No 933 “En mi opinión” Abril 27, 2015
“IN GOD WE TRUST” LAZARO R GONZALEZ MIñO EDITOR
"Resistance
to tyrants is obedience to God " ~Thomas Jefferson
Democrats’ Dilemma
·
The
Briefing, Vol. III, Issue 10
From: David Freddoso
A major logjam in the U.S. Senate ended last
week, highlighting again just how much less dysfunctional that body has become
in the Post-Reid era. Democrats dropped their months-long filibuster against a
bill to assist the victims of human trafficking, in exchange for a
meaningless sop to the abortion lobby. And President Obama’s pick to replace
Eric Holder as attorney general finally received a vote — she won easily, in
part because Republican
senators were afraid of being branded as racist for opposing her.
You don’t have to like either development (and many
conservatives are not happy about Lynch for a number of reasons) to see that
the Senate is once again more than just a tool for killing bills that
might put a president in an awkward position. Bipartisanship isn’t always a
virtue, but it’s back, like it or not.
This is in some ways a positive development —
certainly from a simple institutional standpoint it has to be — but it remains
to be seen whether this situation can survive the next occasion when
the same party controls the Senate and the presidency.
The Bush era represented the first run in which the
Senate (then controlled by the GOP) really became noting more than a goalkeeper
for a president’s image. Bush was able to go an unnaturally long time
without having to veto a bill as a result of his Senate buffer, and so he ended
up vetoing only 12 bills in his entire presidency — a tie with JFK (who served
less than one full term before his assassination) and less than any other
president since Warren Harding. Yet even then, the Republicans’ goalkeeping
strategy did not exactly save Bush’s image, nor did it prevent the
party from losing the Senate in the 2006 wipeout.
When Democrats lost control of the U.S. House in the
2010 election, they adopted the same strategy in the Senate to protect
President Obama from bills originating in the House. As a result, Obama
is on pace to cast fewer vetoes than Bush. But this use of the Senate
also helped cost Democrats the chamber last year, and in a way that
isn’t immediately intuitive. By abolishing the chamber’s role of debating and
voting on all manner of amendments that could reveal ideological fissures in
his party, Harry Reid put vulnerable Democrats in a situation where they
could be said to have voted 90, 95, or 98 percent of the time with the
president. This worked miracles for Republican election prospects at
a time when Obama’s popularity was in the toilet.
The “goalkeeper” strategy — far more than any sort of
ideological rigidity by Tea Partiers or Leftists — is what has made
bipartisanship less common in Washington. It remains to be seen whether it will
be revived in the future, but from an empirical perspective, it hasn’t
conferred many political blessings on those who have embraced it.
President 2016
Meanwhile, on the presidential front, Marco Rubio established himself as
a leading candidate, along with Scott Walker and Jeb Bush. And in the
Democratic Party’s “field of one” primary, Hillary Clinton’s prospects for
the presidency suffered a new blow.
Hillary Clinton: The much-anticipated release of Peter
Schweitzer’s Clinton
Cash is still
more than one week away, yet its revelations are already creating havoc for
Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
Yes, the Clintons are scandal-tested, this goes without
saying. But the potential repercussions here go beyond anything the
Clintons have previously faced. The appearance of large bribes is unavoidable,
and the idea that no one involved —
neither givers nor takers — viewed the payments and contributions
in question as attempts to gain influence within the U.S. government is
not terribly plausible.
With mainstream media organs no longer giving the
Clintons the kind of cover they enjoyed during the 1990s, it is really anyone’s
guess whether Hillary’s political prospects will survive the new revelations
about the family and its charities taking money from people who had every
incentive to influence Hillary in her cabinet post.
This is worse than the Clinton email scandal, and it
may also help explain it. During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of
State, parties with business before her — companies requiring State Department
approval for their deals — gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation and/or
paid Bill Clinton large sums to speak.
Whatever your opinion on the merits of any such
proposal — and one is the Keystone XL Pipeline, which most conservatives
support — this stinks. It has the obvious appearance of impropriety, which
even crooked public officials typically try to avoid. The fact that one
such deal put the Russian government in control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium
capacity doesn’t help matters.
To compound the problem, Clinton appears to have
broken the understanding she had with the Obama administration to disclose such
donations to Clinton-controlled charities. The White House was embarrassed
enough to pull out the line that there was “no evidence” that the donations
affected Clinton’s decisions in office. On this basis, Americans are supposed
to accept the idea of having officials raise money — and not small
campaign donations, but six- and seven-figure amounts — from the same
interests whose affairs they direct.
This controversy also opens a new can of worms
when it comes to Clinton’s now-deleted emails. Were any of them related to the
Clintons’ foundations? Were any deliberations made over email about whom
to hit up for money — given that Clinton Foundation fundraising decisions
seem to correlate in some way with people who had business before the State
Department?
Democrats: The new revelations could help Republicans by driving down Clinton’s
numbers in the short run — and indeed, she was already
viewed as untrustworthy by a majority of
Americans before they came. This could all bode well for a Republican victory
in 2016, but it is far too early for Republicans to exploit.
This is the stage at which Democrats have to make up
their minds about whether their 2016 election cycle will really be “Hillary or
Bust.” Because as weak as the alternatives are, Clinton is beginning to look
like she’s on the edge.
It seems unlikely that Democrats will abandon Clinton,
but it seems less impossible now. She had been positioning herself further Left
with a series of rather implausible leaks to The New York Times (on trade and
on income inequality) to stave off an ideological challenge, but the perception
that she is a flawed candidate could prove more difficult to overcome.
The real decider here is the party’s money-base.
How willing would they be to commit to another Democratic
candidate who will vigorously attack her on ethics? Donors to such a
campaign would face great risks, were Clinton to get the nomination and win the
presidency.
Beyond that is the Field of Dreams question for the
other longshot candidates in the Democratic field. Is there a Democrat willing
to start the attacks and build a campaign around them, in the hopes that the
donors will suddenly be emboldened and come to them? So far, this does not seem
to have happened. but anyone — even someone as bland as Martin O’Malley — could become the nominee this way,
and has little hope of doing so any other way.
But the brave soul who follows that pat
will risk becoming an outcast in the party and a persona non grata, should
a second Clinton administration ever materialize. This is the moment when
Democrats learn the truth about the other candidates — are they in to become
secretary of Commerce, or are they in it to win?
House 2015
New York-11: As expected, Daniel Donovan, R, is dominating this
special election race in Staten Island and some of the ethnic areas of
southwest Brooklyn, outraising Councilman and former State Senator Vinnie Gentile, D,
three-to-one. Democrats effectively conceded this race before it began. If Rep. MIchael
Grimm, R, was able to win while under indictment, their chances
seem slim.
Election Day is May 5. Likely Republican Retention.
House 2016
Pennsylvania-9: Rep. Bill Shuster, R, finds
himself in hot water after
revelations that he helped his
girlfriend, a lobbyist, move an airline bill through the House. The divorced
congressman’s excuse — that she did not lobby him on the issue while they were
dating — is somewhat absurd, although frequently offered by members of Congress
who find themselves with such conflicts. Surely, he was aware
that she wanted the bill when he revived it from an obscure member and
moved it to a voice vote on the House floor.
Shuster comfortably survived a three-way primary in
2014 with 53 percent of the vote. But it was not an overwhelming win, and
he will have a lot more trouble on his hands if Tom Smith, the party’s
2012 Senate nominee, jumps in. Smith, a businessman, won a surprisingly
respectable 45 percent against Sen. Bob Casey in a bad year for
Republicans, and represents a much stronger challenger with greater financial
resources than Shuster’s 2014 opponents. Art Halvorson, the strongest of Shuster’s
2014 challengers, has
promised to back Smith if he chooses to run.
The district is overwhelmingly Republican, with a Cook
Partisan Voting Index rating of R+17. It will not likely be a problem in
November 2016, no matter who wins the primary.
Read more at http://conservativeintel.com/2015/04/27/the-briefing-vol-iii-issue-10/
Read more at http://conservativeintel.com/2015/04/27/the-briefing-vol-iii-issue-10/
Hillary Ineligible Due To Felony
Support Trey Gowdy (Andrew@EconomicFreedomNow.org)
To: lazarorgonzalez@hotmail.com
Hillary Clinton May Soon Be Facing Felony Charges! Her Treasonous Crimes
In The Benghazi Attacks May Force Her To Drop Out Of The Presidential Race!
Once All The Information Comes Out About The Benghazi Attacks, Her Campaign
Will Be Ruined! The American People Deserve To Know The Full Story! Trey Gowdy
Is Working To Investigate Benghazi And Expose Hillary Clinton's
"Personal" Emails!
Hillary Clinton is a
criminal and she may soon be forced to drop out of the Presidential race! Her
treasonous role in the Benghazi attacks may soon lead to felony charges that
make her ineligible to run for President. Voters are going to be
outraged when they find out that Hillary Clinton made a clear orchestrated
effort to hide evidence and ignore security in Benghazi! Once the truth about
Benghazi is revealed to the American people, Hillary Clinton's campaign will be
ruined! Trey Gowdy's
investigation into Benghazi is going to expose Hillary Clinton and ruin her
Presidential campaign. Please
contribute $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more, to support voter
outreach and advertising efforts to re-elect Trey Gowdy.
Trey Gowdy wants a
comprehensive federal investigation of Hillary Clinton's server. As Chairman of
the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Trey Gowdy has legally subpoenaed
Hillary Clinton's 31,380 "personal" emails. Predictably, the Hillary
Clinton legal mob is fighting against Trey Gowdy's investigation. Trey Gowdy's
heroic efforts could ruin Hillary Clinton's career and that's why the
Democratic machine is doing everything possible to stop the investigation. If
Hillary Clinton didn't have anything to hide, her lawyers wouldn't be fighting
against Trey Gowdy's investigation! It is impossible to believe Hillary
Clinton's claim that all of the 31,380 personal emails are about personal matters
such as weddings, birthdays, and party invitations! In reality, there is most
likely incriminating evidence about the Benghazi attacks in the emails!
Fortunately, the incriminating evidence is impossible to delete! Even if
Hillary Clinton attempts to erase data, data recovery experts can easily
retrieve deleted emails in less than a day! Hillary Clinton cannot run from the
truth!
Once the truth about
Benghazi comes out, Hillary Clinton will be forced to drop out of the
Presidential race. Not only will Hillary Clinton lose support from voters, she
will most likely be facing multiple felony charges! Will you support Trey
Gowdy's heroic efforts and help expose Hillary Clinton? Please
contribute $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more, to support voter
outreach and advertising efforts to re-elect Trey Gowdy.
Trey Gowdy is a
conservative hero. He is dedicated to stopping amnesty, balancing the budget,
and protecting the Second Amendment. In Congress, he also fights to end big
government programs such as ObamaCare and Common Core. He knows that the
federal government is the biggest obstacle to economic growth! Will you help re-elect
Trey Gowdy to Congress? Please
contribute $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more, to support Trey Gowdy
with voter outreach and advertising!
The Democratic
machine is furious about Trey Gowdy's investigation of Hillary Clinton. Clinton
operatives view Trey Gowdy as a threat to Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Sleazy
Clinton political consultants are working hard to smear Trey Gowdy and stop his
heroic efforts. Every Clinton donor and ally wants to remove Trey Gody from
Congress! Will you help
fight back and defend Trey Gowdy?
As a father, Trey Gowdy knows that the liberal agenda is bad for America's future. In Congress, Trey Gowdy fights to balance the budget, stop amnesty, and defend the Constitution. He knows that the best way to grow the economy is to get the federal government out of the way! It is crucial that conservatives everywhere support Trey Gowdy and defend his House seat. Conservatives cannot allow Trey Gowdy to be replaced by a radical liberal! Please help re-elect Trey Gowdy to Congress by contributing $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more, for voter outreach and advertising!
As a father, Trey Gowdy knows that the liberal agenda is bad for America's future. In Congress, Trey Gowdy fights to balance the budget, stop amnesty, and defend the Constitution. He knows that the best way to grow the economy is to get the federal government out of the way! It is crucial that conservatives everywhere support Trey Gowdy and defend his House seat. Conservatives cannot allow Trey Gowdy to be replaced by a radical liberal! Please help re-elect Trey Gowdy to Congress by contributing $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more, for voter outreach and advertising!
|
Clinton
Foundation admits ‘mistakes’
They say admission is the first step……
The
Clinton Foundation’s acting chief on Sunday acknowledged the organization had
made missteps, but defended its transparency efforts amid Hillary Clinton’s
nascent presidential campaign.
Acting
CEO Maura Pally’s statement, posted to the foundation’s blog, comes in response
to a flood of questions surrounding a forthcoming book that scrutinizes foreign
donations to the foundation.
Read more at http://cowboybyte.com/38068/clinton-foundation-admits-mistakes/
Read more at http://cowboybyte.com/38068/clinton-foundation-admits-mistakes/
Jeb Bush says the
"best part" of Obama's presidency is the NSA's unconstitutional domestic spying program
4 days ago
Jeb Bush continues to defend the National Security Agency's
unconstitutional domestic spying program, telling a conservative talk show host
that this gross encroachment on the Fourth Amendment is the "best part of
the Obama administration."
There's absolutely no evidence that the National Security Agency's
domestic spying program has prevented a terrorist attack in the United States.
This is a conclusion reached by the New America Foundation and the White House Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications Technology. ThePrivacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board could "not
identif[y] a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which
the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism
investigation."
Bush, however, hails the massive expansion of the NSA and its domestic
spying program. "I would say the best part of the Obama administration has
been his continuance of the protections of the homeland using the big metadata
programs, the NSA being enhanced," the former Florida governor told
Michael Medved on Tuesday. "Even though he never defends it, even though
he never admits it, there has been a continuation of a very important service,
which is the first obligation of our national government is to keep us
safe."
Not only is the narrative that Bush is trying to set utterly false when
compared to aforementioned reports by private and government-backed panels,
there is no legal basis for the NSA's domestic spying program.
NSA apologists say that Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act authorizes
this broad program through which the NSA can collect metadata on virtually
every call made in the United States. But the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board rebutted this argument, noting "Section 215 does not
provide an adequate legal basis to support the program."
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board listed several reasons why this broad
interpretation of Section 215 runs afoul of what the statute actually says.
While Section 215 does authorize the collection of records connected to
terrorism investigation, as the Board explained, it was not meant to apply so
broadly that the government is collecting records of swaths of innocent people
who are not suspected of terrorist activity. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.),
who authored the PATRIOT Act and now advocates for reform to protect civil
liberties, noted that this absurd notion rests on the idea that the government
needs the "the haystack" (virtually every call made in the United
States) "to find the needle" (records relevant to an actual
investigation).
Moreover, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board noted that the
language of the statute "permits only the FBI to obtain items for use in
its investigations; it does not authorize the NSA to collect anything."
The Fourth Amendment exists to prevent the federal
government from illegal searches and seizuresthrough general
warrants. No one disagrees that terrorism is a threat to the United States,
but, as Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) explained in an August 2013 interview,
"it’s precisely because we live in this dangerous world that we need
protections like the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution."
Section 215 will expire on June 1, and there's a showdown looming.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced legislation, S. 1035, on Tuesday to extend the provision through the
end of 2020.
Reformers in Congress have, however, introduced the Surveillance State
Repeal Act, H.R. 1466. This bill,which FreedomWorks supports, would bring to an end the NSA's
unconstitutional domestic spying program and restore the civil
liberties protected by the Fourth Amendment.
FERGUSON ALL OVER AGAIN? Mayhem in Baltimore Erupts
During Freddie Gray Protests [WATCH]
This is how not to “seek justice”.
Hours after
Baltimore police promised “deep, systemic changes in the culture” of their
department to protesters upset over the death of Freddie Gray, waves of
violence and looting shook the city.
Baltimore Police
Commissioner Anthony Batts said that demonstrations and marches were peaceful
until about 7pm, when protesters became “agitated” and clashed with police
around Camden Yards baseball stadium. Fans inside the stadium were told to stay
inside.
Hundreds of
Baltimore and Maryland State Police in riot gear tried to calm the crowd, but
police said that a small group of protesters left the Camden Yards area and
went on a violent spree through the streets, smashing windows and looting a
local convenience store.
Videos taken at
the scene show some protesters jumping on top of police cars and smashing
windows, throwing things through store windows, and leaving shelves of items
overturned in shops. Footage also captured a large group of police clad in riot
gear sprinting down the street toward protesters.
Jorge A Villalon: La resurrección de Neville
Chamberlain
JOSÉ AZEL
El primer ministro británico Neville
Chamberlain falleció en 1940, pero su fracasada política exterior de apaciguar
enemigos de gobiernos democráticos ha resucitado. La actual reencarnación del
enfoque del apaciguamiento en política exterior –que llamo “neo apaciguamiento”
– es articulada por el profesor Charles Kupchan, de la Universidad de
Georgetown, en su libro Cómo los enemigos se vuelven amigos: las fuentes de una
paz estable.
Explorar ideas no
convencionales señala al trabajo académico, y la erudición del profesor Kupchan
puede brindar conocimientos teóricos en el estudio de las relaciones
internacionales. Pero las relaciones internacionales no pertenecen a las
ciencias físicas, donde se puede realizar experimentación benigna de
laboratorio sin impactar negativamente las vidas de millones de individuos.
La experimentación en ciencias
sociales, del tipo que plantea Kupchan, es mejor mantenerla en la torre de
marfil donde podemos discutir hasta la náusea sin arriesgar vidas.
Lamentablemente, las hipótesis de
Kupchan se movieron con él al Consejo de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos,
donde es director superior de Asuntos Europeos, y su neo-apaciguamiento parece
exponerse plenamente en la formulación de la política exterior de EEUU. Desde
el primer capítulo de su libro destaca que “la administración Obama considera
claramente que los enemigos pueden convertirse en amigos”.
Entonces, ¿cuál es la hoja de ruta del
profesor y de la administración para convertir enemigos en amigos?
La receta neo-apaciguadora implica un
proceso de cuatro fases. Debe comenzar, de acuerdo a Kupchan, haciendo
concesiones a nuestros enemigos, en una acción de “acomodo unilateral”. Las
concesiones deben ser “extraordinarias y costosas” para mostrar buena voluntad.
Supongo que eso era lo que el primer ministro Chamberlain tenía en mente cuando
entregó a Adolfo Hitler los Sudetes en 1938.
La segunda fase implica “restricción
recíproca”. En esta restricción recíproca las naciones adversarias se alejan de
la rivalidad, surge la paz, y la competencia geopolítica cede paso a la
cooperación. Debe haber sido lo que Hitler tenía en mente cuando Alemania ocupó
lo que quedaba de Checoslovaquia seis meses después del Pacto de Múnich,
y continuó con la invasión de Polonia en 1939, desatando la Segunda Guerra
Mundial.
“Integración social” y “generación de
nuevas narrativas e identidades” son la tercera y cuarta fases de la secuencia
de Kupchan hacia la paz estable. Él y el presidente Obama creen que profundizar
negociaciones entre adversarios de alguna manera los llevará a un cambio
de identidad donde, “las distinciones entre uno mismo y el otro se erosionan, dando
paso a identidades comunes y sentido compartido de solidaridad”.
No puedo determinar si tal aseveración
es ingenua o simplemente absurda, pero dejémosla de momento mientras
exploramos otra tesis inquietante del trabajo del profesor, donde expresa que
la democracia no es necesaria para una paz estable. Desde su punto de vista,
EEUU debe evaluar si los países son enemigos o amigos basados en su diplomacia
(o sea, en lo que dicen) y no en la naturaleza de sus instituciones domésticas
–lo que hacen.
Supongo que esto explica las
decisiones diplomáticas de la administración marginando aliados democráticos
como Israel y apaciguando regímenes represivos como Rusia, Irán y Cuba.
Normalmente las democracias no
guerrean entre ellas, y reconocer que las democracias tienen enemigos no es
sinónimo de belicosidad. El tipo de gobierno es importante, y no debemos
buscar, como prescribe el neo-apaciguamiento, identidad común y sentido de
solidaridad compartida con personajes como Alí Jamenei, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir
Putin o Raúl Castro.
El neo-apaciguamiento parece ser el
fundamento intelectual de la política exterior de la administración. Bajo ese
estandarte admitimos la ocupación por Putin del territorio de Georgia, como
Chamberlain admitió a Hitler. Abandonamos nuestros planes de defensa
antimisiles en Europa del Este; habremos retrasado, pero finalmente
aceptamos el camino de Irán hacia el arma nuclear, y el Presidente utiliza su
poder ejecutivo para normalizar incondicionalmente relaciones con el régimen
cubano.
Cuando se cuestiona su política
exterior, el Presidente señala repetidamente que “no está interesado en pelear
batallas que comenzaron antes que hubiera nacido”, dando a entender que la paz
mundial depende de un cálculo de antes o después del nacimiento de Obama.
Profesor Senior en el Instituto de
Estudios Cubanos y Cubanoamericanos de la Universidad de Miami, y autor del
libro Mañana in Cuba.
WATCH: It
Takes Just 40 Seconds For This Awesome Southern Judge To Smack Down A Gang
Member
She laid down the law, Southern style.
She’s being called
the “Southern Judge Judy” for her tough, direct, no-nonsense demeanor in her
Tennessee courtroom. Lila Statom laid down the law for a reputed gang member,
O’Shea Smith, when he appeared before her on an attempted murder charge and referred
to a public housing development as his “hood.”
The video of that
verbal smackdown has gone viral, with a lot of viewers leaving comments
thanking Hamilton County Judge Statom for her firm stance on the gang violence
that has rocked Chattanooga in recent months. Chattanooga police say there’s a violent war being waged among several gangs, including the Gangster Disciples of which
Smith, the suspect in the attempted murder, is a known member.
Obama Kept Iran's
Short Breakout Time a Secret
The Barack Obama
administration has estimated for years that Iran was at most three months
away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the
administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month,
just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to
Congress and the public.
Speaking to reporters
and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that the U.S.
has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three months away from
producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. When asked how
long the administration has held this assessment, Moniz said: "Oh quite
some time." He added: "They are now, they are right now spinning, I
mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly 19,000. Plus all the
. . . . R&D work. If you put that together it's very, very little time to
go forward. That's the 2-3 months."
Brian Hale, a
spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed to
me Monday that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was
declassified on April 1.
Here is the puzzling
thing: When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune.
He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without
mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three
months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most
challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only
two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a
sense of urgency for his Iran agreement.
Back in 2013, when
Congress was weighing new sanctions on Iran and Obama was pushing for more
diplomacy, his interest was in tamping down that sense of urgency. On the
eve of a visit to Israel, Obama told Israel's
Channel Two, "Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran
to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too
close."
On Oct. 5 of that
year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian breakout with that of
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time said Iran was only
six months away from nuclear capability. Obama told the Associated
Press, "Our assessment continues to be a year or more away. And in
fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates
of Israeli intelligence services."
Ben Caspit, an
Israeli journalist and columnist for Al-Monitor, reported last year that
Israel's breakout estimate was also two to three months away.
A year ago, after the nuclear talks
started, Secretary of State John Kerry dropped the first hint about the
still-classified Iran breakout estimate. He told a Senate panel, "I think
it is fair to say, I think it is public knowledge today, that we are operating with a time period
for a so-called breakout of about two months."
David Albright, a
former weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International
Security, told me administration officials appeared to be intentionally
unspecific in 2013, when the talking points used the 12-months-plus
timeline. "They weren't clear at all about what this one-year estimate
meant, but people like me who said let's break it down to the constituent
pieces in terms of time to build a bomb were rebuffed," he said.
Albright's group released its own breakout timetable that focused
solely on the production of highly enriched uranium, not the weapon itself. It
concluded Iran was potentially less than a month away.
When USA Today asked
a spokeswoman for the National Security Council about Albright's estimate, she
responded that the intelligence community maintained a number of estimates for how long
Iran would take to produce enough material for a weapon.
"They have made
it very hard for those of us saying, let's just focus on weapons-grade uranium,
there is this shorter period of time and not a year," Albright told me.
"If you just want a nuclear test device to blow up underground, I don't
think you need a year."
This view is
supported by a leaked document from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, first published by the Associated Press in
2009. Albright's group published excerpts from the IAEA assessment that
concluded Iran "has sufficient information to be able to design and
produce a workable implosion nuclear device based upon (highly enriched
uranium) as the fission fuel."
Kenneth Pollack, a
former CIA analyst who is now an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, told
me that most of the technical estimates about an Iranian breakout were not
nearly as precise as they are sometimes portrayed in the press. "The idea
there is such a thing as a hard and fast formula for this is nonsense," he
said. "All the physicists come up with different answers depending on what
inputs they use."
In this
way, Obama's new, more alarmist figure of two to three
months provides a key selling point for the framework reached this month
in Switzerland. When Obama announced the
preliminary agreement on April 2, he said one benefit was that if it were
finalized, "even if it violated the deal, for the next decade at
least, Iran would be a minimum of a year away from acquiring enough material
for a bomb."
Hence the
frustration of Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "We've been researching their
claim that a deal would lengthen the breakout time for Iran from two to three
months to a year," he told me of the administration. "We're just
trying to confirm any of their numbers and we can't confirm or make sense of
what they are referencing."
Nunes should
hurry. The Iranian nuclear deal is scheduled to breakout in less than
three months.
Radio Miami: Renunció la jefa de la
DEA por un escándalo de agentes con prostitutas
La
agencia antidrogas de EE.UU. Michele Leonhart había sido duramente criticada
por su tibia respuesta en este sonado caso
La directora de la DEA, la agencia para el
control de drogas estadounidense, Michele Leonhart, renunció al cargo tras la
fuerte presión legislativa que recibió a raíz del escándalo protagonizado por
varios agentes de ese organismo en Colombia, donde
tuvieron fiestas sexuales organizadas por narcotraficantes.
El anuncio lo hizo este martes el secretario de Justicia, Eric Holder, quien señaló que la medida se hará efectiva a mediados del mes próximo. “Michele dirigió esta distinguida agencia con honor, y he estado orgulloso de considerarla mi socia en la labor de salvaguardar la seguridad nacional y de proteger a nuestros ciudadanos del crimen, la explotación y el abuso”, afirmó a través de uncomunicado formal.
Leonhart, que ocupaba el cargo desde 2007, había sido duramente criticada por su tibia respuesta al informe de la propia DEA, donde se admitía que agentes antidrogas asistieron a fiestas sexuales con prostitutas en Colombia, algunas de ellas pagadas por jefes de los carteles de drogas locales.
La semana pasada Leonhart compareció ante la Comisión para la Supervisión del Gobierno de laCámara de Representantes, pero sus declaraciones resultaron muy endebles. La mayoría de los integrantes de la comisión dijeron que habían perdido la confianza en ella ya que no aplicó ningún castigo a los agentes involucrados. “Carece de la autoridad y voluntad para tomar las decisiones necesarias para achacar responsabilidades a quienes ponen en riesgo la seguridad nacional y deshonran sus puestos”, dijeron los legisladores. Es más, señalaron que era “deplorablemente incapaz de cambiar” la cultura de la agencia.
Entre los legisladores que expresaron sus críticas había 13 demócratas y nueve republicanos, incluido el presidente de la comisión, Jason Chaffetz. Varios de ellos, incluso, pidieron la renuncia inmediata de Leonhart, algo que finalmente se concretó ayer.
El anuncio lo hizo este martes el secretario de Justicia, Eric Holder, quien señaló que la medida se hará efectiva a mediados del mes próximo. “Michele dirigió esta distinguida agencia con honor, y he estado orgulloso de considerarla mi socia en la labor de salvaguardar la seguridad nacional y de proteger a nuestros ciudadanos del crimen, la explotación y el abuso”, afirmó a través de uncomunicado formal.
Leonhart, que ocupaba el cargo desde 2007, había sido duramente criticada por su tibia respuesta al informe de la propia DEA, donde se admitía que agentes antidrogas asistieron a fiestas sexuales con prostitutas en Colombia, algunas de ellas pagadas por jefes de los carteles de drogas locales.
La semana pasada Leonhart compareció ante la Comisión para la Supervisión del Gobierno de laCámara de Representantes, pero sus declaraciones resultaron muy endebles. La mayoría de los integrantes de la comisión dijeron que habían perdido la confianza en ella ya que no aplicó ningún castigo a los agentes involucrados. “Carece de la autoridad y voluntad para tomar las decisiones necesarias para achacar responsabilidades a quienes ponen en riesgo la seguridad nacional y deshonran sus puestos”, dijeron los legisladores. Es más, señalaron que era “deplorablemente incapaz de cambiar” la cultura de la agencia.
Entre los legisladores que expresaron sus críticas había 13 demócratas y nueve republicanos, incluido el presidente de la comisión, Jason Chaffetz. Varios de ellos, incluso, pidieron la renuncia inmediata de Leonhart, algo que finalmente se concretó ayer.
When did America forget that it’s America?
On a number of occasions during the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli
government has appealed to the United States and its allies to demand a change
in Tehran’s aggressive behavior. If Iran wishes to be treated as a normal
state, Israel has said, then it should start acting like one. Unfortunately,
these appeals have been summarily dismissed. TheObama administration apparently believes that only after a nuclear agreement is signed can
the free world expect Iran to stop its attempts at regional domination, improve
its human rights record and, in general, behave like the civilized state it
hopes the world will recognize it to be.
As a former Soviet
dissident, I cannot help but compare this approach to that of the United States
during its decades-long negotiations with the Soviet Union, which at the time
was a global superpower and a existential threat to the free world. The
differences are striking and revealing.
For starters,
consider that the Soviet regime felt obliged to make its first ideological
concession simply to enter into negotiations with the United States about
economic cooperation. At the end of the 1950s, Moscow abandoned its doctrine of
fomenting a worldwide communist revolution and adopted in its place a credo of
peaceful coexistence between communism and capitalism. The Soviet leadership
paid a high price for this concession, both internally — in the form of
millions of citizens, like me, who had been obliged to study Marxism and
Leninism as the truth and now found their partial abandonment confusing — and
internationally, in their relations with the Chinese and other dogmatic
communists who viewed the change as a betrayal. Nevertheless, the Soviet
government understood that it had no other way to get what it needed from the
United States.
Imagine what would
have happened if instead, after completing a round of negotiations over
disarmament, the Soviet Union had declared that its right to expand communism
across the continent was not up for discussion. This would have spelled the end
of the talks. Yet today, Iran feels no need to tone down its rhetoric calling
for the death of America and wiping Israel off the map.
Of course, changes in rhetoric did not change the Soviet Union’s policy, which
included sending missiles to Cuba, tanks to Prague and armies to Afghanistan.
But each time, such aggression caused a serious crisis in relations between
Moscow and Washington, influencing the atmosphere and results of negotiations
between them. So, for example, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan shortly
after the SALT II agreement had been signed, the United States quickly
abandoned the deal and accompanying discussions.
Today, by contrast,
apparently no amount of belligerence on Iran’s part can convince the free world
that Tehran has disqualified itself from the negotiations or the benefits being
offered therein. Over the past month alone, as nuclear discussions continued
apace, we watched Iran’s proxy terror group, Hezbollah, transform into a
full-blown army on Israel’s northern border, and we saw Tehran continue to
impose its rule on other countries, adding Yemen to the list of those under its
control.
Then there is the
question of human rights. When American negotiations with the Soviets reached
the issue of trade, and in particular the lifting of sanctions and the
conferring of most-favored-nation status on the Soviet Union, the Senate, led
by Democrat Henry Jackson, insisted on linking
economic normalization to Moscow’s allowing freedom of emigration. By the next
year, when the Helsinki agreement was signed, the White House had joined
Congress in making the Soviets’ treatment of dissidents a central issue in
nearly every negotiation.
Iran’s dismal human
rights record, by contrast, has gone entirely unmentioned in the recent
negotiations. Sadly, America’s reticence is familiar: In 2009, in response to
the democratic uprisings that mobilized so many Iranian citizens, President
Obama declared that engaging the theocratic
regime would take priority
over changing it.
Reality is
complicated, and the use of historical analogies is always somewhat limited.
But even this superficial comparison shows that what the United States saw fit
to demand back then from the most powerful and dangerous competitor it had ever
known is now considered beyond the pale in its dealings with Iran.
Why the dramatic shift? One could suggest a simple answer: Today there is
something the United States wants badly from Iran, leaving Washington and its
allies with little bargaining power to demand additional concessions. Yet in
fact Iran has at least as many reasons to hope for a deal. For Tehran, the
lifting of sanctions could spell the difference between bankruptcy and becoming
a regional economic superpower, and in slowing down its arms race it could
avoid a military attack.
I am afraid that the
real reason for the U.S. stance is not its assessment, however incorrect, of
the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral
self-confidence. While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations
of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system
over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people
and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could
speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers
still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s
postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over
other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the
United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.
We have yet to see
the full consequences of this moral diffidence, but one thing is clear: The
loss of America’s self-assured global leadership threatens not only the United
States and Israel but also the people of Iran and a growing number of others
living under Tehran’s increasingly emboldened rule. Although the hour is
growing late, there is still time to change course — before the effects grow
more catastrophic still.
WATCH CHELSEA
LIE FOR MAMA: Hillary’s Kid Defends Clinton ‘Charity’, It’s ‘Among the most
transparent of foundations’
It’s true, it’s about as
transparent as the Obama administration too…if that’s how we’re defining
transparency now.
World Leader Says It’s ‘Ridiculous’ That
With Black President, ‘Crimes Against U.S. Blacks Continue.’ Now Guess Who Said
It.
2K
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took the
opportunity to slam the U.S. over the death of Freddie Gray and the police
shootings of black men Walter Scott and Michael Brown, posting on Twitter,
“It’s ridiculous that even though US President is black, still such crimes
agnst US blacks continue to occur.”
In a speech
to police commanders in
Tehran just hours after a night of violent
anti-police protests in
Baltimore over Gray’s death, Khamenei said the behavior of U.S. police toward
blacks represents “cruel might,” contrary to Islam which, he said, does not
favor “power with cruelty.”
“FREEDOM IS NOT FREE”
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