Daily Archives: January 5, 2010

I find it amazingly funny that Obama,  who has devoted his first year in office to pushing his socialist agenda domestically and flying about the planet at the expense of the American taxpayer,  has suddenly decided to spend a few seconds of his time trying to protect the United States from its sworn enemies.   I would bet money that Obama’s internal polling has told him that this has hurt not only him, but the entire democrat party.    JD

President Obama may have returned from Hawaii Monday, but the holiday break truly ends Tuesday, as the White House hosts gatherings on two vital fronts — terrorism and health care.

“Hit for being too slow and diffident in his initial response to the Christmas Day terror plot,” Politico writes, Obama “is hoping for a do-over Tuesday” as “the White House is trying to project an air of decisive action by the president, on an issue where the stakes couldn’t be higher.” Obama meets Tuesday with his security team to discuss the reviews he has ordered on airline security and passenger screening. At the gathering, the Associated Press writes, “Obama will get updates on the investigation from [Robert] Mueller, on the prosecution from [Eric] Holder and on the review of terrorist detection techniques from [Janet] Napolitano. [John] Brennan will update the president on his own review of the system of watch lists and outline his initial findings. Agency heads will comment on their internal reviews.”

Some of what Obama plans to announce is already out: “The Obama administration has transferred dozens of names from a broad terrorism database to watch lists that are more closely monitored,” the Wall Street Journal reports. ABC News says that “dozens of people” were added to the Selectee List, “approximately 16,000 individuals who require more stringent screening before they are permitted to board an airplane,” while a “relatively small” number of additional names were added to the No-Fly List. Byron York writes that the Detroit plot was “a head-on collision between Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric and the reality of terrorism.” Michael Kinsley makes the case for why Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should get a criminal trial: “We have nothing to be ashamed of, little to fear and much to be proud of in choosing to err on the side of treating captured foreign terrorists as we would treat any upstanding American who tried to blow up an airplane full of people.”

Also on the White House radar, the Washington Post writes that “the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a trap by promising new information about al-Qaeda’s top leadership.” The Los Angeles Times adds that the revelation “suggests a new level of sophistication in Al Qaeda’s efforts to retaliate against” the CIA. Beyond that, the New York Times reports, the attack “dealt a devastating blow to the spy agency’s operations against militants in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, eliminating an elite team using an informant with strong jihadi credentials. The attack further delayed hope of penetrating Al Qaeda’s upper ranks, and also seemed potent evidence of militants’ ability to strike back against their American pursuers.

The New York Times looks at America’s “relationship with the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has filled his government with numerous members of his family and who wants to ensure that his son Ahmed succeeds him.” Time writes that Obama’s “substantial policy positions have proven to be remarkably similar to those of the second-term, chastened-by-reality George W. Bush.”

On health care, Bloomberg writes what has looked apparent for weeks: “Democrats will likely drop the idea of setting up a new government-run insurance program as they try to quickly resolve differences between House and Senate health-care bills.” There are plenty of differences between the two chambers beyond just the public option; a detailed list can be found here. Roll Call notes that “Democrats are looking to minimize the GOP’s opportunities to trip up health care reform legislation by scrapping a formal conference committee and settling their differences informally among themselves.”

House Democratic leaders plan to meet Tuesday with committee chairmen to discuss the way forward. Later Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer will meet with Obama on the subject, with Harry Reid and Dick Durbin joining via conference call, according to Politico. Then the full House Democratic Caucus will meet Thursday, though many lawmakers will have to call in from their districts. According to a new federal report, Americans spent “an eye-popping total of $2.3 trillion” on health care in 2008, the Associated Press writes, “even though spending actually slowed dramatically that year because of the recession.” Firedoglake gives a liberal take on the best possible bill the negotiators could assemble.

Meanwhile, raise your hand if you didn’t crash the November state dinner at the White House. Following up on a Newsmax scoop, several outlets report that another uninvited guest got into the event already made famous by the Salahis, though as best we can tell this guest will not be the subject of a reality show or a party to scores of lawsuits. The Washington Post says the third crasher was “Carlos Allen, a D.C. party promoter who runs an event space in Mount Pleasant.” The New York Times writes that his presence was belatedly discovered after “a review of video from the party, which was held to honor the prime minister of India, showed that a man wearing a tuxedo entered with members of the Indian delegation.”