terrorists are criminals-plus, and that's a big PLUS. Therefore, terrorists should be treated DIFFERENTLY than mere criminals.

You don't treat the guy who tried to hold up a 7-11 with a fake gun the same as you do the guy who actually shot and killed somebody, and you don't treat the guy who tried to blow up a whole plane of almost 300 people, along with himself, the same as you do the guy who shot and killed one person. DUH!

Being ideologically determined to close Guantanamo, as Obama adamantly remains, and therefore probably not wanting to add not even one more detainee there, and being a liberal ideologue, as both Obama and Holder are, and wanting to make "us" look good and feel good by giving our enemies rights to which they are not entitled, will make even otherwise reasonably intelligent men say and do strange and twisted things in attempts to "justify" the desired outcomes. And those strange and twisted things seem thus not only to many of us but also to our enemies, which gives them encouragement to respect us less, to fear us less, and, probably, to laugh at us more.

The Nigerian, just like KSM, is a foreigner and a terrorist and an enemy combatant. He has no rights under the Geneva Conventions or the Law of Land Warfare, much less under the U.S. Constitution. He should have been turned over to military authorities right off the plane, treated for his self-inflicted lap burns, transported to and interrogated at Guantanamo as a detainee, and he should be either held there until the war in which he voluntarily made himself a "warrior" is over, or he is tried by military tribunal and found guilty or innocent and is either additionally imprisoned, executed, or someday repatriated.

So, plea bargain, Mr. Brennan? Oh, hell no! We don't need no stinkin' plea bargain. We just need a president, attorney general and DHS secretary who all stand up more for Americans and more against terrorists and who worry more about being realistically and practically correct, rather than so much about being ideologically and politically correct. And who tell anybody who doesn't like it to just go play in the traffic, to boot.

My initial reaction was: Hey, Obama's on VACATION, folks! Give him a break. After all, this is only his THIRD vacation since taking office less than a year ago. Why, in less than a year in office, Obama has already played more golf and taken more time off than George W. Bush did in his whole first term in office. (Where are the liberal lamestream media who used to count any and every time George W. Bush went to either Camp David or Crawford, Texas, and just moan and wail and wring their hands about it?) Given that and how much time Obama spends in front of any available TV camera (daily), it's a wonder he has any time to spend in the Oval Office and get any real work done at all, even when he IS here and not off traveling around the world somewhere, bowing and apologizing for all of America's faults.

My second reaction was that this was just POLITICO.com, once again "explaining" for the president, i.e., trying to give cover for why Obama was slow out of the gate -- again -- when something bad happened. This reaction was sort of confirmed later, when White House Press Secretary Robert "frat boy" Gibbs lamely tried to claim that Obama didn't want to react too publicly, too quickly so as not to give too much publicity to the "incident" and therefore "credit" to its perpetrator(s). Pardon me, but what a crock! 

Besides, we were reassured by Bobby Gibbs-erish and others of Team Obama that the prez was being kept "informed" and had directed this and that be "investigated," etc. (Well, I don't know about you, but I felt better right away.) Meanwhile, Team O got busy trying to figure out how this latest terrorist incident was just somehow more of Bush's fault. Plus, maybe Obama being in Hawaii was complicating getting what George Soros wanted him to say about this "incident" through to him -- although I'm sure George has Barry's Blackberry contact info, so, in all not-so-subtle sarcasm, but also in all fairness, maybe that wasn't it.

Obama being in Hawaii did not, however, prevent his Secretary of Homeland Security Janet "nitwit" Napolitano from saying on the following Sunday talk shows that "all systems worked smoothly." This not only caused the gaffe-prone Madame Secretary to have to backtrack on that Monday that what she actually meant was that all systems worked smoothly after the Christmas Day "incident" but what she had said on Sunday also went against what Rahm "run amok" Emanuel's White House henchmen had come up with about everything being Bush's fault again, which was that it was the systems he had put in place which failed to work. What an idiot! No, not Run Amok Rahm this time, but Nitwit Napolitano. She doesn't even pass Lenin's "useful idiot" test. How much are we paying her to "keep us safe," anyway? Never mind. Anything would be too much in her case.

But also, three more things about that. First, you people on "Team Obama" need to get your stories together. Either it was as Nitwit Napolitano first said, that the systems which Bush put in place worked smoothly, or it was, as the WH spin doctors tried to later claim, that the systems Bush had put in place failed to work. You (a) can not have any cake, or you (b) can have your cake but not eat it, but you (c) can't have your cake and eat it, too -- or, so I'm told. So, at least coordinate and try to get your stories straight, or at least not antithetical to each other.

Second, neither Nitwit Napolitano nor the White House henchmen even addressed the issues that (a) whether they were good systems or bad, you have to "work them" to maintain and maximize their effectiveness, or (b) if Bush's systems were so flawed, why hadn't Team Obama done something -- anything -- to improve them in the better part of the year that Team Obama's been in charge?

Third, what Napolitano initially said on Sunday and clarified she meant on Monday, that the systems worked smoothly but only after the incident occurred, was seemingly all too true -- you know, to expeditiously notify TSA and airlines to "reactively" step up measures to further inconvenience the American domestic flying public after the fact, to wit: nobody goes to the bathroom for the last hour of a flight (useful only if terrorist suicide bombers don't want to blow the plane up any earlier than that), no blankets or anything else in your laps on approach to landing (assuming that al-Qaeda operatives will be so hell-bent on making that particular explosives-in-your-underwear method work that they will try it again -- and probably soon -- duh!).

One wonders where was the emphasis on what happened before the "incident" -- you know, when the systems apparently didn't work quite so smoothly to prevent a foreign jihadist, who (a) was on one "watch list" but not on another, (b) whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria was radicalized and had spent time in Yemen, (c) who was evidently traveling without a passport, (d) who the U.S. issued a visa, although the Brits refused to give him one, and (e) who paid cash for a one-way ticket and boarded an international flight in Amsterdam without any luggage but with explosives concealed in his underwear.

Finally, three days after the incident, on Monday the 28th, our Ditherer-in-Chief -- oh, I'm sorry, that's just not fair, is it? -- I mean our Deliberator-in-Chief -- interrupted his Hawaiian holiday long enough to address the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day, saying: “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.” He added: “The American people should be assured that we are doing everything in our power to make sure you and your family are secure during this holiday season.”

Well, I'm sorry, Mister Prez, but I don't think so. First, I don't think you're doing anything close to everything in your power to make sure we're safe, either during the holidays or generally. Second, I don't think you know what to do to keep us safe. And, third, I think your being (a) consistently slow out of the gate, (b) inappropriate in your remarks when you do finally make them, and (c) you, your AG and your DHS Secretary all treating each of three recent incidents as law enforcement type criminal acts, rather than wartime terrorist attacks, is just plain wrong-headed, as well as encouraging to our enemies.

Just consider:

June 1 - Little Rock, Arkansas - Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Leon Bledsoe, is a black American Muslim who opened fire on a U.S. military recruiting office, killing one Army private and critically wounding another. He was arrested and is being held in a civilian confinement facility. He is currently under indictment on one count of capital murder and 15 counts of terrorist acts. In October, his lawyer requested additional time to prepare his defense. At some point prior to his attack, he had been detained in Yemen for having a fake Somali passport. That episode prompted a preliminary inquiry by the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies into whether he had ties to extremist groups, but that investigation was inconclusive, they said, leaving the FBI with insufficient evidence to wiretap his phone or put him under surveillance. (Uh, WHAT?! Hmmm, black American born Muslim, in Yemen (one of the poorest Muslim countries and where al-Qaeda is known to be very active), with a fake Somali passport (and we know Somalia is not only home to Black Hawk Down, ruthless warlords and no government to speak of, but also mainly exports terrorism and high seas piracy). What, do they think he was just over there in Yemen, with a fake passport, shopping? If I were a federal judge, I'd sign a wiretap and surveillance warrant for the FBI on that dude in a heartbeat. But then, the too-PC FBI probably never even pursued it and it's doubtful that Obama's Attorney General Eric "hold 'em til you fold 'em" Holder's Justice Department would exactly have pressed the FBI to do so, either.

November 5 - Killeen, Texas - Army major and psychiatrist Nidal Malik "AbduWali" Hasan, an American born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened indiscriminate fire with a semi-automatic pistol on Fort Hood military installation, killing 13 of his fellow soldiers and civilians and wounding another 30. Connections to al-Qaeda were found through a radical Yemeni-American Northern Virginia Muslim imam, Anwar al-Awlaki (Anwar al-Aulaqi), who was suspected by the FBI of involvement in 9-11 and who subsequently went to Yemen and is now believed (hopefully) to have been recently killed there, along with other al-Qaeda operatives, by a Yemeni-U.S. air strike. Hasan, also wounded during his attack, was apprehended and, at last report, is paralyzed from his wounds and in military custody at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Hood. He has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder and presumably will be tried by military courts-martial.

December 25 - Detroit, Michigan - Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Muslim, attempted to detonate about 80 grams of a high explosive concealed in his underwear while on an aircraft enroute from Amsterdam to Detroit. During the incident, he ignited himself on fire, was extinguished by flight crew and overpowered by two passengers. The aircraft landed safely in Detroit with the only injuries reported to be the suspect himself and two others. He was arrested and charged with attempting to blow up an aircraft (doesn't sound too legal or technical to me) and is currently in civilian custody in the Burn Unit of a local hospital for treatment of burns to his legs. (I say give him some Bacitracin ointment and gauze bandages and be done with it, but that's just me.) After being taken into custody, he claimed the explosive and how to detonate it, as well as his task, had been given to him in Yemen by al-Qaeda operatives. And a Yemeni al-Qaeda group has since claimed responsibility, as well.

Now, in each of these cases, the liberal lamestream media and Team Obama have made a big point about "lone wolf," "isolated," "acting alone" perpetrators and cautioned against jumping to hasty conclusions (you know, like Obama did about the "stupid" arrest of his big mouthed, over-entitled black Harvard professor buddy by the near-perfect role model white police sergeant -- open mouth, insert foot).

But, let's see now, three "incidents" -- Muslim, Muslim, Muslim; Yemen, Yemen, Yemen; al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda. Hmmm. Although each perpetrator may have acted alone in carrying out, or trying to carry out, his actual attack, isn't that exactly what suicide-bomber-wannabe-martyr types do? But also could it be that -- oh, my gosh -- there's a "pattern" here?! You know, connect the dots? Something we weren't doing too well pre-9-11, but which Bush got us doing better, and which Obama and Holder and Napolitano, et al., now seem intent on having us do less well again?

Despite Team Obama apparently having an absolute gag reflex against even using the word "terrorist" and treating all three of these "incidents" like "isolated," criminal, law enforcement cases, instead of full-on, al-Qaeda influenced and/or assisted terrorist attacks, could it be that our enemies, al-Qaeda and the al-Qaeda type terrorist jihadists in Yemen, as well as many other places around the world, just don't care about, much less appreciate, our legalistic "nuances," except to exploit and use them against us, and, although we evidently are no longer waging a war ON terror against them, they are still waging their war OF terror against us and still want to kill us and destroy our way of life?    

Obama, Holder and Napolitano, as well as every other liberal who's received the official liberal talking points memo on terrorism, make a lot of noise about THE RULE OF LAW. And they do this especially when pressed with logical arguments and questions about their rationale for such things as (a) calling acts of terrorism "man-caused disasters," (b) calling the war on terror "overseas contingency operations," (c) still rushing to close Guantanamo without any real plan to do so and despite circumstances surrounding whether to close it or not having changed, or (d) moving the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM) and his terrorist cohorts from a Gitmo military tribunal, in which they had already agreed to be tried and to plead guilty in a trial which was imminent, to a New York City civilian court, where they have now claimed to be innocent, they have the rights of U.S. citizens, and there's no telling when that trial will start, much less how long it will drag out -- but however long it is, it will be free propaganda "advertising" for Islamist jihadist terrorists everywhere.

So, let's consider this whole RULE OF LAW misdirection ("because I really don't want to answer your probing questions") smoke screen -- for that's what it is. Applicable law in such cases derives from the U.S. Constitution, certain federal statutes and legal precedents, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Law of War (the Law of Land Warfare) and certain other international laws.

U.S. military tribunals are established based on the Constitutional grant to the president as the head of military authority. It is the primary responsibility of the president, as the commander-in-chief, to fulfill the expressed dictate of the Preamble of the Constitution ­- to protect and defend the citizens from foreign attack. It is this same conveyance of power that Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt relied upon when they engaged in similar wartime actions. Tribunals are to be conducted pursuant to The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which was duly passed by Congress and is the same code which is applied to discipline our own military servicemembers.

An example of applicable legal precedent from the past took place in 1942. On June 13, 1942, four German agents were landed from submarine U-584 on Amagansett, Long Island, New York; and on June 17, 1942, four agents from U-202 were landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Florida. The eight Nazi saboteurs were tried in FDR-created military tribunals, all were convicted, six were executed, one received life imprisonment and one was given a 30-year sentence. And the Supreme Court unanimously upheld both the procedure and all of the convictions. President Truman subsequently granted executive clemency on condition of deportation to the two surviving agents who were deported to the American Zone of Germany in 1948.

Briefly speaking, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Law of War (the Law of Land Warfare) and certain other international laws, all taken together, are what spell out the categories of who are legitimate prisoners of war (POWs) -- generally captured uniformed and equipped military personnel of foreign governments -- and are therefore entitled to certain humane and legal "protections" pursuant thereunder.

Radical Islamist jihadists who are foreigners, captured on the battlefield (or anywhere else, for that matter), are NOT uniformed and equipped military personnel of any single, recognized foreign government and are therefore NOT entitled to the protections of, say, the Geneva Conventions as POWs. They are instead mere adherents to a radical movement or cause, do not represent any one, particular recognized foreign government and are not uniformed. An interesting note about the U-boat German saboteurs mentioned above is that at least some of them carried German uniforms with them expressly for the purpose that if they were captured, they would be treated and tried as legitimate enemy combatants and not as spies.

And, of course, foreigners have no "rights" under our Constitution, except those which our government officials may grant them, because they are not U.S. citizens. That's why the Gitmo detainees are "enemy combatants" and not POWs. And that's why they should be tried by military tribunals and not in our civilian federal court system.

As to Americans and treason, treason was specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution, the only crime so defined, primarily to avoid the abuses under English law by Henry VIII of executing almost anyone who criticized his repeated marriages. Article III, Section 3 delineates treason as follows:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

"The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

Congress has also, at times, passed statutes creating related offenses which undermine the government or the national security, such as sedition (the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts), or espionage and sedition (the 1917 Espionage Act), which do not require the testimony of two witnesses and have a much broader definition than Article III treason. For example, some well-known spies have been convicted of espionage rather than treason. The Constitution does not itself create the offense; it only restricts the definition (the first paragraph), permits Congress to create the offense, and restricts any punishment for treason to only the convicted persons themselves (the second paragraph). The crime is prohibited by legislation passed by Congress, e.g., the United States Code, at Title 18 USC, Section 2381, states "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

So, in the case of "incident" number 3, the Nigerian foreigner, he has no rights under our Constitution, he is an enemy combatant and he should have been turned over to military authorities and detained at Gitmo, where he should have been questioned for whatever intelligence he could provide, rather than Mirandized, given a lawyer and held in civilian custody.

As to "incidents" numbers 1 and 2, Americans Muhammad (Bledsoe) and Hasan are also enemy combatants but as citizens do have rights under our Constitution. Muhammad should be tried in federal court and Hasan, as an Army major, should be tried by military courts-martial. However, where are the charges against them both for treason, in addition to whatever other charges have been brought? Added note: It personally would not bother me in the least if those accused of treason during wartime were also held in military custody and tried by military tribunals, but I'm not aware of any U.S. precedent for that.

All terrorists are criminals, because their acts of terrorism necessarily include criminal acts as lesser included offenses, but of course not all criminals are terrorists. That is to say, terrorists and criminals are not the same and should not be treated the same, as if they were somehow "interchangeable." Our president, attorney general and homeland security secretary need to distinguish between those who are mere criminals but not terrorists and those who are terrorists but who have also committed criminal acts. The former should be held and tried as criminals; the latter should be held and tried as terrorists, with American-bred, traitorous terrorists as the most insidious and worst among them.

Remember the "Good Old Days"?
Those BO (before Obama) days, when our Congress talked in terms of spending only billions, with a B, of taxpayer dollars, instead of everything seemingly needing to cost trillions, with a T, as it is now? When each successive piece of legislation didn't have to be longer than the last, accelerating from over a thousand pages to over two thousand pages per bill? When, it's true, some legislation was "voted on" or "supported" by hotlining, but at least somebody's staffer read it before it was finally voted on? When the president and Congress actually felt somewhat constrained by the Constitution? When you didn't have our president and Congress simply ignoring what the polls clearly told them the American people wanted or didn't want and rushing to "fix" things which weren't all that "broken"? Ah, yes, the days of some sanity, before Obama and the Democratically controlled 111th Congress -- the "good old days."

President "Saves" Us $100 Million
Remember this, from back around April of this year: President Obama recently announced that he has directed his Cabinet secretaries to each find $100 million in budget savings within the next 90 days. Wow, Mr. President! Don't be too bold about saving taxpayer money, now! The DHS subsequently announced that it can save around $52 million by buying its office supplies in bulk -- which makes one wonder, then, why it wasn't already doing that? A big "duh" to Secretary Janet "nitwit" Napolitano. Writing on National Review Online, Heritage Foundation budget expert Brian Riedl put the budget cut in perspective: "Out of $4 trillion in spending this year, this is the rounding error of a rounding error." It is 1/40,000 of the federal budget. It is 1/7,830 the size of the recent "stimulus" bill. It would close 1/1,845 of this year's budget deficit. It is the amount the federal government spends every 13 minutes. And for a family earning $40,000 annually, it is the equivalent of cutting $1 from their family budget. "So why bother?" Riedl asks. "Because it may enhance the president's 'budget-cutter' image. Seriously." And we should all know by now that image is everything to this president. Form, not substance. How he appears to be, rather than how he really is. What he says, and how pretty he says it, rather than what he does. And if you haven't caught onto that yet, keep watching. Sooner or later, it will (should) dawn on even the more deluded and deranged among you who are still his followers, just as it already has among us disillusioned. And, by the way, where's the Obama government's "transparent" follow-up on how many of those 14 secretaries of 22 presidential cabinet members were able to meet the president's task of saving that $100 million within 90 days? I mean, April was a long time ago now, and every little bit helps so far as saving some taxpayer money goes, you know what I mean? A $100 million here, a $100 million there, eventually it all adds up to some real money, you know. 

Deadly Donkeys
It is a matter of trivia fact that more people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes. Ironically but how totally appropriate, then, that it is liberal Democrats of the donkey party (or is that jack*ss?) in the current runaway, run amok Congress who are killing the American economy and our Constitution and killing the futures of our children and grandchildren. Them damn donkeys are damnably dangerous, and don'tcha doubt it.

Isn't it supposed to be those "fat cat" Republicans who always favor Big Business?
Let's see, we've got a very liberal Democrat president in the White House. A president who doesn't hesitate to label almost anyone he doesn't like as some kind of "fat cat" -- from corporate CEOs to Wall Street types to health insurance companies to bankers to Big Oil to Big Pharma to.....whatever and whomever. And we've got liberal Democrats running both the House and the Senate. And, according to liberal talking points of long-standing, Democrats are the ones who care about the "little guy," who care about Main Street and not Wall Street, who will extend and expand government to protect the "victims" and "help the helpless " from the cradle to the grave, whereas those nasty, uncaring "fat cat" Republicans just love Big Business and all those other "Biggies" and coldly and cruelly just expect the "little guy" to get out there and somehow make it on his own. Well, then, why is it that, with Democrats totally in charge of two of the three branches of our government, the only businesses with a higher IRS audit rate in 2009 than 2000 are small businesses? The audit rate of larger businesses is lower in 2009 than in 2000. Somebody 'splain that to me, please.
 
Obama's Pusillanimous Passivity
Remember a while back, when Iranians were rioting in the streets of Teheran, protesting their recent rigged reelection of Mahmoud "mad monkey man" Ahmadinejad, and Obama waited days before saying anything and then basically said we shouldn't meddle in the internal affairs of another sovereign country, while at the same time poking his nose directly into Honduras' internal affairs, another sovereign country, over Hondurans ousting a president who, while democratically elected, was trying to override the Honduran constitution and become a president-for-life a la Venezuela's Hugo Chavez? I don't know, maybe Obama just liked the president-for-life idea and wanted another example of such a move succeeding in this hemisphere, you know, to point to later, just in case he needed examples to cite in making his own case for the same. Ya think? (And if you think, nah, he would never try that, just consider what else he and his duplicitous left-wingers in Congress have done in just less than the past year -- which many of us didn't think they would do, either -- and then, think again.) Anyway, the Iranians are still demonstrating in the streets, protesting the current illegally reelected regime, as well as demonstrating for freedom generally. In fact, the Iranian regime opened fire into crowds of protesters just this past Sunday, killing 8 - 10 people. In other words, shooting them down in the street. We don't know exactly how many, because that same regime pulls the plug on Internet, cell phone and all and any other ways for Iranians to communicate with the outside world. And, again, after waiting a while (maybe this time because he's on his Hawaiian holiday vacation), Obama comes out and makes more milquetoast mumblings about how the regime in Iran shouldn't be doing things like that. Wow! Iranians are dying in the streets for their freedom and the most you can do, Super Prez, is say naughty, naughty to Iran's theocratic thugs? I sure hope, but sadly doubt it, that we are doing more behind the scenes to undermine the current Iranian regime, not only to eliminate it for the growing nuclear threat it poses to the region and to the West but also to simply help the Iranian people gain freedom from its repression.
   
Whatever happened to Obama's little red Sharpie pen?
You know, the one he said during the campaign he would use (like a scalpel) to line through waste, fraud and abuse, like earmarks, in any and all legislation before signing it into law? Although also true of all the legislation Obama has already signed since taking office -- the so-called Stimulus Plan, the Omnibus Bill, etc. -- the Defense appropriations bill he signed just this month has 97 pages listing nearly 1,000 congressional earmarks. I guess the prez's little red Sharpie went the same way as his transparency and accountability in government, huh?

The Simple and Clear Legislative Language Act (SCLLA) of 2010?
The Zogby polling firm recently asked this question in a national survey: “Some contend that the reason federal legislation is often thousands of pages long is because provisions to benefit special interests can be more easily buried in long bills, and so citizens cannot decipher the legislative language quickly enough to be able to communicate support or opposition to their Senators or Members of Congress before a vote is taken. Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with this opinion?” Remarkably, 83.5 percent of likely voters surveyed at least somewhat agreed and 61.2 percent strongly agreed. Among conservatives, 96.9 percent at least somewhat agreed, compared to 66.1 percent of liberals and 82.2 percent of moderates. The reasons for this are no doubt the massive bills the 111th Congress has rushed through to passage this year. The final version of the economic stimulus package -- the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- was more than 400 pages long. The so-called healthcare reform bill passed by the House was over 1,000 pages and the one by the Senate surpassed 2,000 pages. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) said that he would not read the full text of the healthcare bill “...because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life.” And you can bet he's not the only Congressional member who feels that way. So, I think it would be a good idea if one of the first pieces of new legislation to be considered by both the House and Senate after the holiday break would be a bill which would limit the length of all future legislative bills and specify that they must be in plain, "American" English. If such a bill itself also avoided any and all "hidden language" for special interest groups, it could probably be written within a couple of hundred pages, at most. Then, once that was done and signed into law, one of the first items they should apply it to is the rewriting of.........the Tax Code, one of the biggest, most confusing and special interest-driven pieces of legislation there is.

Best quote I've found yet (which could be) about Obama's first year, aided and abetted by his henchmen and handmaidens in the Democratic 111th Congress
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should be doing for themselves.” Unfortunately, that quote is not from anyone currently in government, much less in the current administration or Congress. Nor is it from anyone in the liberal lamestream media. It's not even from any of the so-called current Republican "leadership" or any other of today's conservatives. No, no, no. That's a quote from an earlier Republican -- Abraham Lincoln. What a truly wise man he was.....and how much he could say with so few words, too. Type that up for your teleprompter, Barry.

December 16, 2009
The day when, with a stroke of the pen and without any fanfare, much less coverage by his slobbering serfs and sycophants in the liberal lamestream media, Obama gave away some (more?) of our country's sovereignty. But, more about this in a future article.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! Let's hope 2010 is better than 2009 was. Starting to clean out Congress will certainly help. 

One of Dear Ellen's "facts" in her article is: "Did only Jon Stewart catch Sean Hannity using video from one (large) teabag rally to illustrate another (small) rally?"

Well, first, I would remind both you and Jon Stewart (who, I'm told, a lot of college students who voted for Obama still think is a "real" newsman, instead of merely another liberal comedian) of something that you probably, if you were being honest, already know. And that is that the B-roll video accompanying any given feature story on TV, either news or commentary, may be sometimes mismatched by production staff, and that is not necessarily "evidence" of conservatives not being able to handle "facts," especially since, in the case cited, Hannity subsequently admitted "on air" that the B- roll footage was, in fact, uh, mismatched.

But, second, you know, liberal "journalists" just can't seem to help themselves. It's like playing poker with someone who has such obvious "tells" or "giveaway signs" that you know what they're going to do before they do it. And one obvious liberal lamestream media "tell" is referring to the TEA Party movement and its activities as "teabag" rallies, protests, marches, etc. It's either intentionally done to be a diminishing, dismissive and/or derisive term, or it's merely subconsciously done, without even thinking, for much the same reasons. In any case, it shows either a bias against or an ignorance about what the movement is all about, or both, which is, at one and the same time, both regrettable and unforgivable.....or would be to any "real" journalists, anyway. 

So, you go ahead and bewail the decline in "journalism" outlets in this country, Dear Ellen, while I will bemoan the decline in real "journalism" itself.

Dear Ellen also said: "When the reporters go, so do the facts. And their checkers."

Yes, and, for all the good you've done at your jobs lately, good riddance, because where have all the investigative "reporters" been for the last two years while Obama talked out of both sides of his mouth and claimed this and disclaimed that without challenge or proper vetting by your so-called vaunted "journalists"? Where were the "facts" then, Dear Ellen? Where were the "fact checkers" then?

Oh, I think I know. In fact, it's even still recently pretty revealing that more "news outlets" fact-checked Sarah Palin's new book than have fact-checked some of the monstrous nanny state legislation being forced through Congress, cobbled together in secret behind closed doors, by a stridently partisan liberal Democratic majority, in the dead of night, to what repeated polls clearly show is against the will of the American people. So, the liberal lamestream media is STILL not doing its job.

This may also be a contributing factor to why it took some news media types, who had been approved to cover the conference, over 8 hours to be registered and checked in.

This would simply be a funny fiasco if not for what is at stake: potentially trillions of dollars in regulatory actions and billions of dollars in aid to developing nations.

If by some miracle there were to be some kind of signed and binding agreement reached by the attending nations (there won't be, but Team Obama will be making noises about what a "breakthrough" deal The One brokered while there in just the last couple of days of a two-week conference -- "news" -- and spin -- at eleven), who would be in charge of monitoring all these agreed-to carbon reductions and oversight of all that development aid? Well, that would be the same entity that can't even figure out that 45,000 people won't fit into a 15,000-person building, the United Nations.

We've long known by how little they actually get done about world problems, and how long it takes them when and if they finally do, that the UN is more bureaucratic than effective.

And we know, at least from the "Oil for Food Program" scandal of a few years ago, if not many other indicators, that they are corrupt.

Now, we know they are also just plain inept.

So, ineffective, corrupt and inept? Uh, tell me again why do we give them a big, fancy, recently renovated, multi-million dollar building in New York to meet in, put up with their parking wherever they want and not paying their parking tickets, claiming diplomatic this and that all over the place, while we, as a single nation, also pay about 20 to 25 percent of the UN's operating costs?

I think we should remain a member (so we can retain some influence and keep tabs on what they're up to) but tell them that all member nations should pay the same amount for operating costs -- you know, make everybody "buy in" and make the UN operate on a budget -- and also that they should relocate to a new UN complex on some island somewhere.

I hear there are some in the South Pacific which the global warmers and some Copenhagen attendees are saying will be underwater in just a few years. Sounds good to me.

In the heat of an ambush in Afghanistan's most lawless province, 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Richard S. Weinmaster threw himself in front of a grenade to shield other marines in his platoon. Weinmaster was critically wounded by the blast, but the bloodied Nebraska native stayed in the fight, firing his weapon at the enemy position until he collapsed from his wounds. Looking back at the July 8, 2008, engagement, Weinmaster says, "I didn't do anything special. Everyone on my left and right would have done the same thing. I was just in the right place at the right time." For extraordinary heroism while serving as automatic rifleman, Weinmaster was awarded the Navy Cross.

Notice that Kutcher doesn't say "...of service to my country, or "...of service to my fellow Americans," just "...of service to our president."

Propaganda, anyone?

And I wonder how much Kutcher would actually inconvenience his Hollywood lifestyle to really be "of service" to anyone, anyway. During WWII, Hollywood actors his age, and older, were actually signing up to serve in uniform when we were at war. Clearly, "they just don't make them like they used to."

And I may be wrong, please correct me if I am, but I think about the only USO type of event that Kutcher has done was for the Coast Guard, at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station at Ellington Field, Houston, Texas, and it was Kutcher, Kevin Costner and their movie director appearing there in conjunction with the making of their movie "The Guardian" about the Coast Guard Air Rescue Service.

So, who's your role model? Who's your hero? This guy, or this guy? You can probably guess who mine is.....and who mine is not.

(Yeah, the liberal lamestream media can cover this story and Tiger Woods' foibles all day long -- after all, tabloidism does sell -- but the Fort Hood massacre or the fraud perpetrated by climate warming "science" and its proponents, not so much.)

But, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. A House committee is holding hearings on the presidential state dinner gate crashers who the committee asked to come testify and is considering now subpoenaing for failure to appear; the head of the Secret Service is testifying before the committee and admitting Secret Service failures (probably after being told by some powerful part-timer in the current Obama administration that he, as a dedicated and loyal career federal employee, had to "fall on the sword" for this); at least three Secret Service agents have already been suspended, may be still further disciplined and their careers are probably already ruined; yet the Obama White House is claiming Executive Privilege to prevent its Social Secretary from even appearing and being questioned? The WH Social Secretary? Really?

Well, exactly what, or whom, is the WH really trying to protect here? Funny, but I would think the WH Social Secretary would NOT, in the normal course of her official duties, be privy to ANY national security or other classified information which might be inadvertently revealed if she testified before a Congressional committee.

Now, on the other hand, she might just know why she didn't have anyone from her office, or was not herself, helping the Secret Service agents identify properly invited arriving guests, which has been the norm in the past. And that would seem to be an important thing to learn about this whole fiasco. Maybe she and the other Social Secretary Office people just wanted to enjoy the dinner party instead and were therefore "too busy partying" to do their jobs. Or, to give her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was personally too busy checking flower arrangements, seating charts, table settings, or something else that social secretaries do, instead.

It's just a theory, mind you, but especially after all the incessant liberal carping about George Bush sometimes invoking Executive Privilege to prevent disclosure of real national defense and/or homeland security information in open Congressional committee hearings, it would seem Executive Privilege is not warranted simply to protect the WH Social Secretary from possibly being forced to admit she was at least complicit by omission in a social, as well as a security, faux pas and at least be subject to the embarrassment, if not the dismissal, which should rightfully accompany such an occurence.

"Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference," advertises the Danish tourism commission, which is helping the Goracle promote "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," his newest book about global warming in all of its alarming modalities (no doubt, whether based on any real data or not).

"Tickets are available in different price ranges for the event. If you want it all, you can purchase a VIP ticket, where you get a chance to shake hands with Al Gore, get a copy of 'Our Choice' and have your picture taken with him. The VIP event costs DKK 5,999 and includes drinks and a light snack." Ohhh my, drinks AND a light snack, too! How wonderful!

How much is that in American dollars? The currency conversion equates 5,999 Danish kroners to $1,209 USD.

"If you do not want to spend that much money, but still want to hear Al Gore speak about his latest book about climate challenges, you can purchase general tickets, ranging in price from DKK 199 - 1,499 depending on where in the room you want to sit." "There will be large screens, so that everyone will get a good view." Thus, the Danes advise about the December 16 event. The Danes are so practical about these things.

But wait, there's still MORE.

The White House press office announced last week, "For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference, providing a unique and interactive forum to share our story with the world."

Well, I think "our story" is already pretty well known to "the world." Some of "the world" may not like it, but they all know it. We are, currently at least, the only remaining world super power and in our 200-plus years, we've whipped the butts of about half of "the world," freed the other half and also along the way lent a helping hand wherever and whenever needed to friend and foe alike. We are the reason that the French speak French and not German, that the Germans were helped to rebuild, and the reason that the Japanese are now one of our strongest allies, instead of having been nuked into extinction in the mid-1940s. We are also the reason most of the Muslims in the world who are free, are free. We are the most powerful, most generous, most tolerant, most free and freedom-loving nation on the face of the Earth, and if we can get Obama and his left-wing henchmen out of the White House and the Congress soon enough, we may remain that way.

So, zippy-dee-do-dah, that's just peachy having a "unique and interactive" U.S. Center at the conference, but forgive cynical little ole me, I'm just wondering how much money Fat Al and the Danish tourist bureau hopes to make off of "greenies" affluent enough and stupid enough to spend their money to buy into all that hype, and, even more importantly, how much taxpayer money that "marvey" U.S. "unique and interactive" Center and all those traveling government bureaucrats are going to cost the American taxpayer while they're over there for a week, yakking and yukking it up, talking and trading, placating and promising, eating and effusing, drinking and discussing, posturing and posing, handshaking and hobnobbing.

And we (I mean Obama et al.) just might have, however obliquely, also "promised" to "trade away" our sovereignty while at the global climate conference as well. (But God help Obama if he does anything even close to that, and I sure hope he knows it, too. The American people will put up with a lot, but not everything all the time and not some things at all. Talk about some "lone wolf" crazy maybe really going "crazy" -- that kind of "betrayal" by Obama would be about all it would take. For most of us, it would be grounds to pursue impeachment, but for some, it would be that feared, long-range rifle shot that would set us all back decades in just all being Americans together, whether hyphenated ones or not. I don't like Obama or his policies, but I don't wish him dead -- just out of office.)

But the Copenhagen climate change conference is all just such a sham and a show, based on as much addle-brained alarmism as any accurate analyses. Ironically, maybe it's appropriate that the Goracle should show up with all his "greenie" gadflies, to add to the side-show, climatological carney atmosphere of it all (puns intended where appropriate). The so-called "settled science" of man-made climate change is NOT settled and becomes more shaky with each revelation of more and more scientists questioning its basic premises, coupled with increasing evidence of the climate change scientists themselves "cooking the books" to reinforce their theories and negate, or just plain ignore, any contradictory data. It's just too ironic for words that they, who denigrated all "non-believers" as deniers, turn out to be themselves the real "deniers" now.

So, to me at least, it's just another gross waste of taxpayer money by politicians and bureaucrats acting like elitist, globe-trotting gliterrati at a time when our country and its working people are still in pretty dire economic straits and that's where our pols and 'crats should be putting their focus, their effort and their energy. It's Obama's stupid upside-down economic plans, stupid! Stay home and in your jobs and working hard to fix that, you stupid political and bureaucratic snobs. Then, you can party, to celebrate actually having done something to help the American people, instead of just helping yourselves to more and more of their tax money.

To put it not too nicely, it all reminds me of something we sometimes used to say in the Army to illustrate when something struck you as disgusting or really made you sick: It's enough to gag a maggot.

Vogel's article is what I call a "wedge piece" -- one that purports to be objective (and which can often even appear sympathetic) but which actually is intended to drive a wedge of some kind between people or within and among a group, in this case the TEA Party movement, and thus weaken a position, a person or a group by suggesting that a weakness already exists -- sort of a "self-fulfilling prophecy" meme.
 
Vogel's first subtle attempt at "disparate delegitimization" is:

 "...the movement, which — depending on who's doing the telling — took its name either as an homage to the 1773 Boston tax revolt that played a major role in sparking the American Revolution or from an acronym standing for 'Taxed Enough Already.'”

My response:

It's not an either/or choice and to suggest so is proceeding from a false premise, whether intentionally or due to ignorance. First, TEA Parties originally took their name from the acronym for Taxed Enough Already, i.e., TEA, which is the reason, by the way, that it should always be presented that way -- "TEA Parties," and not merely "tea parties." Besides, if it were always correctly presented as the acronym TEA, it would make it at least more cumbersome for critics to use the gay sexual slur of "teabaggers" to describe and deride TEA Party participants.

TEA as an acronym captured the main points of that to which TEA Partiers originally objected, to wit, too big government bent on too much spending and therefore too much taxing, as exemplified first by the Bush/Obama $700 billion TARP bailouts and then exacerbated by the Obama $787 billion so-called stimulus plan. Just from October 2008 to February 2009, a mere four months, Americans had seen our national debt increased by a breathtaking $1.49 TRILLION. And we already had all indications (which have since proven all too true) that the new president, with his handmaiden Democratic Congress, was just getting started. And all and almost every one of them (the president et al.) were doing all this without listening to objections from We the People to slow down, have more debate and at least read the bills which they were pushing at breakneck speed through the Congress. So, we also had all this sudden debt increase, and therefore projected tax, without feeling we were even being heard, much less adequately represented, as well.

I don't remember U.S. presidents bowing to anyone before. Being polite, yes. Shaking hands, yes. Being gracious and friendly, yes. Sometimes even hugging people, yes. But bowing, no. I don't know if it's Obama's lack of understanding protocol or lack of backbone, coupled with too much interest or eagerness in currying favor, but I don't like my president -- uh, pardon me, the U.S. president -- bowing to anybody. A head nod, okay. Bending deeply from the waist, no.

No, Mr. President, it's better to (now, finally) keep wearing your U.S. flag pin, putting your hand over your heart whenever the National Anthem is played or our National Colors pass by, returning military salutes to the military if you like, but don't bow to anybody. Our country doesn't, or at least it hasn't so far, and neither should you.  

Well, I wasn't going to write anything about this, because as an old soldier and former Military Police officer I've got a lot of strong feelings and opinions about it, but it's finally gotten to a point where, with some of the other things I'm hearing said and claimed and assumed about it, I'll probably kick the dog, break something or shoot something if I don't write something. And now that I am, I'll probably write a lot.

Just say it, already: "Muslim terrorist." Say it again: "Muslim terrorist." There, see? Not really all that bad, was it? Well, not, that is, unless you have developed an absolute gag reflex to saying the word "terrorist," much less the phrase "Muslim terrorist," like Barack Obama's White House, Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security, and, most recently it seems, the U.S. Army, or at least its top "leadership" in the form of General George W. Casey, Jr., current Chief of Staff of the Army.

It was a surreal few moments when, within three hours of Major (Dr.) Nidal Malik Hasan committing mass murder at Fort Hood on Thursday, November 5, 2009, President Obama first appeared before TV cameras in joining a meeting of Native Americans already ongoing at the White House. He spent the first few minutes giving "shoutouts," that is recognizing people in the audience before him, to include crediting one individual for receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor (a military award) who had never served in the military but who Obama himself had presented with the Freedom Medal (a civilian award) just months before (uh, right person, wrong award, Mr. President -- see what happens when you go off teleprompter?).

Then, he praised the Native American group's work on whatever it was they had been working on and pledged his undying support for what almost sounded like reparations for Native Americans for how badly they had been treated ("by the white man" was of course implied or at least understood). I guess he was "identifying" with them about their ancestors' dispossession, much as he, as a black man, no doubt "identifies" with his ancestors' slavery. (I can "identify," too, by the way, less because of some idealistic notion than because I actually am part Cherokee.)

Those first few minutes sounded like Obama was speaking before the local chapter of the Rotary Club. Then, he finally addressed the Fort Hood massacre, his main message being that we didn't know all the facts yet and should be careful not to jump to conclusions. (Maybe he did learn his lesson after all, after having jumped to conclusions himself about the professional white police sergeant arresting the big mouthed black college professor.) I don't recall now if Obama identified the Fort Hood murderer as a Muslim at that time, but I do clearly recall that the words "terrorist" or "terrorist attack" never passed his lips.

Then, later in the afternoon, we had another surreal TV appearance, this time by Army Chief of Staff, General Casey, who said: "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here." What?! A greater tragedy?! Now, General Casey was talking about the shooter being Muslim, because he was making the point that we have and need Muslims in the Army and he was trying to forestall any backlash against Muslims in the military because the Fort Hood shooter had by then been named as a Muslim.....but, ah, still not as a terrorist. But "our diversity" being damaged would be an even greater tragedy than the mass murder of unarmed, innocent soldiers and civilians on an Army post?! This from the top "leadership" of our Army?! Are you nuts, General? Hmmm, sounds like the good general had been given his talking points by the White House and was being a good little general. Notably, he also did not say anything resembling the "T" word.

Well, let's hear it for political correctness by Obama, the White House AND the military, shall we? Maybe a whole bunch of PC by a whole bunch of people is what led to, or at least permitted, if not enabled, what Major Hasan did at Fort Hood. I've often said that I'm not too much of a PC guy, but I will be one of the first to give someone the benefit of the doubt. It seems, however, that a lot of PC and giving too much benefit of the doubt are what left Major Hasan free to do his killing.

Why was a medical officer who was supposed to give a major medical presentation to his doctor colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center allowed instead to give an hour-long Power Point presentation about Islam? Why was an Army officer who often clashed with his peers and some of his superiors over the Army's missions in Iraq and Afghanistan not disciplined, or at least severely questioned about it? Why was an officer whose performance was lackluster and who had that verified in his Officer Efficiency Reports (OERs) still promoted to major? Could it be that something like "affirmative action" or "minority quotas" had anything to do with Army promotion boards? Why was a psychiatrist who was counseling soldiers returning from combat zones, many suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), not also counseled himself? If his links to a radical Islamic imam and attempts to contact al-Qaeda were already known to the FBI for months, why wasn't he on some kind of watch list which would have prevented his going into a Killeen, Texas, gun shop in August and paying over $1,000 to buy a state-of-the-art FNH FiveseveN (5.7mm) semi-automatic pistol which comes with three 20-round magazines but for which you can also pay a little extra and get 30-round magazines? My gosh, if you get the 30-round mags, plus already have a round in the pistol's chamber, you're walking around with 91 rounds of ready-to-go firepower. 

Since that surreal Thursday morning more than a week ago now, I've listened to and seen much of the print and TV coverage about the Fort Hood massacre, what there has been of it by the so-called mainstream media, and noticed how the lamestream media have also avoided using the "T" word, much less coupled it with the modifier "Muslim" or "jihadist," and Heaven forbid that anyone should utter "Islamofascist," despite the fact that, with each passing day, more and more has come to light about Hasan's association with his former radical Muslim imam and attempts to contact al-Qaeda. In fact, some in the liberal media, out of their usual misguided "compassion" and "humanity," have predictably tried to make Hasan into some kind of victim.

For those who are covering the Fort Hood massacre at all, and especially for those who are covering it but ignoring or downplaying that the killer is a Muslim or who are trying to make the mass murderer out to be some kind of "victim," I have this to say:

She is also obviously an expert shot and a petite female version of any one of Clint Eastwood's characters on whose bad side you would NOT want to be. "Well, do ya,.....punk?"

"Could Sgt. Munley, hit in the wrist and both thighs, really be blamed if she'd ducked for cover? She didn't. From all reports, she stood her ground under fire, calmly reacquiring her sight picture, putting four rounds right where she wanted, in the advancing murderer's center of mass. She fired until he dropped. The killing ended."

A Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox News, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again.

He said the call had an intimidating tone. The message was, "We better not see you on again." An implicit suggestion, the strategist said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."

White House Communications Director Anita "I love Mao Tse Tung" Dunn said that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues" and that they had not told people to avoid Fox. This from a woman who lumps mass murderer Mao Tse Tung and Saint Mother Theresa together as her two favorite political philosophers and who does strange things with her tongue when giving a public speech. Maybe that's because it's forked, but I don't know for sure.

So, when she was asked about it, maybe she just checked with those "colleagues who deal with TV issues" that she already knew had not told people to avoid Fox. That way, her statement would be "technically true," don't you see? This president and this White House play that "technically not lying" game all the time. With them, and some other liberals, prevarication by parsing words is not a past-time; it's a passionately practiced procedure.

Oh, and in a related matter:

POLITICO's Michael Calderone reports that President Obama met with several journalists for lunch last Friday at the White House.

Administration officials David Axelrod (Senior Advisor), Anita Dunn (Communications Director), Bill Burton (Deputy Communications Director) and Robert Gibbs (Press Secretary) also attended. (Hey, why not? Free lunch, literally.)

The off-the-record lunch lasted about two hours, and included a green salad, halibut and a pear tart for dessert.

How nice! Well, first I'm just "dying" to know what they had to drink with that delicious sounding lunch. Kool-aid, perhaps? And did NYT's David Brooks check out the sharp crease in Obama's pants again -- to make sure he's still going to be an excellent president? No, don't tell me.

Second, I'm wondering why they all met in a government building, ate a meal prepared and served by government employees, at taxpayer's expense, and several government employees (yes, I mean the prez and gang) were present, yet the meeting was "off the record"? I'm guessing that's the only way they could ensure the White House talking points that were passed out would not have to be reported on, but I could just be being cynical again, as is sometimes my wont.

"In his midnight mission to honor the returning war dead, President Obama did more than personally extend the nation's condolences to grieving families gathered at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware."

"He silently saluted in the morning darkness as the remains of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan were transferred from a military transport. He spent close to two hours talking in private with stricken families."

I don't want to be too cynical here, but I just can't help being at least a little bit so. First, as a military man for over 20 years, I've always been somewhat uncomfortable with presidents rendering the military salute anyway, not for the least reason that some of them don't do it very well. But then, I've come across some in the military who don't always, either. Still, I would prefer that our president, during ceremonies and such, render the civilian "salute" of placing the right hand over the heart, rather than render a military salute. The president is by constitutional requirement a civilian. The requirement that our president, albeit also our commander-in-chief, is a civilian exercising civilian control over our military is one of our basic checks and balances, so I want our president to look and act like a civilian. I guess that's part of what makes me feel more comfortable seeing only military personnel and veterans rendering the military salute. You know, people who've "been there, done that." But, alas, one of my favorite of all our presidents, Ronald Reagan, sort of started all this presidential military saluting stuff by asking his military advisor if he could return military salutes to those in the military who saluted him and was told that as the commander-in-chief he could salute whomever he wanted. Thus, presidents using the military salute almost wherever and whenever they want to was off to the races.

And here, in all fairness, I will give Obama credit. During his campaign, he didn't know the difference between a military battalion and a brigade, which is basically that a brigade may be three to four to even five times the size of a battalion and has a lot more equipment, and he may still not know much about the military. I suspect he doesn't. In fact, he may never know much more about it than he needs so that he sounds like he knows a lot by how he talks about it. But that military saluting thing, he's got that down. He's had someone instruct him and he's practiced in front of a mirror, and he renders the military salute as well as just about anybody. Well, probably except for those of us who've been on military drill teams when we were younger.

Anyway, I've digressed from my main point. I agree it was a nice gesture for Obama to go to Dover last week, but I think it was more photo op than anything else.

The last couple of weeks haven't gone too well for the campaigner-in-chief and he needed another distraction -- something other than his dithering over Afghanistan, his being embarrassed by Iran (again), his hypocritical hype about health care reform -- for the "newsers" to talk about for a while.

(I know, while I dither over Afghanistan, I'll do something to show my respect for the troops! How about some kind of photo op we can feed the media? Oh, Dover AFB? What about Dover? Oh, really? That sounds like just the thing. Set it up.)

He got permission from one of the families involved in welcoming home their dead hero at Dover AFB for the repatriation to be photographed and/or videotaped and had himself videotaped solemnly saluting the returning remains.

Of course, it was also something which liberal pundits have since repeatedly pointed out that Bush never did because he didn't want to call attention to how many flag covered coffins were coming home, despite the fact that how many casualties we had for any given day, week or month were all over TV and print media all the time.

It might just as well be said that Bush also didn't want to call attention to himself to the point of having himself photographed or videotaped all the many times he met in private with, comforted, and prayed and wept with the families of the fallen, either. But, hey, the liberal pundits don't say much about that. I guess, if it's not a photo op and it's not as much about you as it is about whomever you're "honoring," then it doesn't really count, huh?

But, once again, Obama, as much narcissist-in-chief as commander-in-chief, couldn't help making the Dover event as much about himself as the returning dead by having his solemn after-midnight and picture perfect salute recorded for the evening news. So, good for him for going but shame on him for making it as much about himself (again) as anything and for using it as a deceitful distraction during his dithering indecision about Afghanistan.