Bill Keller, "Crime and Punishment and Obama": Keller's Swan Song and a New Obama Legacy to Replace Obamacare

Bill Keller is leaving the New York Times. Yes, I know, who cares?

In his final Times op-ed entitled "Crime and Punishment and Obama" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/keller-crime-and-punishment-and-obama.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), Keller explains that he will be establishing a nonprofit journalistic venture "devoted to the vast and urgent subject of our broken criminal justice system." Keller goes on to say:

"Obama has also been the stingiest of recent presidents in using his powers of pardon and commutation to undo the damage of the crack panic and of sentencing that keeps prisoners in lockup long past the age when they represent a danger. Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank with a justice reform agenda, points out that in his first term Obama pardoned one in 50 applicants while Ronald Reagan pardoned one in three. Late last year Obama commuted the sentences of eight drug offenders, out of more than 8,000 federal convicts serving time under outdated crack laws."

Keller's conclusion:

"The Obama presidency has almost three years to go, and there is reason to hope that he will feel less constrained, that the eight commutations were not just a pittance but, as he put it, 'a first step,' that Holder’s mounting enthusiasm for saner sentencing is not just talk, but prelude, that the president will use his great pulpit to prick our conscience.

'This is something that matters to the president,' Holder assured me last week. 'This is, I think, going to be seen as a defining legacy for this administration.'

I’ll be watching, and hoping that Holder’s prediction is more than wishful thinking."

Ah yes, given the "success" of Obamacare, we have a new presidential legacy in the making: The Procrastinator-in-Chief will now seek saner sentencing in his last three years in office. Yeah, right.

I hope Keller finds meaning in life after the Times.

Gail Collins, "Intelligence for Dummies": A Bronx Cheer for Obama from The New York Times

When was the last time Gail Collins wrote a serious op-ed? When was the last time Collins wrote an op-ed critical of the Obama administration? When was the last time I agreed with anything that Collins said? Well, it's happened. The New York Times, under the stewardship of Jill Abramson, is in open revolt against Obama.

In her latest Times op-ed entitled "Intelligence for Dummies" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/opinion/collins-intelligence-for-dummies.html?_r=0), Collins writes:

"'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,' President Obama assured the American people on Friday. Well, probably nobody. And, if they are, it’s under an entirely different part of the program."

Collins is correct. Nobody is listening to your calls unless you say one of the "magic" words . . .

Collins continues:

"'Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?' [Senator Ron Wyden] asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, at a public hearing.

'No sir,' said Clapper."

Okay, Obama lied. Clapper lied. Eric Holder lied. Lois Lerner took the Fifth. Almost everyone in government is busy lying, but why should that prevent the Obama administration from enhancing the omnipresence of an abusive federal government which the president has failed to oversee?

Collins concludes

"I wouldn’t rely on Congress to keep things under control. It’s really up to the president. As a candidate, Obama looked as if he would be great at riding herd on the N.S.A.’s excesses. But if he has ever seriously pushed back on the spy set, it’s been kept a secret. Meanwhile, the administration scarfs up reporters’ e-mails and phone records in its obsessive war against leaks.

And without the leaks to reporters, we would never be having discussions about whether it’s a good idea for the government to collect piles of records about our telephone calls every day.

'I welcome this debate,' Obama said Friday. 'I think it’s healthy for our democracy.' Under further questioning, he said that he definitely didn’t welcome the leaks. Without which, of course, there would be no debate.

Do you remember how enthusiastic people were about having a president who once taught constitutional law? I guess we’ve learned a lesson."

More to the point, Obama also said (see video at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/07/Obama-press-conference-problems-here):

"Trust me. We're doing the right thing. We know who the bad guys are. And the reason that's not how it works is because we got Congressional oversight and judicial oversight. And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here. But my observation is that the people who are involved in America's national security, they take this work very seriously. They cherish our Constitution. The last thing they'd be doing is taking programs like this to listen to somebody's phone calls."

Where to even begin?

Given his friendships with the likes of Erdogan and Putin, I don't think Obama knows who the bad guys are.

As observed by Collins, relatively few in Congress have known what his administration has done, thus preventing Congressional oversight.

And as far as people involved in America's national security "cherishing" the Constitution, many do, yet there are others who would be hard pressed to describe the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Not unlike the IRS, the NSA is an enormous organization, and not everyone there thinks alike. The IRS ran amok under the Obama administration, and the NSA is capable of the same.

Trust you, Mr. President? I don't.

New York Times, "U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls": Welcome to the Fascism of the New Left

After learning that Susan Rice would replace Thomas Donilon as national security adviser and that Samantha Power had been nominated by Obama to replace Rice as UN ambassador, I went to sleep feeling nauseous.

Rice, who happily lied to Americans on behalf of the Obama administration concerning the facts on the ground in Benghazi? Yes, I know, David Ignatius in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Susan Rice, a provocateur in the West Wing" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-susan-rice-a-provocateur-in-the-west-wing/2013/06/05/5b7f0e10-ce22-11e2-8f6b-67f40e176f03_story.html?hpid=z2) writes today:

"And then there’s Benghazi: Obama is swapping a man who generally avoided the Sunday talk shows for someone who nearly committed career suicide for delivering the famous talking points (for which she was otherwise blameless). Enough, already, about Benghazi."

Sorry David, but not enough already about Benghazi. Americans were spared having to see what was done to Ambassador Steven's body after the Obama administration refused to lift a finger to prevent his murder. Since that time, none of those responsible for this abomination have been made to pay the price. Forgive me - maybe it's my Posttraumatic Stress Disorder acting up - but I can't forget such outrages.

Samantha Power? The very same person who called for a massive US army presence to protect Palestinians from the Israel Defense Forces? The person who called Hillary Clinton a "monster"? The person who wrote of John Kerry (http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2008/03/barack-obama-interview-power):

"The lesson we got was that the only thing worse than John Kerry being Swiftboated was his being slow to respond. God love him, he must have thought that having got shrapnel in his ass out there bought him some credibility. It didn't."

Well, at least she was right concerning America's new secretary of state.

But as nauseous as I was last night, little did I know what would await me in the morning.

In its current lead online article entitled "U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/us/us-secretly-collecting-logs-of-business-calls.html?_r=0) by Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, The New York Times reports:

"The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over 'on an ongoing daily basis' to the National Security Agency all call logs 'between the United States and abroad' or 'wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.'"

The article concludes:

"The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011 for a report describing the government’s interpretation of its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act. But the Obama administration withheld the report, and a judge dismissed the case."

What has happened to The Times? After refusing to participate in Eric Holder's off-the-record discussion, they are now investigating violations of Americans' basic First Amendment rights? Is Jill Abramson finally getting wise to Obama's "Little Shop of Horrors"?

Frank Bruni, "Who Needs Reporters?": Ask Reporters Who Attended Eric Holder's Off-the-Record Discussion

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Who Needs Reporters?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/bruni-who-needs-reporters.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), Frank Bruni tells us that with regard to politicians, journalists "must be able to poke and meddle." Bruni writes:

"Lately we journalists have been agitated, justifiably, by the Obama administration’s prosecution of leakers and spying on the reporters and news organizations who set up or sop up those leaks. It’s an overzealous overreach and a serious threat to our ability to police government, which has shown time and again that it needs policing.

But our role and relevance are arguably even more imperiled by politicians’ ability, in this newly wired world of ours, to go around us and present themselves in packages that we can’t simultaneously unwrap. To get a message out, they don’t have to beseech a network’s indulgence. They don’t have to rely on a newspaper’s attention. The Bachmann, Weiner and Clinton videos are especially vivid examples of that, reflections and harbingers of an era in which YouTube is the public square, and the fourth estate is a borderline obsolescent one.

. . . .

If there’s a trend line at work, it’s of politicians’ being ever more orchestrated and anxious about the establishment of their own narratives (and they were plenty orchestrated from the get-go). President Obama rose to national prominence literally on the power of his own storytelling, with an electrifying convention speech and a best-selling memoir, and has since been emphatic about the polish of his public appearances and the distance at which reporters are kept. He prefers teleprompters and the soft focus of 'The View,' Letterman and 'Entertainment Tonight' to potentially messy interactions with political reporters."

Frank, are you really so surprised by this trend? There is a saying that "a fish rots from the head down." Listen to Obama adviser Anita Dunn at an event focusing on the president’s tactics, hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, in which Dunn discusses how Obama controlled the media during the 2008 election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y):

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Obama’s chief campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. . . . very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control."

More recently, consider how many news organizations were willing to attend Eric Holder's "off-the-record" meeting on Thursday, concerning the scandals involving AP and Fox News.

By the way, at least this once The New York Times got it right - they refused to participate in this discussion, intended to win back media sympathy, but not intended for public consumption (see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-calderone/whos-attending-holders-off-the-record-meeting_b_3359562.html?utm_hp_ref=media).

Gail Collins, "The Women Versus the Ted": The Men Versus the Nancy?

In her latest New York Times hyperpartisan fluff op-ed entitled "The Women Versus the Ted" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/opinion/collins-the-women-versus-the-ted.html?_r=0), Gail Collins begins by observing that the female population of the Senate "rose from 17 to 20 this year." Good news, but this is not enough. One day before I depart this earth, I hope that number will be closer to 50.

Collins concludes by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas:

"So, people, who do you think has been more helpful in edging the Senate toward a pinch of progress? The women or Ted Cruz? One strives for collegiality by holding regular bipartisan dinners. One called his colleagues 'squishes' for opposing a gun control filibuster.

I’m sticking with the girls. “Women seem to know how to work in a way that at least moves the process,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the new chair of Appropriations. If you can agree on how to proceed, then maybe someday you get some progress.

On the other hand, Ted Cruz has memorized the Constitution."

Well, I don't see eye to eye with Senator Cruz on gun control, but I also believe that there is nothing wrong with memorizing the Constitution, particularly when the First Amendment is under attack by the Obama administration.

I also believe that a Senate populated with 50 clones of Nancy Pelosi (even if her net worth was divided 50 ways, they would all still be wealthy), who has yet to say a disparaging word about any of the scandals besetting the Obama administration, would not work in America's favor.

As observed today by a Washington Post editorial entitled "The press must have the ability to ask questions" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-press-must-have-the-ability-to-ask-questions/2013/05/24/8e9ce4ba-c356-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z3):

"The Obama administration already has pursued more criminal leak investigations than all of its predecessors. There is a worrisome trend here, also recently evident in the government’s pursuit of Associated Press telephone records in a different leak investigation. Yes, the government must have secrets in order to function. But overclassification is so rampant that to criminalize the disclosure of all secret information would come close to paralyzing the flow of information.

Perhaps prosecutors failed to read the Justice Department’s policy on this, which declares: “Because freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news, the prosecutorial power of the government should not be used in such a way that it impairs a reporter’s responsibility to cover as broadly as possible controversial public issues.” That statement goes back four decades. The Obama administration should recommit to its spirit."

Meanwhile, as reported by Ryan Lizza in a New Yorker article entitled "How Prosecutors Fought to Keep Rosen’s Warrant Secret" (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/how-justice-fought-to-keep-rosens-warrant-secret.html):

"The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time.


. . . .

Yesterday, hours after President Obama said, in a speech at National Defense University, that he had asked Attorney General Eric Holder to review the Justice Department’s policies concerning investigations of the media, NBC News reported that the warrant to search Rosen’s e-mail account was personally approved by Holder."

Concern from Collins or Pelosi over this outrage against the First Amendment, perpetrated by Obama's Justice Department? Heck, no.

Which tells me that Ted Cruz also has a role to fill in the Senate.

As I said, I can't wait for the day that fifty percent of American senators are women; however, I also believe in the sanctity of the First Amendment, which is under siege by the administration of constitutional lawyer Barack ("I found out when you did") Obama.

Atomic Device Set to Explode in Manhattan: Do You Read the Suspects Their Miranda Rights?

I recall some 30 years ago being presented in law school with the following hypothetical:

An atomic device, planted in Manhattan, is timed to explode in one hour. You catch a suspect who has called for the violent overthrow of the government and whose clothes are emitting traces of radioactive material. Do you read him his Miranda Rights? And when he asks for coffee, donuts and a court-appointed defense lawyer, how do you respond? Think fast: we're already down to fifty-eight minutes before all goes up in a mushroom cloud.

Thirty years ago we could afford to shrug off this constitutional rights question as beyond the realm of possibility. Today this is no longer the case. International terror is forcing us to contend with issues for which their are no readily available answers, tools, formulas or experience.

Or am I mistaken? In a November 14 editorial entitled "A Return to American Justice" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/opinion/14sat1.html), the editorial board of The New York Times seems to know just how to handle mass murderers. Their editorial with my commentary in italics:

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. took a bold and principled step on Friday toward repairing the damage wrought by former President George W. Bush with his decision to discard the nation’s well-established systems of civilian and military justice in the treatment of detainees captured in antiterrorist operations. [A "well established system" for dealing with mass murderers? Excuse me, but apart from Pearl Harbor, I don't recall anything resembling 9/11, and given the many different nationalities of the 9/11 victims, perhaps a Nuremberg-type trial would indeed be in order.]

From that entirely unnecessary policy (the United States had the tools to detain, charge and bring terrorists to justice) flowed a terrible legacy of torture and open-ended incarceration. It left President Obama with yet another mess to clean up on an urgent basis. [Fortunately Obama also didn't have to clean up another 9/11.]

On Friday, Attorney General Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four others accused in the plot will be tried in a fashion that will not further erode American justice or shame Americans. It promises to finally provide justice for the victims of 9/11. [Ask the families of the victims how they feel about this upcoming show trial.]

Mr. Holder said those prisoners would be prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan. It was an enormous victory for the rule of law, a major milestone in Mr. Obama’s efforts to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and an important departure from Mr. Bush’s disregard for American courts and their proven ability to competently handle high-profile terror cases. If he and Vice President Dick Cheney had shown more faith in the laws and the Constitution, the alleged mass murderers would have faced justice much earlier. ["High profile" justice or a media circus leading to retribution against U.S. civilians and army personnel overseas?]

Republican lawmakers and the self-promoting independent senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman [argumentum ad personam], pounced on the chance to appear on television. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they said military tribunals are a more secure and appropriate venue for trying terrorism suspects. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former judge who should have more regard for the law, offered the absurd claim that Mr. Obama was treating the 9/11 conspirators as “common criminals.” [Senator Cornyn "should have more regard for the law"? Maybe The New York Times editorial staff should begin by stating which law applies. If you ask the defendants, they'll tell you that they abide by Sharia law and are immune to prosecution.]

There is nothing common about them — or Mr. Holder’s decision. Putting the five defendants on public trial a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center is entirely fitting. Experience shows that federal courts are capable of handling high-profile terrorism trials without comprising legitimate secrets, national security or the rule of law. Mr. Bush’s tribunals failed to hold a single trial. [Examples, please, of federal courts trying cases involving something on the order of 9/11.]

The fact that defense lawyers are likely to press to have evidence of abuse aired in court — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was tortured by waterboarding 183 times — is unlikely to derail the prosecutions, especially given Mr. Holder’s claim to have evidence that has not been released yet. [Evidence that has not been released yet? Forgive my cynicism, but if we want to be "fair" and abide by the rules of "due process", mustn't the defendants be informed of the evidence?]

Regrettably, the decision fell short of a clean break. Five other Guantánamo detainees are to be tried before a military commission for the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the attack. [By all means: Let's give them a "high-profile" trial, too, and see what that costs taxpayers.]

The rules for the commissions were recently revised to bring them closer to military standards. And Mr. Holder cites the fact that the Cole bombing was an attack on a military target to justify a military trial. But that does not cure the problem of relying on a new system outside the regular military justice system. Nor does it erase the appearance that the government is forum-shopping to win convictions. Most broadly, it fails to establish a clear framework for assigning cases to regular courts or military commissions going forward. [The government is forum-shopping to win convictions against "alleged" mass murderers? How dare the nasty government seek convictions against these "alleged" mass murderers!]

Still, this much is clear: the Obama administration has yet to completely figure out how to rectify the disgraceful Bush detention policies, but it is getting there. [Disgraceful detention policies? We've already seen where some of these "detainees" have reappeared following their release.]

I don't pretend to have the answers. But how many members of the NYT's editorial board have ever held an M-16, gone out on patrol in the cold of night, confronted an armed terrorist, or witnessed the aftermath of a Daniel Pearl style execution? Something horrible is brewing out there that mere words, from The New York Times or from any other news organization, cannot begin to describe.