Trump Turns the Tables

The Ancient Laws of Unintended Consequences - Victor Davis Hanson

Finally, after Democrats, Obama officials, and the media massaged the leaks from surveillance of Team Trump, in Samson-like fashion, Trump pulled down the temple on everyone — by tweeting groundbreaking but unsupported accusations that a sitting president of the United States and his team were the catalysts for such unlawful tapping. Apparently, he reckoned that the liberal conversation would therefore turn defensive rather than accusatory. If the progressive media and intelligence agencies were hand-in-glove leaking damaging rumors about Trump, and if none were yet substantiated, then the issue reversed and turned instead on a new question: How were they trafficking in confidential intelligence information if not from skullduggery of some sort? No wonder that some smarter observers backtracked from the Russian-Trump collusion charges of the past six months, given that the leaks were less likely to be credible than they were criminal. The accusers have become the accused. And who would police the police?

The media and the anti-Trump Republicans decried Trump’s reckless and juvenile antics as unbefitting a president. Perhaps, but they may have forgotten Trump’s animal cunning and instincts: Each time Trump impulsively raises controversial issues in sloppy fashion — some illegal aliens harm American citizens as they enjoy sanctuary-city status, NATO European partners welch on their promised defense contributions, Sweden is a powder-keg of unvetted and unassimilated immigrants from the war-torn Middle East — the news cycle follows and confirms the essence of Trump’s otherwise rash warnings. We are learning that Trump is inexact and clumsy but often prescient; his opponents, usually deliberate and precise but disingenuous.

Emphasis added to original. Read the whole article through the link above.

Also, here is a good summary of the articles confirming that the Obama administration had not only surveilled Trump and his associates, but also unmasked the identities of US citizens and illegally leaked that information to the press:
12 Pieces Of Proof: The MSM Knew Obama Spied On Trump and LIED To Cover It Up - John Nolte

HealthCare.fail

Declaring Victory! - Tom Maguire

We have something else for which to be thankful this weekend - Team Obama claims to have won their recent battle against HealthCare.fail:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said on Sunday that it had met its goal for improving HealthCare.gov so that the website now “will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.”

...

Left unanswered - whom do they imagine they are kidding? Reality will overtake their BS quite quickly, and the legacy media seems to have put down the pom-poms and embraced the notion that there is a real problem here.

Obamacare's architects plugged their ears and misled public - Michael Barone

Central to the goal of Obamacare's architects, universal health insurance, was preventing the possibility of exit. Its individual mandate meant everyone had to sign up for insurance.

...

If Obamacare's architects were keen on preventing exit, they blithely ignored voice. The legislation was unpopular when it was proposed, while it was passed and in the months and years afterwards.

Barack Obama seldom mentioned it in the 2012 campaign except for the provision allowing “children” under 26 to stay on mommy and daddy's policies.

The architects of Obamacare also had to deal with loyalty.

Polls have consistently shown that about 80 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health insurance and doctors. They have chosen each at one point or another and were not eager to change absent some serious aggravation.

Indemnity! Whiskey! Sexy! - James Taranto

One reason medical policies are so expensive is that their purpose is twofold. They provide not just indemnification against risk--that is, true insurance--but also payment for routine expenses. You can't buy medical "insurance" without buying an expensive service contract. That was true to some extent before ObamaCare. But that law makes the package more expensive for everybody by mandating both more services and "free" ones, and more expensive for the young in particular by jacking up their rates so as to subsidize higher-risk policyholders.

At the same time as ObamaCare raises the cost of having insurance, it reduces the risk of going without insurance--the reason why doing so "sucks!" As blogger Michael Eades points out, lacking insurance no longer makes you uninsurable. If you pass up insurance in 2014 and are diagnosed with a serious condition, you may face burdensome out-of-pocket expenses--just as you would have before. But ObamaCare promises that you'll be able to buy insurance in 2015, and at the same price as if you were still healthy.

The Ascent of Magical Thinking

Obama: The Myth of the Master Strategist - Jonah Goldberg

Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, “He meant to do that.”

And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle,” proclaimed then–New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It’s an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish — because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody ever likes to admit they were suckered.

But the fiction of Obama as a man three steps ahead has taken a terrible beating if you have eyes to see it.

A new theory of liberalism - Scott Johnson

A recent sad experience with a friend undergoing rehab has left me with another analogue. I now think liberalism is an addiction and displays all the behaviors commonly associated with addictive behavior.

Well, not “liberalism” per se. That policy-agenda is really an elaborate metaphorical delusion built to camouflage the true drug these poor souls crave so desperately: moral superiority.

It’s as powerful as heroin or cocaine. It supplies a terrific high: all sense of personal failure, betrayal, guilt, ineffectiveness, irrelevance, of being nothing and nobody, disappears in a flash. Instead our hero feels extraordinarily good about himself. He is helping. He is compassionate. He is without sin. He is sensitive, caring, part of the solution and not the problem. He feels handsome, daring and heroic. He thinks it will get him laid. How could he not love this?

He cannot see the harm he is doing, either at the micro level or at the cataclysmic macro level; he cannot see how his “generosity” with other people’s money, for example, has devastated the black community, turned it bitter, hopeless, impulsive, violent and addicted itself to free stuff from the gub’mint as well as the crutch of “racis” to justify everything.

Government is Magic - Daniel Greenfield

Healthcare.gov, like ObamaCare, was going to work because it was "good". Its goodness was by some measure other than result. It was morally good. It was progressive. And so the deity of liberal causes, perhaps Karl Marx or Progressia, the Goddess of Soup and Economic Dysfunction, would see to it that it would work. Karma would kick in and everything would work out because it had to.

This brand of magical thinking was once commonplace. It still is. And it's why things so rarely work out in some of the more messed up parts of the world. But the sort of attitude that would once have made anthropologists shake their heads is now commonplace here. Savages in suits, barbarians with iPads are certain that things will work because they have appeased the gods of modernity with their fonts, they have made a website that looks like a functioning website. And like the cargo culters who built fake control towers expecting planes to land, they thought that their website would work.

Competence is built on the unhappy understanding that things won't work because you want them to, they won't work if you go through the motions, they will only work if you understand how a thing works and then make it work by building it, by testing it and by expecting failure every step of the way and wrestling with the problem until you get it right.

The Great Prevaricator - Paul A. Rahe

He is, in fact, our first postmodern President, and he is always looking in the mirror. He believes that thinking makes things so. He believes that the most important part of the universe within which we live is the imagination. And when things go amiss, he is apt to tell his aides not that he or they have blundered in their deeds, but that they have "lost the narrative." Everything is always about the man his aides call "Obam-me." He is the Prophet of "Change We Can Believe In." Belief is the operative word.

More Benghazi

• Obama Didn't Convene Terrorism Response Task Force During Attack - Ace
• 'Troubling' Surveillance Before Benghazi Attack - Harald Doornbos, Jenan Moussa
• Documents found in Benghazi consulate claimed “troubling” surveillance by Libyan guards; Update: Obama not participating in investigation; Report: State never requested military back-up during attack - Allahpundit
• Sources: Key task force not convened during Benghazi consulate attack - Sharyl Attkisson
• Report: Key task force not convened during Benghazi attack - Paul Mirengoff
• Scandal Deepens With New Benghazi Documents: At a Minimum, Hillary Clinton Must Go - John Hinderaker
• The facts about Benghazi are known; the only thing that remains is to disclose them - Paul Mirengoff 
• So What Were The Assets Available For Benghazi? - Herschel Smith 
• The Benghazi Terror Attack: Hard Facts and Fair Questions - Austin Bay
• What Did He Know and When Did He Know It? The Shadow Knows… - Michael Ledeen

A Theory on Bengazi

A lightly defended consulate in flames, an ambassador and three security personnel dead, orders to security personnel to "stand down", pleas for assistance ignored, bogus claims of video outrage, shifting story lines: What to make of it?

The Obama administration is obviously hiding something, but what? The possible answers to that question have boiled down to either (a) disloyalty or (b) stupidity. And while we continue to see some accusations of disloyalty, I frankly doubt it. Sure Barack Obama is a duplicitous leftist who would like to fundamentally transform America, and he would like to ratchet back the U.S. military in a major way, but disloyal? I don't think so. In order to pull off something like that he would have to con a lot of people around him; people like Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He might be a decent con-artist when it comes to people who are willing to believe, but he's not that good.

So at this point I'm leaning toward an explanation that boils down to stupidity. But it isn't the low-IQ kind of stupidity, it's this kind of stupidity:

I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81895_Page2.html

The Benghazi Narrative

• Questions for White House Over Benghazi Just Beginning - Bob Owens
• Early briefings on Libya strike focused on Al Qaeda, before story changed - Catherine Herridge
• Ten Questions for the White House - William Kristol
• Benghazi: A Reader Assesses the Evidence - John Hinderaker
• First, Aid the Living - Bing West
• AC-130U Gunship was On-Scene in Benghazi, Obama Admin Refused to Let It Fire - Bob Owens
• EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say - Jennifer Griffin
• Podcast: Kristol on Benghazi - Hosted by Michael Graham
• Mark Steyn: Benghazi bungle requires act of urgent political hygiene - Mark Steyn
• White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: emails - Mark Hosenball
• A South Park Flashback - Scott Johnson
• Benghazi, cont’d - Scott Johnson
• Krauthammer: Obama Contradicting Himself - Fox News
• Tracking the administration's changing narrative on Benghazi - Fox News
• What Happened In Benghazi - John Hinderaker

Debate Fallout

A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man - Andrew Klavan

The mystery Obama—the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right—is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. It emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights. Rather, left-wing outlets like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and the like have now devoted themselves to fashioning an image of the world they think their audiences ought to believe in—that they may guide us toward voting as they think we should. They have fallen prey to that ideological corruption that sees lies as a kind of virtue, as a noble deception in service to a greater good.

The Real Debate: The Good Father vs. The Abandoned Son - Roger L. Simon

Now I admit I have been making my living most of my life as a novelist and a screenwriter, so I may be no more than “creating characters” here, but consider this:

What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation – between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his.

Good fathering is the story of Mitt Romney’s life. He has five sons who are, by all accounts, devoted to him and vice-versa. These boys grew up with a father who, although wealthy and successful, worked like a demon, doted on them, and apparently devoted an extraordinary amount of time to charitable work, in which he also involved them. Indeed, I’ve never heard of a politician who did anything quite like it.

Almost the polar opposite, Barack Obama’s father abandoned him twice and then ended up an irresponsible drunken victim of multiple car crashes. This sad behavior precipitated a search by Obama that brought him in contact with several father surrogates, notably Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, that it would be hard to brand as anywhere near satisfactory. (Davis was a pornographer and about Wright the less said the better.) No Mitt Romneys there.

If you think this is lost on Barack Obama when he stands opposite Romney, then you think the president is stupid, which he is obviously not. But it’s worse for him yet, because he is standing opposite a father who has worked harder, has more experience, and is more knowledgeable and charitable than he and he, on some level at least, must know it.

Not only that, most of what Mitt Romney has done, including graduating simultaneously from Harvard Law and Harvard Business, is an open book, while almost everything about Obama remains purposefully hidden. (He knows this too, obviously.) Obama lives in fear of exposure – and thus in fear of Romney who, although rich, is much more the self-made man of the two, the ultimate father figure.

The face-to-face clash of these two men is almost out of Greek drama. Obama must rage against or embrace the man who represents what he most dearly needed and never had.

The Taranto Principle - R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (09/25/2008)

According to the Taranto Principle, the media's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans. According to Taranto, in 2004 the media quietly went along with Senator Jean-Francois Kerry's exaggerated claims to heroism and military prowess, thus encouraging his braggadocio and leaving him utterly unprepared when his fellow vets stepped forward and demonstrated that he had been a dreadful showoff in Vietnam.

...

Meanwhile the press continues to treat the inexperienced and gaffe-prone Senator Barack Obama as though he is the next JFK. Among the howlers is the presumption that he is an orator of great gifts as JFK was an orator of great gifts. In truth, the Prophet Obama suffers one of the strangest oratorical disabilities I have ever seen in a presidential candidate, to wit: his dependence on the teleprompter. We know of politicians who depend on the teleprompter for fluency. Senator Obama, however, relies on a teleprompter so that he will not be heard talking down to the electorate. If he is not lecturing with his nose in the air he is all uhhs and ahhs. Perhaps if he had served as mayor in a small town he would have gotten over this revealing disorder.

SECRET ROMNEY CHEAT SHEET REVEALED! MUST CREDIT MOE LANE! - Moe Lane

The New Yorker Cover - Ed Driscoll

The referenced cover is below, but click the above link and follow the additional links.

JOE BIDEN DEBATE PREPARATION - Day By Day via Sarah Hoyt and Instapundit

Obama Personality Cult Roundup

• Revolutionary goals? Check.
• Fawning media propaganda? Check.
• Heroic imagery? Check.
• Band of followers with pseudo-religious zeal? Check.

Yep. All of the elements are in place.

A short visual history of the creepy Obama cult - David Harsanyi

Go ahead. Click the link.

The Audacity of These Dopes - William L. Gensert

The media is on its knees.  It's the customary position of worship, and worship they do -- Barack Obama -- their chosen "one."

He is the man they told us would halt the rise of the oceans and heal the planet, the man who had game like Lebron, knew more than his advisers, was more brilliant than all brilliance, the smartest man to ever be president, the winner of a Nobel Prize and 2 Grammy awards, who was like Lincoln, then FDR, then JFK, then Reagan, the man who would make America loved and respected the world over, the man who would balance the budget and usher in a new era of racial tolerance -- no white America or black America, one America -- the man who would get us out of our cars and break our dependency on foreign oil, who would change the economy into a green energy powerhouse, the man who would solve all the ills of all the world, the man who would change everything.  He was new, he was different.  He was better than the common man; he was more than us; he was like a god.

Obama's Creepy Cult of Personality - IBD Editorials

The Presidency: Last week, the Obama campaign started selling a refashioned American flag with its logo replacing the stars, and then urged Americans to pledge allegiance to Barack. Did we just wake up in Mao's China?

The flag print, designed especially for the campaign by a pair of obviously incredibly hip artists, tries to improve the musty look of Old Glory by taking out a few stripes and swapping the star field for the Obama "O" logo. The campaign is selling the limited edition prints for just $35.

The Obama Cult of Personality - Candace de Russy

If indeed an Obama cult could enter our bloodstream, it behooves us to look more closely at the political meaning potentially similar cults and their consequences for societies in the past. The key point about personality cults, as summarized at Wikipedia (italics mine), is that in modern times they occur “when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise.” Moreover:

• A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship, except that it is created specifically for political leaders. Generally, personality cults are most common in regimes with totalitarian systems of government, that seek to radically alter or transform society according to (supposedly) revolutionary new ideas. Often, a single leader becomes associated with this revolutionary transformation, and comes to be treated as a benevolent “guide” for the nation, without whom the transformation to a better future cannot occur. This has been generally the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies of the 20th century, such as those of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. 

• Although more uncommon, democratic societies also have examples of political figures who have been noted to have some traits of a cult of personality [for instance, President John F. Kennedy and Argentina's Juan Perón and his wife Eva].

Obama supporters desecrate American Flag in Baltimore - Inside Charm City

Convention Roundup

Instapundit roundup of Obama's convention speech: OBA-MEH

The Spinal Tap 11 reference.

Obama's Convention - Yuval Levin

But even as he said this he persisted in the dominant trope of this convention—and, it seems, of contemporary progressive thought: the jump from the sheer fact of human interdependence to a defense of every federal program in precisely its current form. It’s the liberal welfare state or the law of the jungle, and no other alternative is imaginable. This mental gesture—which simultaneously offers an excuse for ignoring the imminent collapse of the liberal welfare state and for ignoring what conservatives are actually saying and offering—really deserves to be thought through. It is a fascinating indicator of the contemporary Left’s intellectual exhaustion.

The offensive theme was, however, far more ably developed, and it seemed to be the only part of the speech that the president really cared about. It was in part an outgrowth of the same self-righteous progressive error—of the sense that the Republicans are offering radical individualism and a cold and selfish you’re-on-your-own philosophy of government. And to this extent it was answered by a very revealing display of the left’s tendency to collapse all of society—all that stands between the individual and the state—into the state.

Transcript: President Obama's Convention Speech

We don't think the government can solve all of our problems, but we don't think the government is the source of all of our problems — (cheers, applause)

This is just one of many straw man arguments in the speech, but typifies the whole attitude. Since the Republicans assert that the government causes, or makes worse, many problems in our society, let's just say that Republicans think that government is the source of ALL of our problems.

These dishonest arguments inevitably lead to the false choice: Either accept the artfully packaged big government solution, or else face the dog-eat-dog, law of the jungle, every man for himself, radical individualism and heartless capitalism of the Republicans.

California Exodus

Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus  - Allysia Finley

Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

As California Collapses, Obama Follows Its Lead - Joel Kotkin

Obama’s push to nationalize many of California’s economy-stifling green policies has been slowed down, first by the Republican resurgence in 2010 and then by his reelection considerations. But California’s politicians, living in what’s become essentially a one-party state, have doubled down on green orthodoxy. As the president at least tries to cover his flank by claiming to support an “all-in” energy policy, California has simply refused to exploit much of its massive oil and gas resources.

Does this matter? Well, Texas has created 200,000 oil and gas jobs over the past decade; California has barely added 20,000. The state’s remaining energy producers have been slowing down as the regulatory environment becomes ever more hostile even as producers elsewhere, including in rustbelt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, ramp up. The oil and gas jobs the Golden State political class shuns pay around $100,000 a year on average.

Instead, California has forged ahead with ever-more extreme renewable energy mandates that have resulted in energy costs roughly 50 percent above the national average and expected to rise substantially from there. This tends to drive out manufacturing and other largely blue-collar energy users.

Over the past decade the Golden State has grown its middle-skilled jobs (those that require two years or more of post-secondary education) by a mere 2 percent compared to a 5.3 percent increase nationwide, and almost 15 percent in Texas. Even in the science-technology-engineering and mathematics field, where California has long been a national leader, the state has lost its edge, growing just 1.7 percent over the past 10 years compared to 5.4 percent nationally and 14 percent in Texas.

Dog Humor

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is probably wishing they hadn't started the whole "Your candidate is cruel to dogs" offensive. The "Dog-eatin' President" response just keeps getting bigger every day.

President Obama: “Dog Eater,” the Music Video

If I had a dog ...

Bam Bites Dog - James Taranto

One time Barack Obama went to an Indian restaurant and ordered the lassi. Was he ever disappointed when the waiter brought him a yogurt drink!

Be sure to pick up some official Barack Obama merchandise for your pet/dinner - Jim Treacher

HEH - Glenn Reynolds

Hitler Finds Out Obama Ate His Dog - John Hinderaker

Dogs Against Romney Defends Obama Over Dog Consumption Revelations - James Crugnale

Conservative Twitter-sphere Goes Wild After Daily Caller Reveals Obama Consumed Dog As A Child - Noah Rothman

Dog-gate - Glenn Reynolds

Obama Bites Dog - Jim Treacher

Fast and Furious Update

With Eric Holder testifying before Congress, and the release of new documents in the case, many new reports have appeared:

A Fast & Furious state of mind - Scott Johnson

Holder, Grilled on Gun Inquiry, Says He Won’t Resign - Charlie Savage

‘Furious’ twisting, Eric Holder stonewalls on - Michael A. Walsh

Sparks fly during Eric Holder 'Fast & Furious' testimony - Josh Gerstein & Tim Mak

Documents: ATF used "Fast and Furious" to make the case for gun regulations - Sharyl Attkisson

Documents: ATF Used ‘Fast and Furious’ to Make Case for Gun Control - Publius

Fast and Furious - Matthew Hoy

Rep. Matthew Hoy (R-Hoystory): Shame? Shame!? Hundreds of Mexicans are dead. Border Agent Brian Terry is dead. The department that you have authority over allowed more than 2,000 guns to cross the border into the hands of violent drug cartels and you have the gall to chide elected representatives of the American people who seek to hold you to account for your lawlessness?

Shame?

Your deputy submitted a letter to Congress that you withdrew only after subsequent disclosures proved it to be full of lies. You can split legal hairs about there being no “intent” to deceive Congress when that letter was originally submitted, but as time goes by that claim begins to look flimsier and flimsier.

Shame?

We found out just days ago that that ATF officials sought to use the violence in Mexico and the fact that U.S.-bought guns were showing up at crime scenes in that country as a pretext to push for further restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. You, of course, were ignorant of this.

Shame?

It’s been the better part of six months, or maybe 9 or 12, depending on the quality of your memory and the meaningless difference between “weeks” and “months” in your concept of time, since you knew about this operation and not a single individual has lost their job, let alone has had charges filed against them for violations of federal laws.

Hundreds are dead as a direct result of actions undertaken by your subordinates and you wish to shame Congress?

Mr. Attorney General, if you had any integrity. If you had any honor, you would fire those most responsible for this travesty and then resign yourself.

The only person in this committee room who should be feeling shame is you and what you allowed—either by design or by neglect—to happen in Operation Fast and Furious.

The Teleprompter

Even More Fast and Furious

‘Fast & Furious’: How a botched operation spawned fatal results - Jerry Seper

Agent Carlos Canino, ATF’s acting attache to Mexico, angrily told the committee that “walking guns” was not a recognized investigative technique, adding that hundreds of weapons ultimately went to ruthless criminals in Mexico.

“It infuriates me that people, including my law enforcement, diplomatic and military colleagues, may be killed or injured with these weapons,” he said, adding that “never in my wildest dreams” would he have thought that ATF agents would allow guns to be walked to Mexican criminals.

Noting that Fast and Furious ended with the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, one high-ranking former Border Patrol official described the operation as “scary.”

“The only thing I can figure is that the politicians in the upper management of the agencies involved decided it would work,” the official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of being reprimanded. “They sure as hell couldn’t have run it by the agents in the field who would have known what would happen.”

...

Mr. Newell testified that ATF had good intentions when it began the operation in 2009 and that it was not its purpose to permit the transfer of firearms to Mexico. He said he would do such an investigation again with some changes.

Emphasis added.

Targeting Anwar al-Awlaki

The Administration’s Strange Reasoning on al-Awlaki - John Yoo

Let’s give partial credit where it is due. Apparently the Obama administration argues that al-Awlaki was a legitimate target because he is a member of an enemy engaged in hostile conduct against the United States. At least Obama has figured out that the war on terrorism is in fact a war, and that it is not limited just to Afghanistan. We should be thankful that Obama officials have quietly put aside the arguments they made during the Bush years that any terrorist outside the Afghani battlefield was a criminal suspect who deserved his day in federal court. By my lights, I would rather the Obama folks be hypocrites in favor of protecting the national security than principled fools (which they are free to be in the faculty lounges both before and after their time in government).

The Reasonable Press

Has the press ever been "reasonable" in the past? Have they ever eased up on Republican administrations?

• Watergate
• Iran/Contra
• Scooter Libby

Or how about the highly vaunted public's "right to know"?

• Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
• Terrorist Surveillance Program

Except for a few bravely inquisitive reporters, they suddenly seem to have decided "There's nothing to see here folks. Move along."

Why Obama’s Flacks Bullied a CBS Reporter - Keith Koffler

President Obama’s press office bullies are in high gear, a sure sign that there are legs to the story about Attorney General Eric Holder’s potential perjury before the House Judiciary Committee.

CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson is doggedly pursuing the case, reporting that Holder knew about the Fast and Furious operation well before he said he did under oath last May, when he testified to the panel he’d just learned of it “over the last few weeks.” In fact, it appears, he was told about Fast and Furious in 2010.

A Justice Department spokeswoman and White House spokesman launched at Attkisson what few people realize is a routine Obama administration tactic – attempt to quash good journalism that’s bad for Obama by intimidating reporters.

...

ATTKISSON: They will tell you that I’m the only reporter- as they told me- that is not reasonable. They say ‘The Washington Post’ is reasonable, the ‘LA Times’ is reasonable, ‘The New York Times’ is reasonable- I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

More Gunwalker

ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010 - Sharyl Attkisson

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Is CBS News Silencing Fast and Furious Reporter? - Mark Hemingway

Yesterday, CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson told radio show host Laura Ingraham that the White House yelled and swore at her over her reporting on the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal tied to the deaths of two U.S. law enforcement agents. Attkisson also revealed that she'd also been yelled at by the Justice Department.

Today, I called CBS News in an attempt to interview Attkisson. I was told by CBS News senior vice president of communications Sonya McNair that Attkisson would be unavailable for interviews all week. When I asked why Attkisson would be unavailable, McNair would not say.

I've also heard from a producer at another media outlet that has previously booked Attkisson that they tried to book her since she made news with the Laura Ingraham interview yesterday. They were also told that she would be unavailable.

Congressman: With Fast and Furious, administration officials might be accessories to murder - Tina Korbe

In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, pulled no punches in a discussion of the implications of Fast and Furious for Obama administration officials:

"We’re talking about consequences of criminal activity — where we actually allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals — where our livelihoods are at risk,” Gosar said in a phone interview. “When you facilitate that and a murder or a felony occurs, you’re called an accessory. That means that there’s criminal activity."

Indict Eric Holder - IBD Editorial

Scandal: A major-league pitcher was indicted for lying to Congress about steroid use. Administration memos show Eric Holder lied about what he knew about Fast and Furious and when he knew it. What's the difference?

Somewhere, Scooter Libby must be scratching his head. He was indicted and convicted simply because his recall of when a meeting occurred differed from others. He didn't lie about a gun-running operation that led to the deaths of two American agents and at least 200 Mexicans.

But Attorney General Eric Holder did, according to memos obtained by CBS News and Fox News.

They show Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Fast and Furious gun-running operation. He told House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa he was "not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks."

The Narrative

Once Upon a Time in America - Peggy Noonan

But this is mostly a problem for the Democratic Party at the national level, and has been since the 1980s. It reflects a disdain for the American people—they need their little stories—and it springs from an inability to understand the Reagan era. Democrats looked at him and the speeches and the crowds and balloons and thought: "I get it, politics is now all show biz." Because they couldn't take Reagan's views and philosophy seriously, they couldn't believe anyone else could, either. So they explained him through a story. The story was that Reagan's success was due not to decisions and their outcomes but to a narrative. The narrative was "Morning in America": Everything's good, everyone's happy.

Democrats vowed to create their own narratives, their own stories.

Here's the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality. Things work or they don't. When they work, people notice, and say it.

Would the next president like a story? Here's one. America was anxious, and feared it was losing the air of opportunity that had allowed it to be what it was—expansive, generous, future-trusting. It was losing faith in its establishments and institutions. And someone came out of that need who led—who was wise and courageous and began to turn the ship around. And we saved our country, and that way saved the world.

There's a narrative for you, the only one that matters. Go be a hero of that story. It will get around. It will bubble up.

More Fast and Furious

A 'Furious' revelation - Michael A Walsh

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House - Sharyl Attkisson

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

More Solyndra

Solyndra. So Bankrupt. So Many Questions: