American Future grabs this tidbit from the press briefing earlier this week with the Attorney General & General Hayden, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former Director of the National Security Agency:
Q Have you identified armed enemy combatants, through this program, in the United States?
GENERAL HAYDEN: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.
The text of the full briefing is available.
I’m just wondering and all.. but considering all of the flap over the Valerie Plame leak investigation and all….
Since real classified information was leaked in this case – and that leak caused irreparable harm to a program that appears to be generating actionable intelligence…
Where’s the outrage over this disclosure of highly classified information? Where are the calls for a special prosecutor?
I’m just wondering.. that’s all…
The illegal strike of the New York City transit workers makes me wistful for these words of wisdom by former President Ronald Reagan:
Let me make one thing plain. I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I’m maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL – CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government’s reason for being.
It was in recongition of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety. Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees, a sworn affidavit, when they accepted their jobs: “I am not participating in any strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while an employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof.”
It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.
And then this great question & answer:
Q. Mr. President, why have you taken such strong action as your first action? Why not some lesser action at this point?
The President. What lesser action can there be? The law is very explicit. They are violating the law. And as I say, we called this to the attention of their leadership. Whether this was conveyed to the membership before they voted to strike, I don’t know. But this is one of the reasons why there can be no further negotiation while this situation continues. You can’t sit and negotiate with a union that’s in violation of the law.
The Secretary of Transportation. And their oath.
The President. And their oath.
Bubblehead writes of Germany’s release of Mohammed Ali Hamadi:
I have a new standard by which I’ll measure the success or failure of the current Administration: whether or not this scumbag is still breathing in January 2009. Chapomatic makes pretty much all the points I’d make about the Germans freeing Mohammed Ali Hamadi, murderer of SW2(DV) Robert Stethem, in what they’re claiming was not a “terrorist for hostage” deal.
As much as I’d like to see Hamadi dead, I guess I wouldn’t mind too much if he’s just captured and returned to the U.S. to face trial and subsequent execution. And if he’s captured overseas, and our European allies make a big stink about flying him through their airspace, I know just the warship that should carry him here.
Where’s that missile equipped Predator when you need it?
I haven’t had the time or the right mindset yet to dig into the legal arguments surrounding the New York Time’s disclosure of the NSA Wiretaps of some US Citizens thought to be connected to Al-Qaeda, but I did enjoy this little tirade from Froggy:
So essentially what the liberals are saying is that the US should not monitor calls from known terrorists abroad to previously unknown US co-conspirators under any circumstances. They are proposing in essence that only calls to terrorist co-conspirators who are well known and under surveillance already can be monitored. The idea that the US should put its fingers in its own ears and repeat, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!” when terrorists communicate with their agents in the US is one of the most ridiculous and silly ideas that I have ever heard. Members of the Frogosphere already know that Democrats cannot be trusted with the security of the United States, but this highly political stance cannot be mistaken as anything other than the utterly irresponsible and laughably weak gesture that it is.
I am especially encouraged by the President’s rapid and forceful defense of this practice which has already compelled his leftist malefactors to take indefensible positions that they will undoubtedly regret at the ballot box. Timing the release of this story with the filibuster of the Patriot Act and the successful Iraqi elections demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the MSM and the radical left are one single purpose entity focusing on any possible method of attacking the President and prematurely ending his term. When Democrats make the same argument against wiretaps targeting terrorists trying to kill millions of Americans with eavesdropping on civil rights leaders and anti-war activists in the 1960’s one shudders at the implications of that level of timidity and cowardice.
When I get a chance to read the 20+ articles I have tabbed here in Firefox about this, I’ll spout off some more…
Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giulani pens this editorial in the New York Times:
It is simply false to claim, as some of its critics do, that this bill does not respond to concerns about civil liberties. The four-year extension of the Patriot Act, as passed by the House, would not only reauthorize the expiring provisions – allowing our Joint Terrorism Task Force, National Counterterrorism Center and Terrorist Screening Center to continue their work uninterrupted – it would also make a number of common-sense clarifications and add dozens of additional civil liberties safeguards.
Concerns have been raised about the so-called library records provision; the bill adds safeguards. The same is true for roving wiretaps, “sneak and peek” searches and access to counsel and courts, as well as many others concerns raised by groups like the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Given these improvements, there is simply no compelling argument for going backward in the fight against terrorism. Perhaps a reminder is in order. The bipartisan 9/11 commission described a vivid example of how the old ways hurt us. In the summer of 2001, an F.B.I. agent investigating two individuals we now know were hijackers on Sept. 11 asked to share information with another team of agents. This request was refused because of the wall. The agent’s response was tragically prescient: “Someday, someone will die – and wall or not – the public will not understand why we were not more effective.”
How quickly we forget.
Via Michelle Malkin:
Blunt words from Iraqi voter Betty Dawisha for the Cindy Sheehan Left (hat tip: The Political Pit Bull):
“Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done, and President Bush, let them go to hell!”
Go Betty, indeed!