RUTHFULLY YOURS

I spoke Monday with a highly decorated former Special Forces operator and asked what he thought about Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant who was released over the weekend after five years of Taliban captivity in exchange for five hard cases out of Gitmo.

The former operator suggested a firing squad might be appropriate.

His view is widely shared in the community of warriors who risked—and, in at least six cases, lost—their lives searching for a soldier who wrote his parents that “the horror that is america is disgusting” before vanishing from his post in Afghanistan in 2009.

Whether Sgt. Bergdahl was taken by the enemy, deserted the Army or defected to the Taliban remains to be established. But just to be clear where the former operator is coming from, Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states: “Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.”

But wait: We are not “in time of war.” We are in Time of Obama.

In Time of Obama, dereliction of duty is heroism, releasing mass murderers with American blood on their hands is a good way to start a peace process, negotiating with terrorists is not negotiating with terrorists, and exchanging senior Taliban commanders for a lone American soldier is not an incentive to take other Americans hostage but rather proof that America brings its people home.

In Time of Obama, we may get the facts about the circumstances of Sgt. Bergdahl’s disappearance and captivity. But first his parents are going to get an invitation to the White House so Mr. Obama can milk the occasion for his own political purposes. First Sgt. Bergdahl will be welcomed home by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. First “senior defense officials” are going to prejudge a potential verdict by a military court because, as one such official averred, “five years is enough.”

In Time of Obama it has become impossible to credit claims by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and National Security Adviser Susan Rice that a prisoner exchange had to be made because Sgt. Bergdahl was in dangerously declining health.

This assertion was instantly contradicted by eyewitness accounts that the sergeant was “in good condition” when he was released by his captors. “Freed U.S. soldier Bowe Berghdal developed a love for Afghan green tea, taught his captors badminton, and even celebrated Christmas and Easter with the hardline Islamists,” the AFP reported Sunday, citing a Pakistani militant commander.

No one begrudges Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and his family the relief and joy they feel now that he is free from the hell of enemy confinement. But in the aftermath of his welcome release, it is striking to read the accounts of his former military comrades who wonder about the price the country has paid to retrieve him after he wandered from his post in Afghanistan.

That price includes the danger that the five Taliban terrorists traded for his release will return to the battlefield to kill again. Perhaps other Americans will be their targets. But more tangibly for those who served with Sgt. Bergdahl, the price includes those who were wounded or killed in the five-year search to locate and retrieve him.

First-hand accounts are appearing, on and off the record, from men who served in the unit with Sgt. Bergdahl or who were part of the special forces teams dispatched to find him. The resources devoted to the search were enormous, and some of those soldiers will never return.

We don’t know the complete story of how and why Sgt. Bergdahl vanished at a forward base in Afghanistan. But there is evidence to suggest that he left his post without authorization and was then captured. Emails he sent to his parents before his capture also suggest he was alienated from the Army and his mission, and perhaps even his country.

What Sgt. Bergdahl now owes his comrades, and his country, is a full accounting of his actions before and after he was taken prisoner. The videos he made while captive were no doubt coerced under duress. But serving as an enemy prisoner is not absolution for any military dereliction that led to his capture. His fellow soldiers and now his government have risked much to get Sgt. Bergdahl home. Now Sgt. Bergdahl’s duty is to face up to the consequences of his own actions as a soldier.

We’ve filed a Senate ethics complaint against nine Senators who prodded the agency to silence opponents.

(Dick Durbin-Illinois, Charles Schumer- New York, Carl Levin-Michigan,Michael Bennet -Colorado, Sheldon Whitehouse -Rhode Island, Al Franken -Minnesotta, Jeanne Shaheen New Hamshire, Jeff Merkley Oregon and Tom Udall New Mexico.

Carl Levin is retiring, Dick Durbin, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Jeanne Shaheen, are incumbents this year)

On Monday the Center for Competitive Politics filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against nine U.S. senators: for interfering with IRS tax proceedings; for misusing official resources for campaign purposes; and for improper conduct that reflects poorly upon the Senate. Attempting to use the IRS to advance a partisan, electoral agenda is a fundamental assault on good government. We believe these elected officials have staged such an assault.

The complaint documents how the senators improperly interfered with IRS adjudications to further their party’s electoral prospects. They pressured the IRS to undertake income-tax investigations of specific organizations, to find that specific organizations were in violation of the law, to reach predetermined results pertaining to pending applications by individual organizations for nonprofit status, and to adopt specific regulatory interpretations and policies to further their campaign goals.

A year ago in May it became public knowledge that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative organizations. Republicans have since attempted to find a “smoking gun” directly linking the scandal to the White House. That likely does not exist, because that’s not the way these things are done. Meanwhile, their quest has helped enable the press to ignore obvious abuses of power emanating from the Senate.

After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on Jan. 21, 2010, Democrats adopted a campaign strategy of attempting to squelch the speech of conservative groups. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.)—named in our complaint—introduced the so-called Disclose Act, saying on Feb. 11 that it would make targeted speakers “think twice” before speaking out. “The deterrent effect should not be underestimated,” he added.

At campaign fundraisers in the summer of 2010, President Obama repeatedly denounced conservative organizations for “running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates,” identifying Americans for Prosperity by name. On Aug. 27 the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed a complaint with the IRS against Americans for Prosperity.

Senate Democrats twice failed, on straight party-line votes, to end a filibuster of the Disclose Act. Mr. Obama told Democratic donors that they had “tried to fix” the problem but failed.

The attempt to silence opponents through legislation may be ugly, but such hardball politics are not a violation of Senate ethics rules. After failing to pass Disclose, however, the senators in our complaint began a pattern of improper conduct aimed at pressuring the IRS to harass and investigate their political opponents.

Senators may inquire about agency practices and operations. But they cross an ethical line when they interfere in pending tax exemption applications or pressure an agency to investigate or prosecute specific organizations.

Just days after the final defeat of the Disclose Act in October 2010, Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.)—another senator in our complaint—wrote to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman on his official letterhead to demand that the IRS “quickly examine the tax status of Crossroads GPS,” a major conservative nonprofit.

Czech President Milos Zeman Gives Amazing Speech about Islam, Israel and Anti-Semitism

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/czech-president-milos-zeman-gives-amazing-speech-about-islam-and-anti-semitism/
Milos Zeman, the President of the Czech Republic courageously condemned the culture of Islamic anti-Semitism behind the Brussels attack as well as commenting in an informed fashion on the larger trend of Islamic Supremacist violence.

“The only holiday of independence which I can never leave out is the celebration of the independence of the Jewish State of Israel,” Zeman said.

“There are other nations with whom we share the same values, whether it’s free elections or a free market economy, but no one is threatening to delete those states from the map. No one shoots at their border towns and no one wants to see the citizens of those nations driven out of their country.”

“There is a term called political correctness and I consider it to be a euphemism for political cowardice. So I refuse to be cowardly.”

“It is necesarry to name the enemy of human civilization and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance. This fanatical creed does not only attack a single nation, as we saw after September 11. Muslim fanatics in Nigeria recently captured 200 young Christian girls. And in the flower at the heart of Europe, an abominable killing took place at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.”

“I am not reassured by the claims that this is the work of only a small fringe group. Quite the contrary. I believe that xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism stems from the essential ideology that these fanatical groups are based on.”

“And let me provide a proof of this assertion in a quote from one of its sacred texts. ‘The Jews will hide behind stones and trees. Then the tree will call out, ‘A Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.’ The stone will call out, ‘A Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.’

“I criticized those who call for the killing of the Arabs, but I don’t know of about any mass movement that calls for the mass murder of Arabs. I do however know of an anti-civilizational movement which calls for the mass murder of the Jews.”

“One of the articles in the Hamas Charter calls for killing Jews.”

“Do we really want to pretend that this is only a small group of extremists. Can we really be politically correct and insist that they are all good and that only a tiny number of the extremists and fundamentalists are committing these crimes?”

“One of my favourite essayists, Michel de Montaigne once wrote: “Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse evil.”

“We began the Arab Spring, which became the Arab Winter, and the fight against the secular dictatorships has become a battle run by Al-Qaida.”

“Let’s throw out political correctness and call a spade, a spade.

“Yes we have friends in the world to whom we express our solidarity, but this solidarity costs us nothing because these folks are never threatened.”

“A true sense of solidarity is solidarity with a friend who is in distress and in danger, and so here I am.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/06/01/McCaskill-Hillary-has-resume-to-be-terrific-president

McCaskill: Hillary Has Résumé to be ‘Terrific’ President

In 2008 Enthusiastic support for Obama in the primaries.

IN 2006

“I really don’t want to be in an elevator alone with her,” McCaskill told the friend, according to the forthcoming book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and Politico’s Jonathan Allen.
The deep tension between Clinton and McCaskill first formed after McCaskill made remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that struck raw nerves for both Hillary and President Clinton.

In 2006, McCaskill was debating then-Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) on the Sunday morning political show. The two were in the midst of a campaign that McCaskill ultimately won, and the Clintons had given her strong backing.

But when the subject of Bill Clinton came up, McCaskill said, “He’s been a great leader but I don’t want my daughter near him.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/195193-mccaskill-didnt-want-to-be-in-elevator-with-clinton#ixzz33U2ppfTe

IN JANUARY 2014

Claire McCaskill To Rand Paul: Don’t You Dare Play The Lewinsky Card

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is incensed that Rand Paul dredged up a scandal from the 1990s.

McCaskill ripped the Kentucky senator on Tuesday for saying that Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky undermines Democratic claims of the GOP’s “war on women” and that, fair or unfair, the scandal could be a factor in Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign.

“I think I can speak for most women to say that I found what he said infuriating. I think most women understand they should not be held accountable for the behavior of their husbands,” McCaskill told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “You know, frankly, it was a long time ago. Our country did very well under the leadership of Bill Clinton.”

Paul accused former President Clinton on Sunday of engaging in “predatory behavior” with Lewinsky and, pointing to the successful female members of his family, argued that there is no such thing as a “war on women.”

McCaskill swatted down Paul’s bit of mansplaining.

“I think Rand Paul is grasping, trying to show that he can be tough and win the presidential nomination,” she said.

There’s an old joke here in Arkansas about President Clinton returning to his home state for a Razorbacks championship football game. While there, he’s given two cute little piglets by a wealthy agribusiness, Razorback alumnus. As he later disembarks Marine 1 on the White House lawn Bill has a cute piglet under each arm. At the foot of the stairway, a sharp young Marine lance corporal snaps a smart salute and barks, “Nice pigs, Sir!” A grinning Clinton hoists them a bit higher and says, “Yeah, they a couple of real Arkansas beauties aren’t they; I got one for Hillary and one for Janet Reno.”

The Marine, still holding his salute says, “Smart trade, Sir!”

Well, it would appear that America’s second black president isn’t quite as adept at hog-swapping as America’s first black president was. As we have learned in the past twenty-four hours, our outlaw president has taken it upon himself to ignore the law and oversee a prisoner trade between our country and the Taliban.that is so one-sided as to once again demonstrate to the world that in the Obama White House, ineptitude is the acceptable standard of performance.

Obama got his pig, and I make no apology for that description of PFC Bergdahl (he was promoted to sergeant while being held captive) for this is where this discussion turns deadly serious. As a former non-commissioned officer who served in combat with another airborne unit, my first reaction upon hearing of Bergdahl’s desertion many years ago was, get him back, give him a fair court-martial and put him in front of a firing squad. Good, honorable paratroopers lost their lives searching for this treasonous bastard. Various sources from Bergdahl’s unit, the 501st Airborne Infantry are reporting in around the Web with this information:

PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, SSG Clayton Bowen, PFC Morris Walker, SSG Michael Murphrey, 2LT Darryn Andrews, were all KIA from our unit who died looking for Bergdahl. Many others from various units were wounded or killed while actively looking for Bergdahl.

Those deaths, every single one, are on Bergdahl’s head. For the squeamish among you who find my opinion too harsh, here’s Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the statutory regulation dealing with desertion:

Andrew McCarthy understands the law—and the politics.

On December 20, 1998 the House of Representatives approved a two-article bill of impeachment against President William Jefferson Clinton. In it, Clinton was accused of lying to a grand jury, suborning witnesses’ perjury in a civil case, and other such criminal conduct. What was missing from the Senate trial on that indictment — and from the nation at that time — was the political momentum to remove Clinton from office. So, like the only other president so far to be impeached, Clinton was not convicted in the Senate trial that followed.

Andy McCarthy, a former senior federal prosecutor, has written the new book Faithless Execution, which is both a powerful case for the impeachment of Barack Obama and also a politically savvy explanation of why it will never happen. It’s brilliant and frustrating. Brilliant because of the constitutional analysis of the impeachment mechanism and frustrating because it recognizes that no matter how deserving of it he may be, Barack Obama will never be impeached.

Article II Section 4 of the Constitution says that the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States “…shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Treason and bribery are, of course, crimes prosecutable in federal court. When impeachment is discussed — and it’s not in polite company these days because timorous Republicans are frightened by mere mention of the “i-word” — it’s largely understood to encompass only criminal conduct.

But that’s not what the Framers understood it to mean. The main “go-to” treatise on the Constitution I use is The Heritage Guide to the Constitution published by the Heritage Foundation. It says, “Because ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ was a term of art in English impeachments, a plausible reading supported by many scholars is that the grounds for impeachment can not only be the defined crimes of treason and bribery, but also other criminal or even noncriminal behavior amounting to a serious dereliction of duty.”

McCarthy is one of those scholars, illustrating the point with references to an impeachment that was contemporaneous with the Constitutional Convention and debates among its members. The term “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as McCarthy points out, “…is a concept rooted not on statutory offenses fit for criminal court proceedings, but in damage done to societal order by persons in whom great public trust has been reposed.” One example he gives, the 1786 impeachment of the British governor-general of India, proves the point. William Hastings was impeached not only for the crimes of bribery and extortion, but also abuse of power.

McCarthy’s recitation of the history of the Constitutional Convention’s consideration of impeachment is worth the price of his book. I won’t give it all away, but the quotations from James Madison on the need for Congress to be able to remove the Chief Magistrate for “perfidy,” and the profound influence Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England had on the convention’s members (it spoke of the maladministration of officers who would be subject to impeachment), are essential to understanding the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard.

So if a president is guilty of significant malfeasance or misfeasance in office he can be removed by impeachment. But will he be? Only if the nation’s political mood demands it.

The most important lesson Faithless Execution draws from those points is that impeachment is a political mechanism available to a political body — the Congress — that is separate and distinct from the judiciary. It’s not a legal mechanism, and unless the political momentum across the nation is clearly in favor of impeaching a president, it cannot be done.

I will actually miss Jay Carney and his lame and constipated defense of every Obamination….I would have loved to hear him take questions on the release of terrorists….Maybe Hillary will hire him….rsk

In 2008, Jay Carney went from covering the White House to lying for the White House. Carney’s lies weren’t unusual among his media colleagues, but unlike them he began lying in an official capacity, assuring his former colleagues that his bosses were completely unaware of what they were doing.

Carney went from covering the presidential campaign for TIME and CNN to covering up for the same people he had been covering. He didn’t do it for the money. TIME was paying Carney $60,000 more than Obama would. He did it because he believed.

You don’t take on the thankless job of being Biden’s Director of Communications when you have a prestigious position at the top of your profession because your big dream involves chasing after the gaffes of a professional idiot whose whiskey-pickled brain has convinced him that he’s a political genius.

You take it because you believe in the agenda.

Jay Carney was a compulsive liar who truly believed in the cause he was lying for. Like the Communist hacks he had dealt with while working in TIME’s Moscow Bureau, he had faith in the revolution.

In 2008, while still working for TIME, he praised Obama’s “refreshingly non-ideological declaration about how best to govern” and called it a “welcome change from the ideology-first recent past.”

“Are conservatives really so blind to Gov. Sarah Palin’s true liabilities that they believe this is the reason she was mauled in the press? How appalling,” he ranted.

During the election, Carney had cheered for Obama and booed McCain. He had “fact checked” Republican press releases while drawing pink hearts on anything that came from Obama Inc.

It was as if he had already been on Obama’s payroll without bothering to inform his bosses.

Before Obama began paying him $172,000 a year to lie, Jay Carney was lying for him on his own. But it was when Carney began being paid to lie, when the content of his lies was dictated to him by the White House, when he had to stand in front of his former colleagues and recite the talking points that he used to organically insert into his TIME screeds that everything went wrong.

On his first day on the job, he was already in his familiar defensive mode looking and sounding like a yuppie complaining about a spoiled organic banana. “Look, he is leading,” he whined. “He led for two years. I mean, this is a president who had done big things. He has tackled hard issues.”

Despite his experience on the other side of the table and his claim that he liked being up there, he was nervous and uncomfortable. Carney had been a good liar when he was reporting on the White House, but he was a bad liar as the White House Press Secretary.

Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. But every parent is not the president of the United States, whose primary responsibility is to protect the security and interests of all Americans, both now and in the long-term. The release of 5 “high-risk”––a phrase meaning they’re eager to kill Americans–– Taliban jihadists held in Guantanamo Bay is nothing more than ransom paid to kidnappers, and an invitation to the enemy to take more Americans captive and to hold them as bargaining chips for more concessions. And the release of hardened, high-ranking Taliban terrorists means there will be more dead Americans after theses soldiers of Allah return to the battlefield.

We shouldn’t give credence, however, to the criticism that Obama’s action uniquely violates the principle that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Obama’s administration has already been negotiating with the Taliban in order to craft some chimeric “peace agreement” with the Afghan government after we leave. And talking with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, is de facto “negotiating with terrorists.” But before Obama we have negotiated with terrorists on numerous occasions, and each time we have confirmed the moral hazard that attends trying to talk with fanatic ideologues that, like Auric Goldfinger, don’t expect us to talk, but to die.

How else did we secure the release of the 52 Americans held for 444 days by the Iranians starting in 1979, other than by negotiating ransom with hostage-takers? The hostages came home after Jimmy Carter issued a series of Executive Orders that released billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets in American banks, and that indemnified the Iranians from any lawsuits suing the regime for the destruction of American property and the abuse of the diplomats. So much for Carter’s bluster that “we will not yield to blackmail.” During the negotiations the Iranians serially humiliated the Americans. For example, Carter aide Hamilton Jordan donned a fake moustache and wig to meet with the Iranian negotiator in Paris. After weeks of negotiations, with a deal seemingly close, Ayatollah Khomeini killed it with a public speech in which he called the embassy kidnappings “a crushing blow to the world-devouring USA” and left the decision to the new Iranian parliament, which was months from being seated. Negotiations continued with a series of concessions offered by Carter, all of which were contemptuously slapped down by the Iranians. As a result, the prestige of Iran as the foremost jihadist foe of the infidel West expanded across the globe, providing inspiration and material support to other jihadist groups convinced by America’s weakness that we were a civilization with “foundations of straw,” as bin Laden put it, and ripe for destruction.

“It was an extraordinary day for America,” said National Security Advisor Susan Rice on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, referring to the announcement of a deal that would free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Afghan captivity after five years. Indeed it was an extraordinary day: it was a day when we signaled to the world that America officially caves in to terrorists for hostages.

Well, not America herself, but President Barack Obama specifically. Obama, who has openly expressed frustration with the Constitutional constraints of checks-and-balances on his dictatorial impulses, circumvented Congress’ collective back to clinch a deal that would free five of the most dangerous guests at Club Med Guantanamo in exchange for Bergdahl. Even the Afghan government condemned it as a breach of international law.

His administration denies, of course, that it broke any laws or this country’s longstanding policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. Bergdahl wasn’t a “hostage,” claimed our anti-war, anti-Israel, anti-military, anti-American exceptionalism Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel: “We didn’t negotiate with terrorists. Sergeant Bergdahl is a prisoner of war. That’s a natural process.” What does that even mean? Is he saying we didn’t negotiate, or that the enemy aren’t terrorists? A prisoner of war can’t be a hostage? Sorry, but a prisoner of war becomes a hostage the moment the enemy makes demands for his safe return. A “natural process”? That phrase is meaningless.

I should concede that Hagel is technically correct: we didn’t negotiate, because giving the enemy exactly what they ask for isn’t negotiation – it is capitulation. Though America should not abandon her dead, wounded, or captured warriors, trading five Taliban leaders for one soldier who deserted after expressing his disgust for our own military is surrender, not a successful trade that benefits American interests. Bergdahl reportedly emailed his parents that “the US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at,” that he was “ashamed to even be an American,” and that “the horror that is America is disgusting.” Some report that he converted to Islam during his captivity and, outrageously if true, trained his captors in bomb-making and ambush skills.

And let’s get this clear about Bergdahl – he didn’t “wander” off base that June day in 2009, as the media so often put it, like a lost toddler; if reports from the ground are to be believed (and they are), he intentionally and premeditatedly deserted. In the wake of that, at least six good American soldiers died or were wounded in search attempts. Their names: Staff Sgt. Clayton Bowen, Pfc. Morris Walker, Staff Sgt. Kurt Curtiss, 2nd Lt. Darryn Andrews, Pfc. Matthew Michael Martinek, and Staff Sgt. Michael Murphrey. Their families and friends have suffered a far greater loss than the Bergdahl parents.