ACLU Likens Obama To Bush In KSM Reversal

I hate to defend Obama on this one, but, the ACLU has forgotten that KSM and the other 9/11 co-conspirators are NOT American citizens and have no right to a civilian trial. That said, it must give the Left and the ACLU fits that Obama has pretty much been Bush-lite when it comes to Gitmo, terrorists, rendition, as well as expanding the Afghanistan war (which he said he would do time after time on the campaign trail)

The possibility that President Obama could send the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks to a military tribunal has earned him the highest insult from the left — that he’s another George W. Bush.

A full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times left no doubt as to how the American Civil Liberties Union feels about the possibility of the president reversing the decision to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators to civilian court.

“What will it be Mr. President?” the ad asks in boldfaced type. “Change or more of the Same?”

Actually, that’s not fair to Bush, who knew what he was doing. Obama has no clue, and is just flailing away like a single-A ball player at bat against Nolan Ryan. (I’m going to be really disappointed if none of you know who he is.)

“Many of us are shocked and concerned that right now, President Obama is considering reversing his attorney general’s decision to try the 9/11 defendants in criminal court,” the advertisement continues. “Our criminal justice system has successfully handled over 300 terrorism cases compared to only 3 in the military commissions.”

Yes, it has. A good chunk of those were caught IN the United States, which should get them a civilian trial. Those caught outside? Nope. Enemy combatants.

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Move Over Gore, Make Way for Lindsey Graham

The Guardian, official mouthpiece of Britain’s pointy-headed establishment Left, can’t help but admit that the Nobel Prize-bedecked Al Gore is a figure of fun. Referring to the Goracle’s recent desperate rant in the friendly New York Times, Guardian contributor Dan Kennedy (a Boston journalism professor) laments that Prince Albert

has not only spent his political capital, but is running a deficit. Mocked by the right every time he pops up, he is no longer in a position to convince anyone who isn’t already convinced — especially when he writes for our most liberal daily newspaper.

It started, of course, with the vicious lies told about Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign, the most notorious of which was that he claimed to have “invented the internet” … the smear campaign that almost certainly cost Gore the presidency.

You don’t get much more vicious than poking fun at a blowhard politician for indulging in excessive self-promotion. It’s almost as mean as saying that skunks stink.

The hate stirred up by that effort has long since congealed into conventional wisdom. Now, whenever Gore speaks out on climate change, he is subjected to withering, fact-free scorn. It has its effect on those trying to figure out the truth. Go ahead. Feel the hate:

“Do you think of your breathing passages as spewing sh*t?” sneered Ann Althouse, referring to Gore’s use of an “open sewer” metaphor.

Another rightwing blogger, Van Helsing, wrote that Gore had emerged “to demand totalitarian restrictions on economic activity in the name of a crisis that clearly does not exist”.

And Andrew Breitbart’s notorious Big Journalism site ran a commentary by Kyle-Anne Shiver, who said of Gore, “His life as a jet-setting, Nobel Peace Prize-sharing, Oscar-brandishing celebrity is on the line. Without the people’s diehard faith in his religion of global warming, Al will be forced to trade his lifestyle of the mega-rich-and-famous for an ignominious and expensive defense of never-ending lawsuits brought by enraged sucker governments and private investors.”

Not to worry, moonbats. Another hero has arisen to take up the burden of rescuing the polar bears from our freedom and prosperity:

But if Gore’s effectiveness as a climate-change activist has expired, there is nevertheless reason to hope. Because there, in the same edition of the Sunday Times, just a few inches away, was columnist Tom Friedman’s interview with the ghost of climate change present, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham—living proof that it is possible for a conservative Republican not only to be sane, but to work toward real solutions to actual problems.

Grahamnesty is praised for wanting to shut down Club Gitmo (which would be a big propaganda coup for Muslim terrorists and their liberal enablers), for backing racist radical Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, and most of all, for conspiring with the disgraceful Hanoi John Kerry to drive millions of jobs overseas in the name of the global warming hoax with Tax & Charade. They might also have mentioned his support for shamnesty, his denunciation of those who want our border defended as “bigots” who need to “shut up,” his alliance with sinister hard left financier George Soros, the delight he took in Dems taking over the Senate, and his support for leaping toward communism by nationalizing banks.

With uncharacteristic understatement, the Guardian admits that Goober is “well to the left of many South Carolina Republicans.” Fortunately, Tea Partiers are on to Graham; as is the Republican Party of Charleston. Less fortunately, there’s nothing voters can do about him until 2014. Maybe he’ll pull a Specter by then.

On a tip from Floccinaucinihilipilificator. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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This GOP Fakir Votes For Terrorists in Illinois

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you’ll recall, just last week I spoke of fake Republican Angelo “Skip” Saviano, State Rep from Elmwood Park. Well, Skippy has again proven his complete lack of Republican credentials with his latest apostasy. With this vote Skippy has once again proven to be a RINO (Republican In Name Only) that we’d be better off to be rid of in Illinois.

With his no vote on HB 4744, ol’ Skippy has not only voted to allow a governor, any governor, to sell state properties without prior approval of the people’s representatives, but he’s also basically given Democrat Governor Quinn the go ahead to sell the Thomson State Correctional facility to the federal government in order to allow terrorist to come live amongst us there.

That’s right, Skippy Saviano pretends to be a Republican but has voted to allow a Democrat to bring terrorists to live here.

HB 4744 is meant to require a governor to get the prior approval of the legislature before being allowed to sell state assets worth in excess of one million dollars. This bill was meant to keep Governor Quinn from selling Thomson prison to Obama so that he could make the place into Gitmo Midwest.

Saviano’s “no” vote means that he wants terrorists to live among us and wants to allow governors to go about willy-nilly selling the state’s property to outside buyers without so much as a by your leave from our elected representatives.

It should also be noted that Skippy was the only local Republican to vote this way, too. Fortunately for the citizens of Illinois, only three other local Democrats joined him in this bad vote and HB 4744 passed pretty handily. The final vote was 81-31.

The process isn’t yet done, though, as the bill still has to pass the Senate and then make its way to the governor’s desk for his signature.

A very few Republican reps other than Skippy the RINO also support bringing terrorists to live in Illinois. Here are the folks that voted to more easily facilitate terrorists coming to our state:

Democrats
Mike Boland
John Bradley
Dan Brady
William Burns
Cardis Collins
Barbara Flynn Currie
William Davis
Lisa Dugan
Sara Feigenholtz
John Fritchey
Julie Hamos
Elizabeth Hernandez
Jay Hoffman
Kevin Joyce
Lou Lang
Frank Mautino
Karen May
Kevin McCarthy
Dick Mell
Elaine Nekritz
Al Riley
Cynthia Soto
Patrick Verschoore
Eddie Washington
Michael Madigan

Republicans
Paul Froehlich
David Leitch
Donald Moffitt
Jerry Mitchell
Jim Sacia
Angelo “Skip” Saviano

(Full vote roll call HERE)

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Amnesty Inat’l Am Nasty for Supporting Taliban

-By Warner Todd Huston

If it’s anti-west, anti-British, Anti-American, Anti-Israeli… well, be sure that Amnesty International supports it. Here’s another bit of proof for that bromide with AmNasty International’s suspension of human rights specialist Gita Sahgal. Why was Sahgal removed from her AI position? Because she criticized AI for supporting Moazzam Begg, Britain’s biggest supporter of al Qaeda, the Taliban and religious oppression against women.

Interesting to see the clash of political correctness here, isn’t it? They’ve booted a female, minority civil rights worker from her position because she came out against an Islamofascist that AI is in love with.

I am sure this had the PC heads at AI roiling in a tizzy. Their dilemma was do they support, a). the female, minority, civil rights worker, or b). the aggrieved Islamofascist that was once held at Guantanamo. What a dilemma for the politically correct, eh?

Tellingly, Amnesty International chose to support the fanatic Muslim that supports al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Here’s what occurred: Last January Gita Sahgal, who was head of the “Gender Unit” at Amnesty International, became alarmed that AI was aligning itself with Moazzam Begg. At that time she sent a letter to her employers at AI saying in part, “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”

AI replied by suspending her and launching an “internal investigation.” This prompted Sahgal to release a public statement.

“Amnesty International has sanitised the history and politics of ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, and completely failed to recognise the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.”

“The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.”

So, who is this Begg character? He runs an organization called Cageprisoners and has been an outspoken supporter of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Originally from Birmingham, Mr Begg went to a training camp in Afghanistan in 1993 and then moved there with his family in 2001.

In his memoirs, he said the Taliban were “better than anything Afghanistan has had in 20 years.”

He was picked up by the CIA in 2002 after fleeing to Pakistan. The U.S. claimed he was a member of al-Qaeda who had helped recruit others and fund training camps.

Since his release, he has been a vocal campaigner for the rights of detainees and has been involved with Amnesty for several years.

Begg’s group has come to the aid of Islamic hate preacher al Al-Awlaki (linked to Major Hassan’s act of terror in Texas in late 2009) as well as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the group has also given support to Abu Hamza, and Abu Qatada.

Sahgal says that Cageprisoners “‘actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.” Obviously she is right.

Yet she is the one that got canned by Amnesty International. AI claims they don’t support terrorists, but this action makes this claim very, very hard to believe.

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Where’s the Outrage: 1 Year Later, Gitmo Not Closed

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the first things that Barack Obama did after being swept into office on the wings of “hopenchange” was to sign an executive order that would close the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama gave a one-year deadline after which he triumphantly informed us the facility would be closed. Well, we are at one year plus ten days after the signing of the order and Gitmo is still open. Yet few stories expressing outrage about this lapsed promise have made the rounds in the Old Media.

On January 22, 2009, Obama signed the Executive Order that gravely asserted that Gitmo would be closed “no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” That was January 22, 2009. It is now February 1, 2010. I’d say a year and ten days after the order was signed just might constitute more than “no later than one year,” wouldn’t you?

Naturally, last year when Obama signed this order the Old Media covered it quite heavily. It was big news and was represented as an example of Obama’s fulfilling a campaign promise. All one need do is type “close Guantanamo executive order” into Google and page after page of Old Media coverage of the signing of the EO will be discovered.

Certainly the Old Media was all aflutter over the signing in 2009. The Washington Post, for instance, trumpeted that Obama’s action, “drew praise from human rights groups as well as politicians and statesmen around the globe.” MSNBC breathlessly informed its readers that, “President Barack Obama on Thursday moved quickly to undo a contentious Bush administration national security program…” For its part, the AP had a report posted on the CBS News page with a headline screaming that, “Obama Upends Bush, Will Close Guantanamo.” And that’s just the news, not the commentariat. Treatment was even more adulatory by political commentators throughout the Old Media.

Again, however, we are now ten days past the deadline that the President set for his momentous “upending of Bush.” One might think that the Old Media would be filled with finger waggers sternly taking President Obama to task for missing his own deadline. One would think that the commentariat would be excoriating Obama for his obvious prevarication on Gitmo.

It isn’t that the Old Media has ignored the missed deadline. One can certainly find a few stories about the issue. But the level of coverage is in no way comparable. According to the Google metrics, typing in “close Guantanamo executive order” gets 140,000 hits. But typing in “close Guantanamo missed deadline” only nets 30,400 hits. That’s quite a disparity.

But I find the most interesting aspect of the missed deadline coverage is the lack of attacks on Obama’s integrity over it all. Can anyone honestly say that the kid glove treatment that this missed deadline is receiving today would have been afforded President Bush if he had done something similar?

So, where are the outraged comments by Keith Olbermann, where’s the snarky jokes by John Stewart? How about the tsking from the chicks on The View? Where’s the Rachel Maddow smack-down? How about a double-barreled Frank Rich take down? Is Joe Klein apoplectic yet? Is there not even a Mo Dowd explosion? Some of these folks have mentioned the missed deadline, but the level of vituperation these same people had for George W. Bush’s Gitmo policies is noticeably absent in discussing Obama’s blatantly missed deadline for closing it, the same deadline they so lovingly reported only a year ago.

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