Topic: Rudy Giuliani

J Street Defends Ground Zero Mosque

Jennifer Rubin 08.02.2010 - 12:58 PM

It’s been obvious for some time now that J Street is neither pro-peace nor pro-Israel. Its rhetoric and ideology tell us it is pro-Obama and pro-anti-Israel. The latest proof comes from a statement released by Jeremy Ben-Ami, which has nothing to do with Israel:

The principle at stake in the Cordoba House controversy goes to the heart of American democracy and the value we place on freedom of religion. Should one religious group in this country be treated differently than another? We believe the answer is no.

As Mayor Bloomberg has said, proposing a church or a synagogue for that site would raise no questions. The Muslim community has an equal right to build a community center wherever it is legal to do so. We would hope the American Jewish community would be at the forefront of standing up for the freedom and equality of a religious minority looking to exercise its legal rights in the United States, rather than casting aspersions on its funders and giving in to the fear-mongerers and pandering politicians urging it to relocate.

What better ammunition to feed the Osama bin Ladens of the world and their claim of anti-Muslim bias in the United States as they seek to whip up global jihad than to hold this proposal for a Muslim religious center to a different and tougher standard than other religious institutions would be.

This is daft. We are going to annoy Osama bin Laden if we don’t let them have the mosque steps from where his followers incinerated 3,000 Americans? I think they were annoyed before. They don’t need an excuse to whip up global jihadism. Moreover, the J Streeters refuse to acknowledge the legitimate concerns — it’s just casting aspersions, you see — of Jews and non-Jews about the associations and identity of the mosque builders.

Compare that pronouncement with Rudy Giuliani’s, who issued his first blast on the subject:

“It sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the Imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about. So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at Ground Zero, but it’s a mosque supported by an Imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We’re gonna allow that at Ground Zero?

“This is a desecration,” he added. “Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let’s have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let’s not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory.

“I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are.”

Well, yeah.

But returning to J Street, how is this related to their ostensible mission? It seems — shocking, I know! — that it is indistinguishable from the leftist party line and the pro-CAIR message. Maybe they’ve given up trying to disguise themselves as liberal pro-Zionists (whatever that is). If so, it would introduce some refreshing honesty into the debate as to just which groups are “pro-Israel” and which are pro-Israel’s enemies.

But here’s the thing: is there a market for pro–Ground Zero mosque-building in American Jewry? I think not, and I think even the J Streeters get that. Their audience — yeah, another shocker — seems to be not pro-Israel Jews but leftist pro-Muslims.

Democrats Heap Scorn on Obama

Jennifer Rubin 06.11.2010 - 10:20 AM

Fareed Zakaria has become an all-purpose apologist for Obama. First it was on the flotilla. A colleague passes on the latest one. It seems he’s now shilling for Obama on his response to the oil spill. Last time, Zakaria was dismantled by Elliott Abrams. This time it was James Carville:

Zakaria, a Newsweek editor but also host of Fareed Zakaria GPS, recently wrote a defense of Pres. Obama’s response (actually he criticized the President for his overreaction). … King read from Zakaria’s recent column, which said “what worries me is that we have gotten to the point where we expect the president to somehow magically solve every problem in the world, appear to be doing it and to reflect our anger and emotion. This is a kind of bizarre trivializing of the presidency into some kind of national psychiatrist-in-chief.”

Carville, smiling – but only at first – responded strongly:

“Yes, he talked about an offensive linebacker. And when I read that I wanted to hit him with a football bat, okay? This guy, there’s some kind of a breakdown here, because this is a very smart man. And I don’t think that he understands exactly what is going on down here. I don’t think he understands that an entire culture is at risk, an entire way of life that there is an invasion going here and he is whining about the fact that the president had to cancel a trip to Indonesia to do something about what’s going on in Louisiana. . … If that thing was in the Long Island Sound, I guarantee you Fareed Zakaria and all his friends would be going nuts out there.”

This tells us a few things. First, we should be wary of “experts” who peddle their foreign-policy lines while reflexively defending the administration across the board. Second, Obama no longer can command respect or discretion, let alone affection, from Democrats. Granted this is Carville, whose Clinton loyalty is well known and who has likely not let bygones be bygones. But if you turn on MSNBC, you will hear plenty of Democrats heaping criticism on Obama.

Again, as I and many others have pointed out, accidents — including big and awful ones — are not necessarily the president’s fault. But neither was 9/11 Rudy Giuliani’s. But he grabbed the crisis by the throat. He was candid, informed, and informative. He did not whine or complain. He did not treat it as a PR problem but as a civic emergency. It is the failure of leadership and of executive competence that has exposed Obama. The closet analogy is not Jimmy Carter but the emperor who had no clothes. And now everyone notices.

It’s Not All Under Control

John Podhoretz 05.04.2010 - 1:26 PM

Over the weekend, faced with the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the terrorist incident in Times Square, government officials at all levels sought to reassure us. In the case of the SUV on 45th Street, we were almost instantly told it was amateurish, a one-off, a lone wolf, maybe someone angry about health-care reform. In the case of the oil spill, it was that, in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, “Every possible resource was being lined up on shore.”

Of course it wasn’t a one-off lone wolf mad about health care. And it turned out that every possible resource wasn’t being lined up on shore — that the main system for dealing with oil spills to keep them from the shore line, the so-called “fire booms,” were nowhere near and that no one had properly marshaled resources to get them there.

We can discuss the reasons for the bizarre assertion by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who should be lucky he will never run for office again, that the bomber was probably just a talk-radio listener driven to mass murder by the passage of Obama’s health-care measure. No matter that his own police department busted an Islamic terror ring aiming to strike the subway system just last summer. In some odd way, by pinning the possibility on, let’s face it, a white guy, Bloomberg was trying to stem panic. A lone attack by a lunatic has no larger meaning except the meaning it can be given by armchair sociologists and the politically expedient. A very nearly successful mass-murder plot arranged in Pakistan and carried out by an American citizen who bought a car for $1,200 cash off a website makes it clear just what kind of casual jeopardy we are in even now, nearly nine years after 9/11, and how fiendishly difficult it can be to prevent small-scale efforts that could bring about enormous pain and suffering and destruction.

Similarly, with the oil spill, though federal government officials say over and over again how dangerous and threatening the results are and may be, they are compulsively insistent that they are on the ball, they are competent, they are doing everything necessary — even though the fault and liability, as they make clear, is with BP, the owner of the rig. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned over time, it’s that when one-of-a-kind crises occur, no one in the early stages knows what on earth he’s doing. Feds and state officials and local officials bump into one another; everybody thinks somebody else is in charge of some aspect of fixing the problem; fights break out; the media screams like banshees; and clarity is achieved only after the initial confusion can be resolved.

Instead of acknowledging this truth, government officials believe it is their role to provide reassurance even when they cannot do so. And they’re simply wrong about that. The American people are far more sophisticated about these things than those officials appear to believe, and they can be talked to like adults. That was the lesson, in part, of the immediate aftermath of September 11, when Rudy Giuliani simply said that the “number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately.” He sugar-coated nothing. And that is the truth of crises and crisis management. When it is done well, there should be no sugar-coating. The impulse to sugar-coat is a mark of the conviction among politicians that they are in the same relation to the body politic as a parent is to a child. In our system, a politician is an employee, not a parent. For a rational employer, an employee who gives it to you straight will always be someone you take more seriously than an employee who pretends that everything is fine when everything isn’t.

Christie Targets Public-Employee Unions

Jennifer Rubin 04.22.2010 - 8:54 AM

George Will, like a lot of us, is impressed with Chris Christie. He won the gubernatorial race in one of the Bluest states and is now governing like a tough fiscal conservative. Will explains:

He inherited a $2.2 billion deficit, and next year’s projected deficit of $10.7 billion is, relative to the state’s $29.3 billion budget, the nation’s worst. Democrats, with the verbal tic — “Tax the rich!” — that passes for progressive thinking, demanded that he reinstate the “millionaire’s tax,” which hit “millionaires” earning $400,000 until it expired Dec. 31. Instead, Christie noted that between 2004 and 2008 there was a net outflow of $70 billion in wealth as “the rich,” including small businesses, fled. And he said previous administrations had “raised taxes 115 times in the last eight years alone.”

So he closed the $2.2 billion gap by accepting 375 of 378 suggested spending freezes and cuts. In two weeks. By executive actions. In eight weeks he cut $13 billion — $232 million a day, $9 million an hour. Now comes the hard part.

But that’s not going to get New Jersey back to fiscal sanity. So Christie is going after public-employee unions’ gold-plated benefits:

Government employees’ health benefits are, he says, “41 percent more expensive” than those of the average Fortune 500 company. Without changes in current law, “spending will have increased 322 percent in 20 years — over 16 percent a year.” There is, he says, a connection between the state’s being No. 1 in total tax burden and being No. 1 in the proportion of college students who, after graduating, leave the state.

Partly to pay for teachers’ benefits — most contribute nothing to pay for their health insurance — property taxes have increased 70 percent in 10 years, to an average annual cost to homeowners of $7,281. Christie proposes a 2.5 percent cap on annual increases.

In the past, the “solution” to all this was to raise taxes, which created an exodus of the “rich” and small businesses to neighboring states. But Christie is taking a page from another northeastern Republican (and another former federal prosecutor) who when he came into office was told he had to raise taxes, but proceeded to show that budget discipline and tax cuts could revive the greatest of American cities. Rudy Giuliani became a conservative rock star and New York came roaring back. If Christie pulls this off, he will not only elevate himself to the top tier of Republican politicians; he will also point the way to taming state budgets (California, are you paying attention?). As Will notes:

In the state that has the nation’s fourth-highest percentage (66) of public employees who are unionized, he has joined the struggle that will dominate the nation’s domestic policymaking in this decade — to break the ruinous collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers whose affections the officials purchase with taxpayers’ money.

No wonder labor leaders are going berserk. If Christie wins, Big Labor will get its comeuppance, New Jersey will prosper, and once again liberal governance will be replaced by something better — responsible fiscal conservatism.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Jennifer Rubin 04.20.2010 - 7:00 AM

Mind-boggling: Admiral Mike Mullen proclaims, “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome. …In an area that’s so unstable right now, we just don’t need more of that.” The only difference is that one way there’s a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic state.

Priceless: “Goldman Sachs is launching an aggressive response to its political and legal challenges with an unlikely ally at its side — President Barack Obama’s former White House counsel, Gregory Craig.”

Suspicious: “The Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case against Goldman Sachs may be settled before it ever sees a courtroom. Yet intentionally or not, the SEC has already secured at least one victory in the court of media opinion. Last Friday, the same day that the government unexpectedly announced its Goldman lawsuit, the SEC’s inspector general released his exhaustive, 151-page report on the agency’s failure to investigate alleged fraudster R. Allen Stanford. Mr. Stanford was indicted last June for operating a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of $8 billion. … But the SEC is very good at nailing politically correct targets like Goldman years after the fact on charges that have little or nothing to do with the investing public. On the Goldman case, by the way, the news broke yesterday that the SEC commissioners split 3-2 on whether to bring the lawsuit — a rare partisan split on such a prominent case and further evidence of its thin legal basis.” And just in the nick of time to help the PR on the financial regulations bill!

Definitive (confirmation that the Dems are in a heap of trouble): “Republican candidates now hold a 10-point lead over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot, tying the GOP’s high for the year recorded the second week in March and their biggest lead in nearly three years of weekly tracking.”

Frightening but not surprising: “It may be too late to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon, a former senior US defence official has warned. The official, who has long experience with several US administrations, said President Obama had waited too long to take tough action against Tehran. ‘Fifteen months into his administration, Iran has faced no significant consequences for continuing with its uranium-enrichment programme, despite two deadlines set by Obama, which came and went without anything happening,’ the former official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Times. ‘Now it may be too late to stop Iran from becoming nuclear-capable.’”

Gutsy: “After being stonewalled by the Obama administration for five months, Senators Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Me, issued subpoenas Monday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder for a list of witnesses and documents regarding the Nov. 5, 2009 Fort Hood massacre.”

Irrelevant: “Mitt Romney continues to look like the early front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. A Public Policy Polling (D) survey shows Romney leading former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in every region except the South, where Huckabee uses his home-field advantage to lead the field.” Ask Rudy Giuliani what early polls mean.

Depressing: “Both left and right [in Israel] are troubled, and both largely about the same things, especially the Iranian nuclear program combined with growing tensions with the Obama administration. ‘There is a confluence of two very worrying events,’ said Michael Freund, a rightist columnist for The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. ‘One is the Iranian threat, an existential threat. Add to that the fact that for the first time in recent memory there is a president in the White House who is not overly sensitive to the Jewish state and its interests. You put the two together and it will affect anyone’s mood, even an optimist like me.” Overly? Not at all.

The Perry Lesson: Run a Good Campaign

Jennifer Rubin 03.03.2010 - 8:53 AM

Gov. Rick Perry won big last night in the Texas gubernatorial primary. Michael Barone digs into the details and concludes:

(1) Perry won this not in rural and small town Texas but in metro Houston. This bodes well for him in the general election, since it indicates strength in the home base of the well regarded Democratic nominee, former Houston Mayor Bill White, who was nominated by an overwhelming margin. (2) Medina, the candidate who wouldn’t disrespect the truthers, did best in the supposedly most sophisticated part of Texas, the Metroplex. Go figure. (3) Hutchison, supposedly the candidate of urban sophisticates, did best in metro San Antonio and rural Texas. She held Perry below the 50% level needed to avoid a runoff in approximately half of Texas’s 254 counties; unfortunately for her, those counties didn’t give her nearly a big enough margin to offset Perry’s advantage in metro Houston

Barone also observes that turnout in the Republican primary was more than double that in Democratic primary, a reversal of the huge enthusiasm generated in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

Pundits are already picking through the returns to glean evidence of larger trends. Is this further proof that Washington incumbents have an uphill climb? Probably. Does this suggest that more traditionally conservative candidates have the upper hand in a GOP primary field? That too. And does Perry have the potential to be a presidential candidate? Perry is playing coy for now, as Jonathan Martin reports:

In an interview with POLITICO Monday, Perry insisted that he would not mount a White House bid.

“I’m really interested in who’s going to be the next president,” he said, before quickly adding: “I have no interest in it being me in any form or fashion.”

Yet as he claimed victory here Tuesday night, Perry’s message seemed as tailored for national GOP primary voters as Texas’s general electorate.

Speaking directly to Washington he said: “Quit spending all the money, stop trying to take over our lives and our businesses.”

He also sought to position himself squarely against President Obama, warning that, “It’s clear that the Obama administration and its allies already have Texas in their cross-hairs.”

But in the lesson-divining department, Martin is correct: Perry simply ran a better campaign and Hutchison bumbled along in a Hillary-like miscalculation about an electorate angry at the status quo. (“By asserting that she would step down from her Senate seat but never actually resigning, Hutchison amplified Perry’s message as much as the millions in his war chest.”) And it is noteworthy that endorsements from Texas political stars, including George H.W. Bush, didn’t help her one bit. (“In Hutchison’s case, the endorsements may have even worked against her, serving to underscore Perry’s message about her ties to Washington.”)

And that, I think, is the key takeaway and a reminder for pundits and candidates eyeing 2012. It really does matter what sort of campaign you put together, how you size up the electorate, and whether you devise an effective message. The front runners in 2008 (Clinton and Rudy Giuliani) crashed in no small part because they ran ineffective, if not disastrous, campaigns. We have learned the hard way that a great campaigner doesn’t necessarily make for a great or competent office holder. But you still have to win the campaign — and for that, nothing beats a sharp delivery, a well-organized team, and a timely message.

A New York Battle

Jennifer Rubin 01.26.2010 - 12:59 PM

This is going to be fun. The “this” is the New York Democratic Senate primary, which is going to make up for that Rudy Giuliani vs. Hillary Clinton matchup that political fans were deprived of when Giuliani decided not to make a Senate run in 2000. A sample:

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is finally heeding New York Democrats’ advice that she get tough with Harold Ford Jr. — slamming the former Memphis congressman as an anti-gay-rights, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant tool of Wall Street money lords. The problem for Gillibrand: Ford is embracing New York’s slappy-face politics faster than she can generate the comebacks. On Monday, Ford dismissed Gillibrand as a party-controlled “parakeet.” For good measure, his spokesman told POLITICO that Gillibrand is a “desperate liar.”

Yowser. And it’s only January.

Now Gillibrand has some problems. She’s an incumbent when incumbents are out of favor. She hasn’t done anything memorable. And to a degree, Ford is right: she morphed from a moderate, somewhat independent-minded congresswoman into a loyal cog in the Reid-Pelosi-Obama machine, never raising a fuss about the KSM trial or objecting to the ObamaCare deals that would have cost her state billions had we not been saved by the Massachusetts voters. (“The 39-year-old Ford, who relocated to New York after losing a 2006 Senate race in Tennessee, has repeatedly lampooned Gillibrand as being protected by her ‘party bosses,’ an argument that Ford advisers believe resonates with nationwide anti-Washington sentiment.”) Her gibes about Ford’s expedient transformation on hot-button issues ring a bit hollow given her conversion on Second Amendment rights (she became enamored of gun regulation only after her appointment to the Senate). You can see why Ford might think he’s got a real chance.

But Ford is not without his problems. The liberal-Democratic establishment has decided he’s too moderate and untrustworthy. For example, he eschews business-bashing at a time when that is de rigueur for Democrats.

The Republicans have yet to come up with a top-tier candidate, despite the giddy optimism circulating in Republican circles post–Scott Brown. But before we get to the general election, there should be plenty to watch and enjoy for those who love a good show. In some ways, it’s an interesting test for Democrats, just as the Florida Senate primary race is for Republicans. (Marco Rubio has come from far back to now lead the establishment favorite Crist in the latest poll.) No, neither is evidence of a “civil war” within the respective party. Rather, both will convey some key political information: whether the association with Beltway-establishment types is the kiss of death and whether a skilled challenger without that taint (Ford in New York and Rubio in Florida) can overcome the money and name recognition that also come with it.

New York: The Carpetbagger State Welcomes Harold Ford

Jonathan S. Tobin 01.06.2010 - 2:47 PM

You would think that out of the nearly 20 million people who live in the Empire State, the two major parties would be able to find at least two distinguished citizens fit to represent New York in the United States Senate. But the state has a sorry recent tradition of outsourcing Senate seats as carpetbagger politicians parachute in to serve in the nation’s highest deliberative body on its behalf. In 1964, though he had not lived in New York for decades, Bobby Kennedy exploited his brother’s martyrdom and his own charisma to win a Senate seat that he would briefly warm (until his own tragic assassination) while plotting to recapture the White House for his family. Thirty-six years later, Hillary Clinton, a native of suburban Chicago and former first lady of Arkansas, arrived here to establish residency and “listen” to New Yorkers, who obediently elected her to the Senate just as her husband was vacating the executive mansion in Washington.

The latest immigrant to New York to consider himself qualified to represent it in the Senate is Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman who was defeated by the citizens of his native state when he ran for a Senate seat in 2006. Since then, the young and handsome Ford moved to Manhattan, where he took a job as vice chairman of Merrill Lynch and appeared as an occasional talking head on MSNBC. The New York Times reports today that some New York Democrats want Ford to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand, the upstate senator who was appointed by Gov. David Paterson to fill the seat Clinton vacated when she left for the State Department a year ago.

Like Gillibrand, Ford will have to “adjust” his positions on a number of issues if he wants to be the standard-bearer for New York’s ultraliberal Democratic Party. In the House, Gillibrand was an opponent of illegal immigration and a supporter of the right to bear arms. Since coming to the Senate and accepting the role of female Sancho Panza to senior Senator Chuck Schumer, Gillibrand has flipped on immigration and gun control. Similarly, Ford will have to ditch his opposition to gay marriage to please liberal Dems. But though Ford is a relative newcomer to the Big Apple, he appears to have always been in an “Empire State of Mind” when it came to fundraising. According to the Times, a third of the $15 million he raised for his 2006 Senate run came from New York.

Ford’s challenge is an indication of Gillibrand’s weakness. Her lackluster performance in the Senate could give the Republicans a chance to knock off an incumbent, but with Rudy Giuliani opting out of the race, Long Island Rep. Peter King appears to be the only Republican with enough stature for a chance at winning the seat. Though any Democrat, even Gillibrand, ought to be favored to win in New York, the rumblings of support for Ford, who might become the only African-American in the Senate next year (with Roland Burris’s lease of the Illinois seat left by Barack Obama about to expire), show that the possibility of a GOP tide drowning weak liberal incumbents in 2010 is being taken seriously.

Schumer, who has been traveling the state twisting arms to ensure that his protégé goes unchallenged, has a lot to lose if a Ford victory ditches the notion that he is the kingmaker of New York politics. But however it turns out, let’s hope we are spared the spectacle of this son of Tennessee claiming to be a lifelong New York Yankees fan as Hillary did in 2000. But no matter which team he says he roots for, Ford has little to worry about when it comes to sincerity on such matters. Clinton’s victory illustrated that although New Yorkers pride themselves on being able to spot a phony from out of town from a mile away, it doesn’t mean they won’t vote for one.

New York Senate Race

Jennifer Rubin 12.01.2009 - 10:16 AM

You know things aren’t going well for Democrats when Blue States like New York, Illinois, and Connecticut become real pick-up opportunities for Republicans in 2010 Senate races. In New York, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand may be in trouble, either from a Democratic primary challenger or a Republican opponent. The chairman of the state’s Conservative party remarks: “Clearly she is unknown, that’s No. 1. No. 2, she has flipped on every given issue so I think she’s weakened herself upstate where initially that was her strength.” But there is something else as well — that “trial of the century.”

After all, she hasn’t opposed the administration’s gambit to try terrorists in the U.S. She and her fellow Democrats had the chance to block funds for terrorist trials and again to cut off funds for refurbishing Supermax prisons to house them here. But instead, the Democratic Senate enabled the Obama administration’s decision, one that is overwhelmingly unpopular. In the general election, Gillibrand may face Rudy Giuliani, who would make this a top issue. But what about New Yorker Debra Burlingame? No sign that she is yet interested in running. But she and her grassroots organization may make Gillibrand’s campaign dicey. Why is it that Gillibrand didn’t do what she could to block KSM’s trial? Well, she’ll need to answer that — if she makes it to the general election.

That’s What Elections Are For

Jennifer Rubin 11.20.2009 - 7:47 AM

Rumors swirled as to whether Rudy Giuliani would enter the New York Senate race. Reports said he would not run for governor but was going to take on Kirsten Gillibrand. His spokesperson said he’ll tell you when he’s made up his mind. A new poll suggests he’d do well against Gillibrand:

54% of registered voters statewide would vote for Giuliani compared with 40% who would support Gillibrand. Even one-third of Democrats report they would back the Republican challenger, and Giuliani runs competitively against Gillibrand in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City.

Giuliani has been out hammering Obama on the decision to try KSM in a civilian court, and one supposes that this and national security would be top issues in the Senate race. After all, within a fortnight, Democrats in the Senate declined the opportunity to cut off funding to move terrorists to the U.S. for trial and to prepare SuperMax prisons to house them, thereby ensuring this issue will be front and center in the 2010 Senate races. Whether it’s Giuliani or another challenger, Gillibrand will be forced to defend her votes and her party’s record on national security. The voters will have their say.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Jennifer Rubin 11.19.2009 - 7:00 AM

NIAC has a “good name” in Iran. Of course, what’s not to like about a group that lobbies against sanctions?

PelosiCare fallout continues: “House passage of a sweeping anti-abortion amendment has set off a wave of soul-searching and finger-pointing among abortion rights activists — many of whom thought they’d found a safe harbor when Democrats won the White House and big majorities in Congress last year.”

More evidence the public doesn’t share the Obami’s enthusiasm for a civilian trial for KSM: “A new CBS News poll finds that only 40 percent of Americans believe suspected terrorists should be tried in an open criminal court. Fifty-four percent say such suspects should be tried in a closed military court.”

Lindsey Graham stumps Eric Holder on Mirandizing Osama bin Laden. And NPR reports it.

Obama taints the jury pool — and proves that this is harder than it looks.

Stunning video of the mom of a 9/11 victim giving Holder an earful. “The theatrics are going to take over at this point,” she explains.

Rudy Giuliani takes it personally also: “Giuliani called parts [of] his reaction to the decision ‘almost personal’ and said that ‘knowing many of the people who died that day,’ and having stayed in close touch with survivors, ‘there’s no reason to put them through what will become a much more intense reliving of what happened with the terrorists getting an equal chance to explain their side of the story,’ in a setting ‘where their lawyers would be unethical if they didn’t pursue every avenue of acquittal,’ which will probably include ‘putting the government on trial’ and, potentially, creating an atmosphere ‘of moral equivalence,’ which will be very upsetting.”

The New York Times says Asia is over Obama: “Instead, with the novelty of a visit as America’s first black president having given way to the reality of having to plow through intractable issues like monetary policy (China), trade (Singapore, China, South Korea), security (Japan) and the 800-pound gorilla on the continent (China), Mr. Obama’s Asia trip has been, in many ways, a long, uphill slog.”

From the “Most Transparent Administration in History” file: “Sen. Joe Lieberman said Wednesday he would hold a hearing this week on the Fort Hood shooting and may use his subpoena power to force government officials to testify. The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is moving ahead with the Thursday hearing despite pressure from the Obama administration to delay congressional inquiries.”

And we should trust these people with health care? “The chairman of the Obama administration’s Recovery Board is telling lawmakers that he can’t certify jobs data posted at the Recovery.gov Web site — and doesn’t have access to a ‘master list’ of stimulus recipients that have neglected to report data.”

The president says all that is just a “side issue.” What? This isn’t an “exact science.” Fills you with confidence, huh?

What Are They Thinking?

Jennifer Rubin 11.15.2009 - 3:48 PM

On Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney laid into the president and Eric Holder for the decision to move KSM to New York for trial:

You know, I think it is absolutely unconscionable that we are a nation at war and that the president of the United States simultaneously is denying our troops on the ground in Afghanistan the resources that they need to prevail to win that war while he ushers terrorists onto the homeland.

He’s going to put these terrorists in a courthouse that is six blocks from where over 2,000 Americans were killed on the worst attack in history on the American homeland.

He’s going to give them a public platform where they can spew venom, where they can preach jihad, where they can reach out and recruit other terrorists. And it is totally unnecessary.

When the attorney general says that he’s bringing them to justice, he’s ignoring the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed asked 11 months ago to be executed for Allah. He asked to plead guilty and be executed. We should have said, “All right, you’ve got it.” Instead, we’re bringing him and his cohorts to America. We’re giving them the constitutional rights of American citizens. And the attorney general throughout the day on Friday talked about this as a crime.

This, in powerful terms, is the argument against reverting to the 9/11 mentality and treating the attack on America as a mere crime. On the other side is some fuzzy notion, unsubstantiated by any experience or evidence, that we’re going to get “credit” with some groups or individuals or countries, which in turn will make us safer. But not from the U.S.S. Cole terrorists, who aren’t getting a trial. Go figure. As Rudy Giuliani wryly observed on the same program: “Problem is the terrorists aren’t listening to him. They’re continuing to make war on us.”

Alongside the argument against treating this as a criminal proceeding is a brew of misunderstanding and distortion of what is required and what may transpire in a legal forum. As Juan Williams did on Fox News Sunday, the Left likes to throw around lofty phrases (the “rule of law”) and straw men arguments (“If you believe in the Constitution …”). But “the law” and the “Constitution” have real meaning, and nothing in statute or the Constitution requires us to take KSM to New York, douse him with ACLU pixie dust, and give him all the procedural rights and constitutional protections that a domestic criminal would receive. It is poppycock on stilts to argue that the Obama team is simply “following the law.” They are making it up and departing from statute and 200 years of legal tradition.

There are good reasons to deplore a trial in New York. One of which, as Bill Kristol pointed out, is that we might lose. No Miranda rights, no subpoenas, and lots and lots of coercion. Chain of evidence? Good luck with that. And if the jury doesn’t give KSM the death penalty, what then? Holder seems to think he has all the angles covered, but it’s impossible for him to guarantee an outcome in an Article III court with an independent judge and 12 jurors.

The bottom line: the decision is practically unintelligible, and the results may be disastrous.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Jennifer Rubin 11.14.2009 - 7:03 AM

Rep. Peter King calls moving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the U.S. for trial the “worst decision by a U.S. president in history.”

Rudy Giuliani: “Returning some of the Guantanamo detainees to New York City for trial, specifically Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has now brought us full circle — we have regressed to a pre-9/11 mentality with respect to Islamic extremist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should be treated like the war criminal he is and tried in a military court. He is not just another murderer, or even a mass murderer. He murdered as part of a declared war against us — America.”

John Yoo explains: “Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda, tie up our courts for years on issues best left to the president and Congress, and further cripple our intelligence agencies’ efforts to fight terrorists abroad. KSM and his co-defendants will have all of the benefits and rights that the U.S. Constitution accords those who live here, most importantly the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it was obtained.”

Bill Kristol on the choice for Democrats: “The political consequences will also extend to 54 Senate Democrats who voted recently against legislation to bar such civil trials–and to Democrats in the House who will be put on the spot as well. Congress could insist on military tribunals, and indeed in the past it has provided for such tribunals. I imagine Republicans on the Hill will try to move to overrule Holder, with legislation in the Senate, and with legislation and perhaps a discharge petition in the House. Holder can take his lumps for his reckless ideological decision if he wishes. Will congressional Democrats follow him off the cliff?”

Mark Ambinder on the U.S. trial of Guantanamo terrorists: “If this is politics, it’s really dumb politics.” Well yes, the scary part is that Obama and his attorney general think this is making us safer.

Marty Peretz on Fort Hood: “It was one of thousands of bloodlettings inspired by Islamic motives over the last decades. You can now add 51 victims to the dealing death and maiming numbers inspired by the ‘great God’ invoked by Hasan as he delivered his first gunfire volley. I am afraid that even the ever-so-fair, ever-eye-averting President Obama will have to reconsider his confidently euphonious message about belief and action in the Muslim orbit.” No sign of an end to eye-averting yet.

The McCain staffers are still trashing Sarah Palin. I suspect she’ll be on another presidential campaign. Them? Not so much.

Obama is not the health-care salesman his supporters may think he is: “More Americans now say it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government’s responsibility.”

The J Word

Jennifer Rubin 05.09.2008 - 4:53 PM

Andy McCarthy’s new book Willful Blindness and his latest essay “The Jihad in Plain Sight” are both must-reading for anyone who concerned that, even now, we have not come to terms with the need for war against Islamic terrorists. His essay makes the horrifying point that our State Department has seen fit to banish the word “jihad” from our official vocabulary.

So if you bemoan the Democratic near-nominee’s unwillingness to face up to harsh international realities and draw clear lines, you won’t be happy to hear that the problem is much more widespread. Yes, Rudy Giuliani mocked the Democrats for failing to use the words “Islamic terrorism” in their debates. But left to its own devices the State Department is going down the same road. (John McCain apparently has no similar issue with vocabulary.)

If you can’t recognize your enemies and define the nature of the threat, you’re not going to defeat them. You will instead spend time annoying the general population, giving them a sense that our efforts are foolhardy.

So if the Presidential candidates want to have a nice high-minded debate, they might start with a simple question: what do you call the enemy? That may tell us quite a bit about each candidate’s willingness and ability to grapple with unpleasant realities.

Cambridge University of Saud

Abe Greenwald 05.07.2008 - 5:57 PM

England’s Cambridge University and Edinburgh University have accepted a £16 million endowment from Saudi Prince Al-Walid to create Islamic study centers that “aim to carry out research and public engagements designed to increase understanding between the Muslim world and the West.”

What exactly does “understanding” mean? A month after 9/11, when the same Prince Al-Walid tried to purchase New York City’s “understanding” for $10 million, he said it meant the attacks were to cause the United States to “re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.” Then Mayor Rudy Giuliani made himself understood by rejecting the “re-examination,” the “balance,”and the check.

No such luck in England. And now two of the West’s finest universities have been bankrolled in the “understanding” racket.

But perhaps we shouldn’t worry, after all. In Al-Walid’s 2001 check memo to the U.S., he called for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank. It’s been almost three years since Israel has withdrawn from Gaza and two years since Kadima–the Israeli political party founded on the very basis of giving land to Palestinians–became the largest party in the Knesset. With that out of the way, maybe Al-Walid just wants the West to “understand” why teenage Muslim girls go missing from Bradford, England, or what it is that offends British Muslim pupils about their teachers assertion that the Holocaust happened, or why British Muslim clerics say “We have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others.” You know, Islam/West “understanding” stuff.

You Want Domestic Policy?

Jennifer Rubin 04.29.2008 - 1:18 PM

John McCain is trying his best to shift from his single-minded focus on foreign policy to a broader agenda that will appeal to key independent voters. His topic this week is health care, about which he offered a detailed speech and a new ad.

His approach borrows from George W. Bush’s ill-fated healthcare plan (and from Rudy Giuliani’s as well). The basic idea is to shift from employer-based plans (in which the consumer/patient is not responsible for costs) to individually-purchased healthcare plans (where consumers will be in charge). By ending the employer benefit tax exemption and providing a tax credit instead, allowing interstate insurance purchases, and throwing in some tort reform, this proposal aims to decrease cost and increase availability.

But McCain has a ways to go if he’s going to sell it. One troubling aspect of the proposal, his GAP plan, is in bad shape. It’s aimed at a vaguely defined pool of hard-to-insure and needy healthcare consumers, and it sounds like little more than an adjunct to Medicare and Medicaid. McCain says:

I will work with Congress, the governors, and industry to make sure that it is funded adequately and has the right incentives to reduce costs such as disease management, individual case management, and health and wellness programs. These programs reach out to people who are at risk for different diseases and chronic conditions and provide them with nurse care managers to make sure they receive the proper care and avoid unnecessary treatments and emergency room visits. The details of a Guaranteed Access Plan will be worked out with the collaboration and consent of the states.

Although he disclaims any intention to create a new entitlement program, he says that the GAP plan would put “reasonable limits on premiums, and assistance would be available for Americans below a certain income level.” That said, McCain’s plan is as market-based an approach as a politician who doesn’t want to risk running on a platform of “Buy your own darn insurance!” is going to offer

The Deceptive Security Of Early Polls

Jennifer Rubin 04.10.2008 - 2:50 PM

Internal GOP polling shows John McCain leading both of his potential rivals and enjoying a healthy advantage among independents. However–and this is a big however–GOP consultants do not expect this lead to withstand a post-nomination bump in the numbers of whomever the Democrats nominate.

The report suggests the GOP consultants are pleased to see McCain running ahead in a mythical “generic Republican vs. generic Democrat” race. But that’s consultant-think: he has to come out ahead of his real opponent. Poll-wonks are convinced that McCain’s advantage lies in his atypical GOP profile and his personal characteristics: even Democratic polling reveals that McCain’s greatest strength is his reputation as “a man of integrity.”

But herein lies a trap for the McCain team: the temptation to run on biography alone. Biographical campaigns did not treat Bob Dole or John Kerry well. And it seems foolhardy to say “We’ll take the biography; let the Democrats take the issues.” The danger with that is that Americans will end up voting for the candidate speaking to their issues and concerns. (It may also overlook the lesson of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign: sky high early polling numbers for a national hero can melt away overnight.)

Moreover, such a tactic may misinterpret why McCain is ahead, even preliminarily, and why his public approval ratings are high. McCain enraged the Right but endeared himself to others during his career not because of his war record but because of the stands he took on issues. By combining traditional Republican virtues (e.g. spending restraint) with decidedly unconventional positions (e.g. campaign reform, immigration reform and global warming) he carved out an identity entirely apart from his war record. To now revert to a mushy, issue-less appeal would risk discarding that carefully-constructed advantage.

But the race has not yet begun, an opponent has not yet been selected, and the chance for the McCain team to make the race about something still remains. Or they could just re-run the Dole campaign and hope for the best.

Bloomberg’s Legacy

John Podhoretz 04.09.2008 - 5:29 PM

The mayoralty of New York’s Michael Bloomberg has been an uncommonly boring one, and primarily for that reason, it has been judged a smashing success. For those who felt exhausted by the constant battles between Rudy Giuliani and the city’s liberal elites in the eight years prior to his election, Bloomberg brought a surprising measure of peace — some of which he purchased, by the way, through personal gift- and grant-giving, which had the effect of quieting attacks from leftie and arts institutions that liked nothing more than to get into a scuffle with City Hall and thereby earn plaudits and attention from the New York Times. Given the size of Bloomberg’s personal fortune, the money he spent to buy himself social quiet was doubtless worth it. And for causing these intolerable loudmouths to shut themselves up and enjoy their financial goodies, Bloomberg deserves a pat on the back. And for keeping the city on the even keel on which Rudy had left it, he deserves credit as well. He didn’t upset the apple cart.

That said, however, Bloomberg’s mayoralty has been, at least to measure by his own ambitions, a horrific failure. This week brought the collapse of his grand design for a car-toll system in Manhattan. This followed the failure, two years and tens of millions of dollars in planning ago, to secure the Olympic games for New York City in 2012 — a loss that had every single person who lives in the city sighing with relief, as you could not find a single person here outside of the construction trade that did not dread the possibility of the city being turned inside out for three solid weeks so that a bunch of stoned volleyball players could vie for a medal on an invented East River beach in the very unpicturesque neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And that followed the failure, two years before that, of his plan to build a stadium in the West 30s only a few years after Rudy had tried and failed at the same thing.

Bloomberg’s signature accomplishments have been: an increase in the property tax, most of which he then returned to city folk in the form of a tax rebate; and a draconian smoking ban, which has caused jam-ups in front of every bar in the city, as drunken louts and lasses crowd the sidewalk, puffing madly away because they are no longer allowed to have a cig with their scotch. He also succeeded in taking control of the city’s elementary schools, a long-sought-after reform that has resulted in mostly nothing.

And now comes the hard part. The reduction in economic activity that inevitably accompanies a slowing or recessionary economy will hit New York City’s public coffers very hard. The city makes its money from transactions — stock trades, mergers and acquisitions, and the like — of which it takes a teeny tiny cut. When the number of those transactions falls from 100 billion a year to 50 billion in a year, the city instantly finds itself going from a surplus in its budget to a huge deficit that, by law, it must close. And it will fall to Bloomberg to close it. And close it he will, with his favorite method of closing it — raising taxes.

He is going to end his mayoralty vastly less popular than he has been through most of it. And that will reflect the true quality of the mayoralty, which has been mediocre.

Nothing to See Here

James Kirchick 04.07.2008 - 8:19 AM

Not long after Rudy Giuliani announced his foreign policy advisory team last year, liberal bloggers and journalists cried that the group represented “AIPAC’s Dream Team” (Harper’s Ken Silverstein), was ginning to implement “bloody, bloody, bloody foreign policy” (Matthew Yglesias) and that “RUDY GIULIANI WILL KILL US ALL” (The American Prospect). One could simultaneously disagree with such unhinged assessments of what a Giuliani foreign policy might look like and still believe that the essence of liberal criticism was not unfair: to a large degree, we can divine what a candidate thinks based upon the sort of people from whom he seeks counsel.

This non-partisan analytical instrument is useless, apparently, when it comes to the people advising Barack Obama. Over the past few months, several of Barack Obama’s advisers (foreign policy advisers in particular) have entered the spotlight for things they have said or written which are supposedly at odds with the beliefs of the candidate for whom they work. First, there was the incident in which Obama’s top economics advisor, Austan Goolsbee, reassured Canadian consular officials in Chicago that Obama’s anti-NAFTA position wasn’t sincere. Then, there was the now-departed Samantha Power, who told the BBC that Barack Obama’s real position on Iraq withdrawal was not, in actual fact, what he’d been saying on the campaign trail. Like Goolsbee, we were told at the time that Ms. Power was “just” an adviser — a past one, at this point — and that what she said about the Iraq War is ultimately irrelevant.

On a similar note, last week we discovered — thanks to the tireless reporting of the New York Sun’s Eli Lake — that Colin Kahl, head of Obama’s Iraq working group, wrote a paper calling for 80,000 American troops to stay in Iraq until at least 2010. Susan Rice, another Obama foreign policy adviser, told Lake that, “Barack Obama cannot be held accountable for what we all write.” Finally, a 2003 interview with top Obama adviser Tony McPeak recently surfaced in which the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force said of Iraq, “We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.” This is the exact same sentiment that John McCain expressed in his much-distorted “100 years” remark.

Of course, given the pattern I’ve elucidated, I presume that we cannot hastily jump to the conclusion that McPeak — like Power, Kahl and Goolsbee before him, and who knows how many advisers into the future — necessarily represents the views of Barack Obama. A great journalistic assignment for an enterprising young reporter would be to find out what Obama does believe.

Life Goes On… If You Have A Life

Jennifer Rubin 03.25.2008 - 5:17 PM

The media certainly is rooting for Hillary Clinton to pack up and go home. The only debate is whether she has a 10% or 5% chance to win. But aside from the potential that she could, after all, still win, it seems entirely out of character for her to up and leave–except under duress. For the Clintons, not to mention their camp of advisors poised to retake the White House, it may be inconceivable to think about losing and returning to life off the presidential trail.

For others, life goes on after campaigns. Rudy Giuliani, for example, seamlessly returned to law and business. (Likewise, his communications director Katie Levinson landed at a top PR firm and his campaign manager Mike DuHaime is back at the RNC.) Yet for the Clintons and their hangers-on, giving up and going back to life before their presidential aspirations would be an exercise in time travel. For decades this is what they strived to achieve. I don’t imagine her (or him) simply walking away voluntarily.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

May 2013
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Topic: Rudy Giuliani

May 2013

Articles

Fiction

Politics & Ideas

Culture & Civilization

John Podhoretz

Threat Assessment

Letters

Enter Laughing

Get Our Free Newsletter

Blog By Date

Sign up for Commentary Daily!

Don't miss the latest opinions on the day's developments and news that matters most to you.