Enemies Foreign and Domestic

By Rich Galen

Monday, May 06, 2013

 

Every Member of Congress and commissioned officer (civilian and military) in federal service as well as every enlisted service member takes an oath that requires they promise to:

 

"support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…"

 

This oath is required by statute. The Presidential oath, the only oath in the Constitution, does not contain that language:

 

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

 

I only raise that because the issue of "enemies foreign or domestic" has raised its ugly head in Boston in Damascus and in Benghazi.

 

First Boston.

 

I don't know very much about the ins and outs of visa vigilance as they pertain to one Tamerlan Tsarnaev (the dead Boston bomber). That's not much of a problem.

 

What is a problem is when the FBI, DHS, NSA, NSC, CIA, and, for all I know, MIB don't seem to be able to track a guy about whom they have been warned. And some or all of those agencies were warned by our loyal allies in the security area, the Russians.

 

At one point we were told that Tsarnaev slipped through the immigration net having taking a six month trip to Russia because his name had been misspelled.

 

I did a test on this. I did a search on "Rihc Galen"

 

Google assumed I meant "Rich Galen" and found 3.3 million hits.

 

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has since said that the redundancies in the immigration systems are every bit as good as Google's (my comparison, not hers) but the reason Tsarnaev got back in was because the FBI alert on him had expired and so his re-entry was not noted.

 

That "beep-beep-beep" sound you hear is team player Sec. Napolitano backing up the bus having thrown the FBI under it.

 

So many questions. How about the wife? She lives in an apartment with - forget about bomb parts she might not have recognized - how about asking what the hell multiple pressure cookers were doing in the living room. Were they going into the housewares business?

 

Ok. That's the domestic enemies.

 

The New York Times was all over a story that President Barack Obama's off-handed remark last summer that if Syrian president Bashar al-Assad used or moved chemical weapons that would be "a red line for us."

 

Just about everyone now believes Assad has used poison gas and is, in fact, consolidating his stores of chemical weapons - moving them around.

 

One unnamed high Obama Administration source, attempting to erase, or at least blur, the "red line" was quoting in the Times as saying:

 

"If he drops sarin [gas] on his own people, what's that got to do with us?"

 

This is known as the Lucky Lindy theory of geopolitics.

 

Obama (nor anyone else) is eager to get involved in another Middle Eastern war, but his own off-the-cuff language may have put the United States into a diplomatic, military and/or legal box.

 

Then there are the enemies foreign and domestic.

 

CBS reporter Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation," said Greg Hicks, a 22-year foreign service diplomat who was the highest-ranking U.S. official in Libya after the strike has told Congressional investigators:

 

"I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.

 

CBS News reminds us on its website that the very morning the U.N. Ambassador was racing from Sunday show to Sunday show to claim the attack was a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand, "President of Libya Mohammed al-Magariaf, said his government had 'no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.'"

 

Al-Magariaf said that on "Face the Nation" moments before Amb. Rice came on to flatly contradict him.

 

Why? Because Obama was in the midst of a Presidential campaign and did not want to give Republicans a chance to say that all of his attempts to avoid the Bushian phrase "war on terror" had emboldened the terrorists to attack the U.S. compound in Libya.

 

NBC reported only a week after Obama's inauguration in 2009 that the "War on Terror Phrase [was] Fading" in new Administration. Obama was using snappy language like: "The enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism" even back then.

 

This second term is off to a very, very rocky start and the Ship of State is tippy because of the incompetence of Obama's own people.

College Students Must Hold Their Professors Accountable

By Gabriella Hoffman

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

 

The American university was once regarded as the marketplace of ideas. Young, eager minds thirsty for knowledge pursued higher education to better prepare for life. The free exchange of ideas and different perspectives largely defined the academic scene in decades prior. This reputed intuition stood out from the rest as the cultivator of future leaders, innovators, and scholars.

 

Alas, this is not the case today.

 

The late conservative thinker William F. Buckley famously opined, “The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.”

 

The American university has departed from its original purpose. Instead, this institution now serves as a breeding ground for complacent, goose-stepping loyalists of the political Left.

 

Most academic departments are favorable to leftist points of view. The majority of professors identify as Democrat or socialist; some even identify as Marxist or communist. In fact, an April 29 Rasmussen poll found that 40 percent of those polled believe college professors oppose American values. 25 percent of those polled believe college professors share U.S. values, while 34 percent of those polled are unsure.

 

The campus climate is equally hostile to conservative and libertarian students. When one openly professes right-leaning views they are ridiculed, harassed, or made to feel uncomfortable on campus. Professors reserve lecture time to proselytize against free markets, limited government, and traditional values. So-called sustainable initiatives, diversity “enrichment,” and the prevalence of gender neutral bathrooms, for example, confirm the radical nature American universities have come to adopt.

 

Despite dominant leftist views on campus, conservative students should not feel discouraged or hopeless. Instead, they should fight back by holding their professors accountable for their actions. If professors repeatedly step out of line or dedicate lecture time to deride conservatives, students should record them and expose their bias.

 

College students can put unruly professors in their place with the right tools and resources.

 

Last fall, Tyler Talgo--a University of Southern California student--recorded  political science Professor Darry A. Sragow on film calling on his students to disenfranchise Republican votes.

 

“Republicans are trying to prevent people of color and people of lower income from voting by requiring voter I.D.” Sragow said.

 

Shortly after the video of Sragow dropped, Talgo appeared on Fox News and The View to encourage fellow college students to hold their professors accountable for what they say in the classroom.

 

Another instance of college students holding their professors accountable is the recent firing of a Brevard Community College (BCC) professor. The professor--Sharon Sweet--was fired after requiring students to pledge their votes for President Barack Obama leading up to the 2012 election. Sweet’s pay and benefits were suspended following an investigation into her questionable activities.

 

Campus Reform reported, “The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet who had been suspended with pay under provisions of the United Faculty of Florida collective bargaining agreement with the college, pending the board’s decision.”

 

These instances of leftist abuse on campus are not isolated. In fact, they are common. Whether it is the University of California or the Ivy League, most American universities encourage and tolerate leftist bias. Leftist professors will continue to go unnoticed unless students bring their bias into light.

 

Time at an American university should be enjoyable, not tainted by leftist indoctrination. As a result, it is imperative to reclaim American universities and encourage dissenting viewpoints.

 

If students want to expose leftist abuses on campus, they can contact their Regional Field Coordinator or send tips to Campus Reform.

The Power of Being “Offended” in Order to Shut Down Political Debate

By Rachel Alexander

Monday, April 22, 2013

 

Has society really become quite thin-skinned, or is acting “offended” a new tactic that is being used to shut down legitimate political debate? Progressives are increasingly claiming to be offended whenever those on the right disagree with their left-wing positions. It doesn't matter what the issue is; the left will divert a legitimate political debate into an accusation that the right disagrees with them because they are full of hate towards them. This puts the right on the defensive, and removes the real debate from discussion. It then becomes difficult for the right to ever prevail with their position, because to do so would mean “hate” had won.

 

Economics? Disagree with welfare, and you're full of hate and intolerance towards the poor. Social issues? Disagree with the left on abortion or gay marriage, and you don't like women or gays. Foreign policy? Disagree on foreign policy, and you hate Muslims, Palestinians, and the poor in less fortunate countries. Second Amendment? If you support gun rights, then you have a cold and callous view towards the victims of gun violence. Affirmative action? If you disagree with affirmative action, then you're a racist. Unions? Disagree with them, and you despise working-class Americans.

 

The offended attitude ploy has become stifling. The left has brainwashed thousands of people across the country into seeking out chances to be offended. Meanwhile, these same people who act hysterically offended by a differing political view will pay $90 to attend a comedy show, laughing the hardest of anyone at the comedian's racist, misogynist, and obscene jokes. This is evidence they're not really offended by those who merely harbor different political positions on issues.

 

Try to make a joke about any of these issues with one of these thin-skinned victims and they will tear into you at best, report you to your employer or appropriate government agency at worst. We're seeing more and more people lose their jobs over simply posting an outspoken viewpoint on Facebook. The left will whip up its victims into a frenzy and have them bombard the employer with angry complaints until the employer complies and terminates the employee.

 

The left is expanding its victims to include almost all Americans. Now everyone has something to be offended about. Even the right is falling into this victim mentality. Fat? You're a victim. Smoker? You're a victim. Single mom? You're a victim.

 

The left has turned generations of Americans into wimpy fourth graders ready to start whining at any minute. At the same time, those same offended folks are walking around on eggshells at work, in public, and on social networking programs, paranoid of someone else catching them saying something “insensitive.”

 

It is a dishonest stretch to assert that because someone has a differing political opinion than you on an issue, they hate you. Look at all the people on the right and the left who are friends with each other. They don't hate each other, or they wouldn't be friends. Sneakily, the left will point to a handful of hateful individuals around the country, and use a broad brush to paint everyone on the right as sharing their views. This is lying. Lying in order to convince Americans of your viewpoint is despicable and shows how desperate the left has become.

 

Using the ruse of being offended to shut down legitimate political debate is censorship. If you try to point this out, however, the left will bring up an extreme example, such as terrible words used against blacks in the pre-civil rights era. This is a red herring, because virtually no one today agrees that racial slurs are acceptable. If someone is using disgraceful slurs against someone on welfare, or against gun control proponents, that is one thing. But to merely disagree with the concept or welfare or gun control is not the same as being full of hate towards those people.

 

The absurdity of this concept can be seen by looking at some of those on the right. Mark Mattioli, the father of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim James Mattioli, has been speaking out against gun control. He doesn't “hate” the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, in fact, he and his wife loved their son more than anyone. To equate him with hate merely for opposing gun control is a pretty cruel tactic by the left.

 

Many blacks speak up against affirmative action and are viciously attacked by the left. Blacks don't “hate” themselves; there has never been a quote by a conservative black saying they dislike themselves, nor have there been hate crimes committed by conservative blacks against themselves. The entire concept is the height of foolishness. Yet the left routinely goes after outspoken conservative blacks more viciously than they go after, say, doctors who mutilate girls' genitalia in Africa, supposedly one of their key causes and something truly abhorrent. It has become so bad that the word “blacklash” has been coined.

 

The latest victim of the left's attacks on conservative blacks is Dr. Benjamin Carson. Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., dared to express a few political opinions as a speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast, for which he was highly praised later by the Wall Street Journal. The left has gone after him hard ever since.

 

The hypocrisy can be seen by visiting the White House website shortly after Carson gave his speech. The website wasn't even viewable until you clicked through a huge gun control message from Obama. There was no massive outrage, it was merely mentioned on a few conservative websites. Apparently for the left, it is O.K. for a left-wing black man to use the national government's website to promote an overtly political message, but not for a conservative black man to use the national prayer breakfast to also declare some political opinions.

 

The phony offensive ploys must stop. We are not a nation of crybaby fourth graders. Don't buy into the victim mentality, and call out the tactic when the left uses it. The left is not the harmless crybabies they appear to be at first. If we don't speak up now, they will bully us into giving up our First Amendment rights by threatening our jobs, licenses and reputations. As Charlton Heston once said, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”

To Punch a Liberal

By Shawn Mitchell

Monday, April 29, 2013

 

The movie 42, about Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play Major League Baseball is an inspiring triumph that strangely made me want to go punch a liberal…or to be more precise, to punch liberal moral bullies.

 

 The aggressive impulse stems from my own political drama, which, though I’d guess isn’t rare, has nothing to do with the film or the maker’s intended message. So before I explain, let me indulge in some amateur movie criticism.

 

It was great!  The tale of Jackie Robinson strikes several profound themes. Robinson was exceptionally gifted, not just with athleticism, but with courage and fortitude. The story is bigger though, and the movie encompasses much: Harrison Ford plays Branch Rickey (who looks more like a bespectacled Johan Goodman) a team owner with the moral compass and confidence to do a revolutionarily right thing, the sense to know it would be good business, and the shrewdness to play the right cards to make it happen. 

 

 Robinson’s devotion to his wife Rachel, her support of him, and the couple’s courage in the face of challenge and hateful opposition should inspire any couple about the sources of peace in life’s storms. The film’s depiction of American society, including even Robinson’s teammates, feeling the way toward doing the right thing, while one man bore the weight of it on his excruciatingly visible shoulders, evoke admiration, anger, and a few tears.

 

At one of those moist eyed moments I had a bracing thought: “I love this guy I don’t even know. I honor the path he pioneered. I want the best life offers for everyone. For everyone. But today, a lot of liberals might call me racist because of my positions on current political issues.”

 

That’s when I got mad. Racism. What an ugly word and an ugly concept. And what an ugly weapon that supporters of big government brandish against supporters of freedom and limited government.

 

Wait…before the politics, let me dwell a minute on humanity. Most of us love our neighbor. Well, some of us are too busy or disorganized to think all that much one way or the other about our neighbor, but we respond to the chords of humanity. Suffering makes us sorry. Hardship makes us sad. Success makes us cheer. Courage makes us admire, and profound sacrifice or triumph can make us tear up a little. In short, we are human beings and we wish well to other human beings, whatever their race, creed, religion, national origin, or choices in the pursuit of happiness.

 

But in the matter of how we organize our society, though, and how much power we give the collective vote of our neighbors over our personal choices, we vary widely. From the “Don’t tread on me” liberty advocates to the “Government is we the people” progressives, our visions drastically diverge about the role of the state in steering toward the blessings of domestic tranquility.

 

It’s an important debate that has continued from the days of the founding and the Federalists and Anti-Federalists.  But in my experience, the debate doesn’t unfold on a level playing field. People who want government to impose a solution to every grievance and problem claim the high ground of caring and morality, while they and the media ascribe the worst motives to people who believe that a free community can figure out ways to interact for the greater good.

 

This is not to deny the role of government as a change agent. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and their continued enforcement have given us a better America. But all bureaucracies have the incentive to expand their portfolio and some unprincipled beneficiaries have the incentive to milk the expansion.

 

So today, we have the circumstance of legal theories like “disparate impact” asserting that it’s racist to require a college or even a high school degree, or to employ skills testing for job applicants. We have elite bureaucracies imposing ratios on limited educational and work opportunities, and calling it affirmative action.

 

And we have an elite and media culture that calls it racist to question government policies that choreograph and ration access to life’s opportunities.

 

It goes much further, of course. Anyone who questions any of government’s progressive empire, from welfare, to environmental regulation, to national education policy, is accused of selfishly hating the poor, clean air, and education for children.

 

But in fact, it all comes down to a debate over the efficacy and benefit of an overweening state. Those who love political control claim to be the only ones that love their fellow man.

 

It’s getting old.

Kermit Gosnell Trial: Much Ado About Nothing

By Matt Barber

Sunday, April 28, 2013

 

What’s the big deal?

 

I mean, why are we surprised that an abortionist and his staff would, behind the walls of an always-lethal abortion clinic, commit one of the most horrific serial killings in American history? What did you think abortionists do, heal people?

 

Why are we taken aback that there was no oversight, no regulation, or that Planned Parenthood, though privy to the clinic’s filthy, medieval conditions, refused to report it to the Department of Health? After all, Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama and the DNC have vehemently opposed all laws – such as those in Virginia, Mississippi and elsewhere – designed to prevent exactly the same kind of squalid conditions found in Gosnell’s clinic (and others), laws that simply direct abortion mills to meet the same minimal safety standards required of all other medical facilities.

 

You didn’t really buy that whole “women’s health” nonsense, did you?

 

Sucker.

 

Seriously, there are so few sociopathic doctors left willing to hack alive those inconvenient little buggers; so you anti-choice nuts need to just chill. Who cares about “blood smeared walls,” or babies left to drown in toilets, or snipped spinal cords, or dismembered body parts kept in jars, or screaming, crying newborns silenced by decapitation? What did you think women were “choosing” with abortion, some kind of medical treatment? We’re not removing a tumor here. You’ve got to kill a few babies to make a “reproductive freedom” omelette. Besides, there’s billions to be made in the death racket.

 

Let’s keep it real. The only difference between what happened in Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic and what happens every day in Planned Parenthoods across the country can be measured by a matter of inches – by the child’s proximity to her mother in the room. Whether the baby is in the womb or 12 inches removed, a dead baby is a dead baby, right? So why all the drama? Relax. You know, Roe v. Wade and all.

 

Besides, what’s an abortionist to do (wink, wink) if that resilient little pest does survive, if she’s born alive? I appreciate President Obama’s candor on the matter. Like he said, laws preventing abortionists like Gosnell from finishing her off are “really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.” Snippety-snip, eh, Barack? You know, choice and all.

 

Or, as Gosnell attorney Jack McMahon noted during the trial, it’s “ludicrous … to say a baby is born alive because it moves one time.” You anti-choice zealots don’t get to define the terms here. One man’s “alive” is another man’s “unwanted pregnancy.” Potato, potahto.

 

And why are we stunned that the mainstream media have spiked a story with all the bloody and salacious newsworthy trappings that – had abortion not been involved – would have filled the news cycle 24/7?

 

You think some now-barren, 40-something copy editor who’s had five abortions wants to draw attention to its grisly reality? You think she wants to be reminded of her own string of dismembered little choices? No, better to sip appletinis with the boys down at the National Press Club and pretend it never happened. Now that’s reproductive freedom! That’s freedom of the press!

 

In reality, to the media, this stuff is old news. Gosnell is on trial for doing something nearly indistinguishable from partial-birth abortion – a “never necessary” procedure (according to the AMA) Obama vocally endorsed. He said that banning it was part of a concerted effort “to steadily roll back the hard-won rights of American women.”

 

Furthermore, why are we surprised that this rush-to-judgment-when-it-suits-his-political-agenda president suddenly “can’t comment” on Gosnell “because it’s an active trial”? Remember? This is the same race-baiting “community organizer” who said that Cambridge police “acted stupidly” when arresting a combative black Harvard professor who, as it turned out, was himself acting stupidly. Don’t forget; this is the same president who had no problem laying guilt on a “presumed innocent” George Zimmerman, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

 

Funny, I actually do have a son and, when he was born, he looked a lot like those little boys Gosnell and Planned Parenthood kill every day. Come to think of it, most of them looked almost identical to Trayvon, skin color and all.

 

Curious.

 

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called Obama out on his refusal to address Gosnell: “Mr. President, your silence on this issue is deafening,” he said.

 

I agree. The left’s silence – to include the mainstream media – speaks volumes. It’s a tacit endorsement of Gosnell’s gruesome practices. And why shouldn’t it be?

 

To “pro-choicers” it’s not that old Kermit did anything wrong; it’s just that he got caught doing it. He was careless. He pulled back the curtain of “reproductive freedom” to reveal abortion’s house of horrors. Kermit Gosnell is liberalism personified, and liberalism relies on deceit. The “progressive” culture is a culture of death. Moral relativism is as moral relativism does.

 

Speaking of moral relativism, on Friday the first sitting president in United States history gave the keynote address at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Nice timing. Even as the Gosnell mass-murder trial wraps up, Obama was lending the full weight of his presidency to a mass-murder celebration.

 

His message? All you Planned Parenthood-hating, anti-Gosnell right-wingers better listen up: “No matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing that the past few years have shown,” he promised. “That Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.”

 

Yeah, we’ll see about that, slick.

Why Is There a Hookup Culture?

By Dennis Prager

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

 

It is well known that most college students engage at one time or another in what is known as a "hookup" -- an emotionless, commitment-less sexual encounter.

 

Yesterday, I interviewed Donna Freitas, author of "The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy."

 

In our dialogue, we agreed that her book subtitle was accurate, but we disagreed as to the cause. Freitas, who holds a Ph.D. in religious studies, blamed it on peer pressure, the sex-drenched social media of young people and the ubiquity of pornography. I blamed three other culprits: feminism, careerism and secularism.

 

I was in college and graduate school during the heyday of modern feminism. And the central message to women was clear as daylight: You are no different from men. Therefore, among other things, you can enjoy sex just like they do -- just for the fun of it and with many partners. The notion that nearly every woman yearns for something deeper when she has sexual intercourse with a man was dismissed as patriarchal propaganda. The culture might tell her to restrict sex to a man who loves her and might even marry her, but the liberated woman knows better: Sex without any emotional ties or possibility of future commitment can be "empowering."

 

Feminism taught -- and professors on the New York Times op-ed page continue to write -- that there are no significant natural differences between men and women. Therefore, it is not unique to male nature to want to have sex with many partners. Rather, a "Playboy culture" "pressures" men into having frequent, uncommitted sex. And, to the extent this is a part of male nature, it is equally true of women's natures.

 

Another feminist message to women was that just as a woman can have sex like a man, she can also find career as fulfilling as men do. Therefore, pursuing an "M-R-S" at college is just another residue of patriarchy. Women should be as interested in a career as men are. Any hint of the notion that women want, more than anything else, to marry and make a family is sexist, demeaning, and untrue.

 

One result is that instead of trying to find a potential husband, young women are under feminist pressure to show that they couldn't care less about forming an exclusive, let alone permanent, relationship with a man. And this provides another reason for her to engage in non-emotional, commitment-free sex.

 

The third reason for the hookup culture is the radical secularization of the college campus. The concept of the holy is dead at American campuses, and without the notion of the holy it is very difficult to make the case for minimizing, let alone avoiding, non-marital sex. Sex, which every great religion seeks to channel into marriage, has no such role in secular thinking. The only issues for students to be aware of when it comes to sex are health and consent. Beyond those two issues, there is not a single reason not to have sex with many people.

 

That's why colleges -- secular temples that they are -- throughout America reinforce the centrality and importance of sex as a mechanical act. There are "sex weeks" at many of our institutions of higher learning that feature demonstrations of sex toys, S&M seminars, porn stars coming to speak, etc.

 

Feminist teaching about male-female sameness; feminist teaching that women will derive their greatest meaning from career, not from marriage and family; and the complete removal of religious values and teaching from the college campus are, indeed, "leaving a generation unhappy, sexually unfulfilled [certainly most of the women] and confused about intimacy."

 

But this is not how Dr. Freitas sees it.

 

As Esfehani Smith wrote in her review of the book for the Wall Street Journal: "In the book's conclusion, Ms. Freitas says that she wants young adults to have 'good sex,' a category that can include, she suggests, hooking up -- as long as students recognize that casual sex is 'just one option among many.' Yet this jars with the nearly 200 preceding pages on the corrosive effects of casual sex."

 

Kudos, then to Dr. Freitas for delineating the tragedy. But I suspect that it is her very Ph.D. that prevents her from understanding either the roots of this human tragedy or its solution. Both would involve the moral and intellectual rejection of the very institution that granted it to her.

The Significance of Persistent Guantanamo

By Paul Jacob

Sunday, May 05, 2013

 

Symbols are not identical to the things they symbolize.

 

•A nation’s flag is not the same thing as the nation itself.

•A star on the map representing a capital city is not actually the dirt and grass and trees and concrete and lumber and people in that capital.

•A picture of a gun is not the material weapon . . . and thus won’t do much at all to stop a criminal.

 

Most people completely understand this simple principle, including those who have not taken an advanced course in semiotics at the Sorbonne. Even young children comprehend the distinction between a sign, or symbol, and its object, or referent (though they may smilingly say otherwise).

 

But is it possible that President Barack Obama does not?

 

As a candidate, Obama pledged to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Bush Administration locked up enemy combatants and suspected terrorists from across the globe captured in the War on Terror. He called it a “sad chapter in American history.”

 

As president, Mr. Obama moved quickly to sign an executive order to shut the facility down by year’s end. Five months later, a U.S. Senate with 60 Democrats voted 90-6 to prohibit the president from moving the prisoners onto U.S. soil.

 

Last week at his news conference, President Obama renewed his call to close down Guantanamo, saying, “The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”

 

But if we need to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo because it is wrong to hold people indefinitely without any charge or trial or conviction, making Gitmo a seriously negative symbol for our country, why is President Obama’s policy, as the New York Times reports, “not to release those prisoners, but to continue to imprison them indefinitely under the laws of war — just somewhere else.”

 

Is Obama’s lofty notion really just to trick the world into thinking we’re the good guys by moving around our prison camps in three-card monte fashion?

 

I really liked the old idea of actually being the good guys. That was great symbolism.

 

It’s true that Congress has, in bipartisan fashion, attempted to block his efforts to close Guantanamo. But it turns out that those efforts have been exceedingly lackluster. The Administration even has the power to waive many of the restrictions imposed by Congress. Somehow, it has never exercised that power. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon said, “The administration has never certified a single transfer” for consideration.

 

In fact, Obama signed a 2011 executive order specifically creating a formal indefinite detention system at Gitmo. “It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of this executive order,” an American Civil Liberties Union official said at the time. Administration 0fficials have acknowledged that under Obama's policy some detainees might be held for life without trial.

 

“So when the president of the United States righteously condemns the idea of imprisoning someone forever without charge or trial,” Charles Davis wrote bluntly in a column at Lobe Log, the foreign policy blog, “it’s important to remember the truth about his record. It’s important to remember he is lying.”

 

Administration officials, asked for specifics on what could be done after reporters were no doubt awesomely inspired by Obama’s oratory, responded by acknowledging they have not moved quickly enough to set up review boards to seek waivers for moving low-risk prisoners and pledging to fill a post currently left unfilled at the State Department.

 

Now, large numbers of detainees at Guantanamo desperately protest their plight with a hunger strike. The current regime has responded by force-feeding 21 men, eliciting from the American Medical Association and many others condemnation for a violation of medical ethics.

 

So, what can we make of this mess? Talk is cheap, but actions speak louder than words. Mr. Obama talks a good game. He’s so symbolic. But our policies — his policies — contradict what he says.

 

When President Obama signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, bestowing upon him the power to incarcerate American citizens indefinitely without charge, he wrote in a “signing statement” that his administration would not “authorize” the use of that power. Of course, by his signature he absolutely authorized it for himself, should he change his mind, or for any successor.

 

As for changing his mind, when Obama signed the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, his signing statement made no mention of whether or not the Obama Administration will be snatching American citizens off the street and holding them for decades or life without any due process of law.

 

What’s the symbolism of that?