Two hundred and ten years after Aaron Burr felled Alexander Hamilton with a pistol shot, modern-day Jeffersonians are taking aim at a quintessentially Hamiltonian institution, hoping to deal it a mortal blow in America’s revivified duel over the proper role of government. The fight is over the Export-Import Bank of the United States, whose charter […]
As regular readers know, the United States and five other countries (P5+1) concluded an interim nuclear agreement (the Joint Plan of Action) with Iran, setting the conditions that will hold during negotiations on a final agreement concerning the Iranian nuclear program and the international economic sanctions imposed on that country and also outlining some aspects […]
In mid November, U.S. Senators Mark Begich (D-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced an amendment into the National Defense Authorization Act cosponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that would authorize spending on up to four icebreakers. While a total of four icebreakers would cost approximately $3.207 billion in 2008 dollars […]
The world continues to watch as President Obama and his administration increase their lobbying efforts to convince the Congress and the international community to support a U.S. led military strike in Syria. President Obama went on a media blitz Monday and is expected to deliver his case to the nation today to launch a “limited” […]
A few weeks ago, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution calling on Morocco and the Polisario Front to “continue negotiations without preconditions and in good faith […] with a view to achieving a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution” to end the Western Sahara conflict.” (The Polisario, a Cold War era separatist […]
A hunger strike by prisoners and President Obama’s remarks at a press conference last week have revived interest in the question of Guantánamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where 166 men (down from the original 779) have been held for up to eleven years in connection with the war on terrorism. Guantánamo (its nickname, […]
But the obfuscation, or confusion–it’s your call–in the Boston Bomber case is masterful. Now we hear reports that Ali Alharbi the young Saudi national in Boston on a student visa, the same young man authorities released after questioning him so he could ‘get back to classes'(and who issued the order to release him is still unknown)is under a DHS-issued deportation order based on an investigation that determined he has ‘suspicious terrorist ties’ and has been determined by the US government to be ‘a security risk.’ (Please see my blog of February 26–“ICE Agents Claim Napolitano Forcing Them to Violate U.S. Law–New Immigration Directives Invitation to Terrorists and Cartels.”
QED: let’s assume enforcement officials used the fact that Ali Alharbi had been investigated and was scheduled for deportation, and that it was this information, that the young man had already been tagged as a ‘national security risk,’ that helped authorities convince a judge that a search warrant was in order.
So what’s happening now? Will the Saudi student with the black backpack be retained in the US while enforcement officials continue to work with him to obtain more information? Keep him around, look for connections, leads, associations? Makes sense, don’t you think?
Not to the FBI, apparently, nor to Janet Napolitano, who heads the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS, it is rumored, is said to be following through with Alharbi’s deportation and getting ready to send him back home to Saudi Arabia.
The administration wants that boy gone.
Staying alive at DHS is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC. So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the Dream directive on deferred action—are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the US Congress in 1996 and their professional careers. Christopher Crane, head of the Council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books—ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the US illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in US prisons for felonies and misdemeanors)—are targets for disciplinary action….
One chapter of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which occurred back on April 20, 2010, has been closed, but not everybody is satisfied with the resolution. On January 29th, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance approved a November 2012 plea bargain agreement between the British oil giant BP p.l.c. and the United States Department […]
Bite me. You might as well go outside and shout it loud, because there isn’t enough DEET in your medicine chest to fend off the bloodlust of Culex pipiens, Anopheles, Aedes vexans, and dozens of other species of infected mosquitoes blanketing the United States. And West Nile virus season has just begun—consider August 2012 a preview.
Don’t get me wrong. Health organizations, federal, state and local, have spent buckets of money on nice-looking, easy-to-understand websites that calmly advise citizens to douse ourselves with bug spray, wear light, long-sleeved clothing (think Out of Africa), eliminate standing pools of water, and, of course, just stay inside the damn house until the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sounds the all-clear.
All good. But hardly sufficient.
West Nile virus—how it got here, how it travels, how it kills, and how health officials could, but often fail to mount the most effective responses—is a complicated story, a cautionary tale, some would say, about power, ego, bureaucracy, preparedness, ignorance, incompetence, and disparate champions whose voices routinely go unheard and whose counsel is too often ignored.
Right now, the highbeams are on Dallas, Texas, ‘Ground Zero’ for West Nile—and Mayor Mike Rawlings has indeed declared a state of emergency in the municipality. As the number of victims escalates, however, so does the anxiety of state and local officials, as well as the complaints of constituents, who’ve begun to question and criticize the city’s response to the health crisis….
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted (255 to 67) to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his refusal to hand over thousands of documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee more than a year ago. The documents, believes Darrell Issa (R-Calif), who heads the Committee, are pivotal to understanding the […]
On May 18th, the House of Representatives voted on the National Defense Authorization Bill (NDAA), or H.R. 4310. The bill passed 299-120. The NDAA contains language which would seriously damage the Administration’s ability to continue to negotiate reductions in its and Russia’s nuclear arsenals. It would also impinge upon the Administration’s ability to implement the […]
June 6, 2012. Four months after the post below went online, the MSM (NYT, CBS, New York Post, Fox) is reporting that Representative Darrelll Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating DOJ’s gunrunning scheme, Fast and Furious, claims the wiretap applications submitted during the course of the operation prove that DOJ officials at the highest levels knew ATF agents were bending, ignoring, and violating US law to move more than 2000 combat-ready weapons across the US border into Mexico. None of the weapons carried tracing devices, and ATF whistleblowers who pressed superiors about the need to have some sort of interdiction strategy in place that would allow them to recover the weapons before they could be used to murder innocent people (Brian Terry) were told to stand down or find another job.
Whether Issa’s latest revelation will revive the official investigation into a government scheme to supply Mexican gangs with weapons that could be traced back to recent sales by US gundealers along the SW border, a move that even the most skeptical mind has trouble believing was designed to do anything but shore up the argument for stricter gun control in the US, is yet to be seen.
Attorney General Eric Holder has told the press that Issa’s Committee is on a ‘witch hunt’ meant to target high-ranking ‘African-Americans’ within the Administration, officials Holder identified more explicitly by adding ‘like me, and the President,’ and it is unlikely the GOP House Leader John Boehner is eager to divert pre-election media coverage from Romney’s singleminded focus on the economy–even though Fast and Furious, with its parallels to Iran-Contra, might well result in the prosecution of admininstration officials for contempt, obstruction of justice, perjury, and multiple violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). Think Ollie North.
In case today’s (June 6th) reports about the importance of wiretap applications linked to Fast and Furious still leave you confused, there’s a repost of my earlier analysis below. Of special interest should be the photocopy of the memo requesting approval for a wiretap signed by Lanny Breuer in March 2010. A DOJ spokesperson says Breuer never scrutized the details, that they were never spelled out to the Head of DOJ’s Criminal Division.
Hmmm…..
Let’s talk wire taps, investigative tools popularized by every cop and criminal show that’s crossed our television screens.
Well, it turns out that ATF agents involved in the gun walking scheme known as Fast and Furious made numerous applications over a significant period of time for the issuance of court orders authorizing wire taps.
Bad news for top cops at DOJ. Like Willy Sutton, who said he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” members of the House Oversight Committee have told DOJ they want those wire tap applications because they know that’s where the evidence is–in detailed descriptions of investigative techniques and signatures they believe will point to the involvement of senior DOJ officials.
2011 has been a year filled with change, reform, progress and challenges across the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco included. As we anticipate what 2012 holds for the region, here’s a recap of key moments in 2011 for Morocco: February 20 – Thousands demonstrated across Morocco in solidarity with protesters in Egypt and Tunisia, […]
Morocco is often left out of the Arab Spring discussion by policymakers and the media, largely because the demonstrations in Morocco took place peacefully, there was no regime change and the reform process proceeded relatively swiftly and transparently. It is also due to the fact that Morocco wasn’t caught blind-sided by the push for change; […]