As related earlier by Moe Lane, the Obama DOJ has exonerated Yoo and Bybee. And just like clock work, enter Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Leahy condemned the report’s findings Monday.

“The deeply flawed legal opinions proffered by these former [Office of Legal Counsel] officials created a ‘golden shield’ that sought to protect from scrutiny and prosecution the Bush administration’s torture of detainees in U.S. custody,” Leahy said in a statement. “In drafting and signing these unsound legal analyses, OLC attorneys sanctioned torture, contrary to our domestic anti-torture laws, our international treaty obligations and the fundamental values of this country.”

If senators had known about Bybee’s role in creating these polices before his confirmation to the lifetime appoint to the federal bench, he would never have been confirmed, Leahy asserted.

“The right thing to do would be for him to resign from this lifetime appointment,” he added

It must be awful living in a world where everyone is conspiring against you … even the Obama DOJ.

Sen. Leahy should reconsider his desire to focus on this non-issue while the people of Vermont struggle with a depressed economy.

Or not.

Another option is for Sen. Leahy to continue down this path of irrelevance, thus opening the door to his Republican challenger Len Britton. Len Britton is a local small business owner who has stepped up to the challenge of 2010. He intends to be a true citizen legislator who has no intentions of staying in D.C. any longer than absolutely needed.

When I asked the Britton campaign for a response to Sen Leahy’s intentions this was the reply:

The world changed after the events of September 11, 2001 and we were in
certain uncharted waters. I agree with the findings of President Obama’s
Department of Justice - this matter should be concluded now. Washington
insiders should stop playing politics and start focusing on the issues that
matter most to Americans - out of control spending, fixing the economy and
most importantly putting Americans back to work

That is an appealing contrast, no?

Aaron B. Gardner

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The Hill’s “Blog Briefing Room” suggests that is exactly the reality our beleaguered President finds himself staring at:

52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll.

Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion.

The reelection numbers are slightly more sour than Obama’s approval ratings, which are basically tied. 49 percent of people told CNN that they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 50 percent disapprove.

The temptation to mock, while great, will be resisted. No personal fan of the man, I almost feel bad for him…almost… as I think back to the doom George W. Bush was told he faced in the run-up to his own re-election and remember how badly I hoped the experts were wrong back then. I’m sure Obama’s fans feel the same way today, so in deference I’ll back off for now.

I will add, though, that drawing comparisons between what Bush faced during his first term then and what Obama has faced during his own first term now is instructive. Bush started 2 wars with a fair amount of success (take it easy…I said fair amount) and Obama has failed to end them as he promised to. Bush inherited a decent economy (however much it was built upon a house of cards) that fairly quickly collapsed before having a full-bore stroke after 9/11. Obama inherited a struggling economy that had some potential for improvement until he chose to bail out everyone and take them over… Bush’s post-9/11 economic stroke would look good now compared to what we’re faced with today. We were afraid back then…now we’re just fiscally cynical and wholly distrustful of the Federal Government.

Like Bush, Obama now finds himself having to glad-hand his political opponents. I think (and I’m prepared to be corrected on this) that there is a fundamental difference between the two however; Bush gave in a little without having to abandon his agenda while Obama appears ready to give up all he stood for a year ago just to cling to his political life - agenda be damned.

Having even some Executive experience really does mean something when you wake up one morning and find yourself assigned the task of being President of the United States…Governor (I suggest here) offers a bit more of that than Community Organizer and hand-wringing political activist. It makes one wonder, yet again, which is the better President…or at least which of these two will be better remembered for having given the job a try.

David Reilly over at Bloomberg tells us that Obama needs to “man up” if he doesn’t want to be handing Sarah Palin the keys to the White House in January 2013. While I think it’s quite presumptuous to assume Palin will be his successor, Reilly’s little rant about Obama needing to be more of a tough guy (even against his own people) made me laugh.

Obama needs to ditch his professorial, community-organizer mien and start cracking some heads. Unless, that is, he is intent on paving the way for a Palin presidency in 2013.

Supporters are crying out for Obama to pull out of his tailspin. In an article in Politico, Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first African-American governor and an early Obama supporter, urged the president to get his act together.

“The need is becoming more obvious by the day,” Wilder wrote. “Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different jobs.”

I find it fascinating that Democrats want a tough-minded, bull-headed, strong-willed President now, when only 3 short years ago these very same Democrats (confronted with a President exhibiting these very same personality traits) did nothing but belly ache, moan, and complain:

“Americans want compromise, not a cowboy-style showdown,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C.

I’ll take the cowboy approach, thank you very much. Gangstas are too well-known for killing their own…

Staggering under a national debt of £830billion ($1.245 trillion) for a nation only about the size of California with a population about twice that state’s, the UK’s Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is selling off its hard asset Dover Port to its historical arch-enemy, France, in a benighted attempt at debt reduction through privatization.

Although the UK already has sold off its other major ports to private hands through the 1991 Ports Act, the sale of Dover Port and the White Cliffs to France has generated anger and outrage among the general British population, a large percentage of whom have living memories of WWII.

Confronted by the historically inverted, proposed sale to the regional council of Nord-pas-de-Calais, Tory candidate for MP, Charles Elphicke had this to say of Calais owning Dover, “In trying to sell off our port and the White Cliffs, it’s clear Gordon Brown has no sense of the history of our nation or the pride of our town.

‘How dare he consider selling it all off to the French? Dover is the English border. We stood proud in defending our nation in times past.

‘We are the nation’s front line. The people of Dover have a clear message for him - hands off our port, hands off the English border, hands off the White Cliffs.’

The sale of Dover is expected to generate between £350million and £500million and was initially prompted by the Dover harbor board’s request to be privatized to the UK Transportation Secretary in order to get construction money for port upgrades.

Earlier this year Calais already proclaimed itself as “part of England” and “the gateway to the UK” in order to catch some anticipated reflected glory and tourist dollars from the Olympics set for London in 2012.

Thanks to Edward III’s continental conquest, it could be argued that Calais was “part of England” from 1347 to 1558 but not since. Dover and Calais are only 21 miles apart and a major transport connection between the UK and the EU.

Other items on the UK’s asset fire sale are its Post Office, student loans, a major toll highway crossing the Thames, and its stake in a uranium processing company called Urenco.

The UK is apparently a Petri dish for socialist experimentation in the English speaking world so whatever is done to the UK will translate to American shores within three to ten years depending on how fast agendas are set in place. Considering the $12 trillion (and counting!) national debt of the US, what might the Obama Administration, seemingly bent on the destruction of the U.S.A., sell off in order to ease that debt?

Since France is already in a buying mood, would it like to take back the Louisiana Purchase? No doubt that would produce a few trillion dollars right there although Obama might have to throw in New Orleans “as is” to get Paris to take it off our hands. Spain’s King Juan Carlos already has dibs on the tolls to be generated by the stalled trans-Texas corridor but Florida is always up for grabs. Al Gore blindly handed over something like $40 billion to Russia during the Clinton years so they do have the dosh to buy back Seward’s Folly, a.k.a. Alaska, although Gov. Palin might have something to say about that transaction.

Mexico would just love to take back all of our Southwest but has no intention on paying back anything it received from us in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo since it is currently using the demographics of its poor to flood our country with recolonizing illegal aliens.

Then there’s our Post Office system and schools although a quick glance at our universities and text books show Saudi money flooding in so they might as well stop fooling around and buy the US educational system wholesale. Japan might like to buy Hawaii if Hawaii doesn’t leave the Union first although considering that Japan has yet to recover from it’s economy going south in the ‘80s, that sale may just be tabled for the foreseeable future.

If all this sounds far-fetched, think again. Our bad bank loans were bundled up and sold as financial instruments overseas prompting a world-wide financial crisis that not only shows no signs of clearing up but of getting worse. Thanks to Jimmy Carter, we no longer control the strategic Panama Canal and thanks to the Bush and Obama administrations massive government bailouts and Weimar Republic-style running of our printing presses, our future and the futures of at least five generations of yet-to-be-born Americans have been sold off to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. We’re indentured servants now and, since a nation’s greatest asset is its people, it wouldn’t all be that big a step to slavery at the auction block at the rate the Democrats and the Obama Administration are spending money.

After describing some challenging times in America’s history, Obama completely misrepresented the unemployment rate under Bush when he stated:

But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. (emphasis added)

Lie #1 came right off the bat during BO’s SOTU — and his transparent lie made me furious. The unemployment rate is not still 10%. Dec. 2008 unemployment was 7.2% (released beginning of Jan 2009). Jan. 2009 unemployment was 7.6% (released Feb. 2010).

By stringing a few immodest sentences between January 20, 2009 and January 20, 2010, Obama obfuscated his own failures and simultaneously misrepresented Bush’s accomplishments. Here’s the fuller text:

Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history’s call.

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted — immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.

But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. …

Hey, “52.” Get you numbers straight. In the last year, the unemployment rate has not stayed unchanged. Rather, thanks to your policies, it has risen by at least 2.4%. And no, the devastation does not remain. It has only just begun. And there will be three more years of it.

I think it is time to socialize the political blame game. 

For the last two years the liberals, socialists, democrats and the main stream media have beat the drums incessantly regarding everything being Bush’s fault. It would seem that the “Blame Bush” mantra hasn’t been receiving as much traction lately from my own perspective as well as here, though many of the normal culprits would like to double-down.

As the November election rapidly approaches, it is time to redistribute the “Wealth of Blame” to some that are ever so deserving but have not enjoyed in the sharing of this wealth. We must work to right this injustice.  (Plus, I’m just tired of yelling at my TV or computer screen everytime someone “Blames Bush” or states “We inherited it from Bush” while a Republican pundit, office-holder, commentator, sits idly by looking around and when does speak does not redistribute the blame.)

In November 2010, we are trying to retake Congress, not the Presidency, or at least win as many new seats as possible. The year 2010 starts the 4th year of the Pelosi/Reid regime and a regime change is warranted. Everytime some idiot says, “it is Bush’s fault”, they (and the public) should be reminded that Pelosi/Reid are entering their 4th year of rule and the poor results of their first three years make the 2001-2006 Bush years and Republican Congress look stellar in comparison.

It is time to appropriately redistribute the wealth of blame and force Pelosi/Reid and the Democratic majority to share in the spending, deficits, financial failures, and general economic conditions since for 2007 onward. As November approaches, are voters better off with Pelosi/Reid in charge than 4 years ago.

Now I know you all probably thought to yourself “that’s JadedByPolitics and she loves President Bush so of course she would say that”, you are correct, however that title comes from Jeffrey Scott Shapiro and he was an attorney for John Francois Kerry during the 2004 election. Why would this man say that? because unless you are an Olbermann or Maddow or Matthews or Reid or Pelosi or Obama you would know that it is TRUE. It is exactly the betrayal of President Bush why WE 48% who did not vote for Obama will treat him as our President was treated, well except on matters of National Security.

The article that he wrote for FOX is quite interesting in that it addresses the bombardment of hate that emanated from a large swath of Americans. I remember quite clearly a few weeks into the Iraq engagement when an Australian General remarked how the take down of the Republican Guard and all of Hussien’s military would end up in history books as a gold standard for war. President Bush enjoyed poll numbers in the mid 60’s when Baghdad Bob was finally removed from the top of the Presidential Palace, it was the last moment of UNITY that President Bush had. What occurred next of course was the 2004 election for President and the ramp up for which Democrat would get the anti-war vote. I can directly relate the PURE HATE for President Bush to that moment. The State Run Media along with Democrats the same Democrats who VOTED FOR THE WAR decided they no longer were in support of that war, hell they had a liberal to get elected. Code Pink and their band of progressives along with Cindy Sheehan created an atmosphere of BETRAYAL all around our President. The leftist media was the most egregious because they had the attention of the public. They created the perception of a stupid, neo-con who loved nothing more then war. WE have NOT done that to their President when he decided to up the ante for the war in Afghanistan. WE are Patriots they are TRAITORS.

I would tell Jeffrey Scott Shapiro that this is too little and WAY TOO LATE! I will note he tried to make Americans understand this in the WSJ in 2008 The Treatment of Bush . I cannot even begin to express how angry I still am at those who divided a nation against a President who saw that being on offense was the way to WIN against AQ. President Bush along with his Generals recognized a strategy to pick a battlefield that WE could WIN ON! It is not as if Saddam Hussein did not have it coming as the man ignored the UN Resolutions and had the WORLD believing he had Nuclear Weapons and he consistently fired on our military jets that were in the Northern and Southern no fly zones . The Democrats in Congress and most notably Hillary Clinton whose husband used Iraq for dart practice when a news story about his peccadilloes was getting ready to break ASSURED us all that he had nukes. The Democrats MADE the case for war more loudly and more assuredly then President Bush and Vice President Cheney did.

I will note for the arrogant, narcissistic President today who is enjoying support from the RIGHT and his LEFTIST followers that I take umbrage and I just shake my head and wish President Bush a quiet and enjoyable retirement and I pray he knows that those of us who understood the why and how of his “chess” move very much APPRECIATE and RESPECT him keeping us and our families safe for 7 years after our Country was attacked without provocation.

Those who divided a nation should NEVER be elected President and yet Obama is today

“As Obama continues to make decisions that mirror the Bush doctrine, it is becoming apparent that the former president was not ignorant or irrational in his foreign policy decisions despite the harsh criticism and disloyalty he endured. He was in fact, ahead of his time, a visionary who understood politics and warfare in the modern age of terrorism.

That is why Obama is now following his lead.

It should be obvious now, even to Obama’s most passionate supporters that shielding the free world requires more than mere words like “hope” and “change.” Bush’s detractors should be embarrassed having arrogantly thought they could do it better, and those Republicans who abandoned Bush when he needed them most should take a moment to reflect on their fortitude or lack thereof.

Americans who chastised President Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq should apologize and show him the same respect they are now showing President Obama as he neutralizes the Taliban in Afghanistan.

George W. Bush seemed to have an almost mystical understanding of what the American people needed when we needed it most. He reminded all of us of why we should be proud to be Americans at a time when there was a whisper that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon ourselves for promoting democracy abroad.

President Bush deserves our respect, not our betrayal.”

With the Dear Leader in a political firestorm, his faithful lackeys in the press are working hard to cover his irresponsible behavior.  Following the panty-bomber’s escapade on Christmas Day, the Obama administration did very little to respond to the situation.  Sure, on Sunday they trotted out Gibbs and Napolitano to try and sugarcoat the episode, but otherwise the president was ‘unexpectedly’ [AP's Favorite Word] silent. 

With Gibbs and Napolitano’s unintelligible comments becoming a national joke, the president stepped out of the shadows to make an ‘allegedly’ important comment on the ‘alleged’ situation of the ‘alleged’ bomber and the ‘alleged’ flight on ‘allegedly’ Christmas Day.  Didn’t work.  The press began feeding on the issue like it was roadkill.  The Dear Leader’s defenders have mounted the counter-attack.

Still marinating in Bush-Derangement-Syndrome, the liberal jackals have decided to compare unlike things making them appear as like.  Josh Gerstein of Politico decided to edit the facts, embroider the situation, and try roasting the president’s political rivals in the charge of hypocrisy, a charge that is laughable considering this administration’s foibles.  He made a valiant, if disingenuous, effort.

“But the similarities between last Friday’s incident and the attempted shoe bombing in 2001 are striking.

This year’s attack came on Christmas. The attempt eight years ago took place on Dec. 22. Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when the suspect, Omar Abdulmutallab, allegedly used plastic explosives in his try to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. Bush was at Camp David when Reid used similar plastic explosives to try to blow up his Paris-to-Miami flight, which diverted to Boston after the incident.”

Spooky.  Richard Reid’s attempt was made at Christmas time and so was Abdulmutallab’s.  Both used PETN to try and explode a plane in mid flight.  Both used articles of clothing to conceal the explosive.  Both failed in their attempts and were stopped by passengers and crew of the flights.  So, it seems they are somewhat similar situations where a president would react similarly, right? 

Wrong.  Reid’s attempt was three months following the 9/11 attacks, attacks we all had not yet digested.  It was during this three month period that we were daily reminded of anthrax being sent through the mail like toxic Christmas fruitcakes.  We invaded Afghanistan to find the perpetrators of the attacks.  We found an American, John Walker Lindh, among the Taliban in that country.  On a weekly basis the crisis that faced us became more and more concrete.  The shoe bomber episode seemed almost surreal and cartoonish.  We were facing strange events that we had never before even dreamed.

Since then reality has set in.  We know these terrorists will stop at nothing to recruit and use human beings as living bombs.  They will attack airplanes, railroads, subways, and every other conveyance we can imagine.  They live among us and around us and are ever poking and prodding for weakness. 

Obama and his minions have the experience of these past eight years to understand our situation.  Bush and his team had three months to figure out what was real, what was happening, and how to deal with it.  The situations are not even slightly similar, except Obama SHOULD have known better and Bush TRIED to know better.  However, that isn’t the realism these people want to consider.

Their Anointed One has shown ?unexpected? incompetence in the face of adversity.  His administration clumsily tries to put our safety on the back burner as they overtly try social and economic experiments on our country.  They are hoping to silence critics of this administration’s dangerous proclivity of believing their own rhetoric.  It won’t work.  We are not so empty-headed as to believe context has no meaning.  If Bush carefully considered a new and strange attack before commenting, it was because we were in a strange new world.  Obama doesn’t have that liability.  He has the shoe bomber’s actions to learn from.  They should try remembering that.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31049.html#ixzz0bINL2vag