- Home
- About Us
- Contributors
- Departments
- Topics
- Back Issues
- Weekly Archives
- AmSpecBlog
- Subscribe
- Newsletter
- Advertise
- Donate
- Contact Us
- Daily Digest
- Templeton Essays
search
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The Obama Watch
The Friend of My Enemy Is Who?
They say you are known by the company you keep and boy, what a rollercoaster ride the past few months have been for President Obama and friends. It started during the campaign with revelations of ties to the likes of convicted felon Tony Rezko, Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers and of course, bombastic preacher Jeremiah Wright. Yet, by the sheer force of his charismatic personality -- capable of causing chills to run up the legs of a media with schoolgirl crushes on him -- in-depth reporting of these associations mostly failed to reach the ears of the general public.
But now that he's the president, his friends should have received the scrutiny they deserve, right? And some of his buddies have been in hot water recently, most notably his "green jobs" commie-czar Van Jones, as well as his pals over at ACORN. But, given that the media don't feel obligated to investigate these folks whose enormous power is equaled only by their shady pasts, it's no wonder that their troubles have so easily been exposed by the loyal opposition.
Also unsurprising is that the president's desire to be loved by those who reviled and more importantly feared his predecessor has come to fruition. But it wasn't without great effort. His bowing, scraping and apologizing to world leaders for America's supposed crimes finally culminated in his exchange of a warm handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
You may remember Chavez' quaint remarks at the UN in 2006 when he said of President Bush: "The devil came here yesterday. It still smells of sulphur today." Sniffing around at the same venue just weeks ago he said of the Obama aura, "It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope."
And the romance between despots and the leader of the free world doesn't consist only of olfactory oratory. During his recent, rambling rant at the UN, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi expressed hope that Obama, whom he called "our son," would "stay forever as the president of the United States."
Such adulation was never heaped upon George W. Bush, who graciously lifted sanctions against Libya after her crackpot leader came begging with his tail between his legs, promising to abandon his WMD program scant days after Saddam Hussein was pulled out of his rat-hole. Yet in his September UN speech, Qaddafi called for Bush to stand trial for war crimes in Iraq. How fleeting is the gratitude of madmen!
Most of mainstream pundithood thinks that the preposterous award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was a slap in the face to our 43rd president; that it somehow repudiates George Bush's approach to foreign relations in the post-9/11 world. Yet in actuality, nearly all Americans save those on the left see it for what is: an empty gesture that speaks only to the wish that Obama continue with his naive intention to put down the big stick W wielded to keep our nation safe for seven years.
George W. Bush was certainly never loved by the rest of the world. Like President John Adams, we can bet that "panegyrical romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit [him] to posterity in brilliant colors." Of course just such worshipful paeans have already been composed about Barack Obama by New Jersey schoolteachers. Yet President Bush had the one thing his successor surely lacks; the one thing that made bloodthirsty killers around the world respect him: a resolute belief in the goodness of our country and the steely determination to defend it at all costs.
No, President Bush never got a Nobel Prize and he never even got close to hosting the Olympics. He was never lauded by Hollywood; that most depraved of all cultures, or by academia or any other entity whose praise is coveted by those on the left. But in spite of a vicious and all-encompassing media blitz against him he was rewarded in the 2004 elections by the American people; those who knew and hopefully still know exactly who our enemies and their friends really are.
Comments
Leave a Comment
Related Articles
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- An American Tragedy
- Barney and Friends
- Breaking Fast With Bill Safire
ADVERTISEMENT
Unger| 10.14.09 @ 7:20AM
What is wrong with Chavez? Does he sniff every empty chair or only those of American presidents?
Alan Brooks| 10.14.09 @ 7:29PM
Chavez proves that not only local social progress is over, but so is global social progress.
Just look at the sneer on his face.
Robbins Mitchell| 10.14.09 @ 7:45AM
Well,frankly there is no reason why ANY of those 3rd world autocrats should fear Barokeydoke....he's a punk and they know he's a punk so they treat him like a punk....so I see no reason why I or any other American with a lick of sense should treat him like anything else either.
EasTexan| 10.14.09 @ 7:46AM
Lisa, you wrap it up nicely. Any US President who is not feared by the world's baddies, is a dangerous man...and we've now one of those. That Obama can awaken to that truth remains to be seen.
Shamus| 10.14.09 @ 8:17AM
Obama is content to let Chavez sniff his butt.
bluecollarbytes| 10.14.09 @ 8:32AM
I remember thinking "irrational exuberance" when pundits fell all over themselves writing about Qaddafi's 'change of heart'. Many of these pundits also spoke of signs of Obama's intent to moderate his ideological goals right after the 08 election. How's that all working out?
we could use some 'pundit reform'
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.14.09 @ 9:23AM
Lisa
I believe we are going to be hit, and hit hard by one of these foreign thugs, but they had better get off their butts if they are going to beat Obama to the punch.
Rhetoric question:
Would a major attack from terrorists provoke a "national emergency"?
Another question:
Are each of you aware of the sweeping powers granted to a US President "during a national emergency"?
Well, each of you had better read up, and get prepared!
(What if that "emergency" just happened to coincide with 2010 elections? Don't write...just think where you would stand then!)
S.L. Toddard| 10.14.09 @ 1:52PM
"Are each of you aware of the sweeping powers granted to a US President "during a national emergency"?
Well, each of you had better read up, and get prepared!"
Why don't you tell us, Ken? Since you imply that you know. What are these powers?
crookedwren| 10.14.09 @ 9:49AM
Lisa,
Thank you for your article. George W. Bush was a much more gracious man than the media ever let on.
I'm appalled by the worshipful masses of the President who kneeled to the Saudi King.
Been reading Coulter's book "Treason." My history classes never spoke much of Alger Hiss, never of Whitaker Chambers, and completely inaccurately of Joseph McCarthy. I'm embarrassed that I've always thought McCarthy was head of HUAC. But that's what my teachers and the media led me to believe. (McCarthy was in the Senate, not the House; he was only concerned about possible Communists in high places in the government. He actively RESISTED naming names in a public forum and was jeered at and forced to by others who were far less patriotic and wise than Sen. McCarthy. -- Thank you, Ann C., for that clarification.)
We could do worse than look back to that time in our history -- and take notes -- then take action.
The "emergency" is here.
Pingback| 10.14.09 @ 10:33AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : The Friend of My Enemy Is Who? [spec links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
davelnaf| 10.14.09 @ 11:15AM
The Nobel Peace prize was degraded years ago; it is not the same thing as a Nobel in the other categories. Therefore, Americans should not get overly exercised by its being awarded to Obama. He was awarded the prize because Europe is once again rife with a traditional anti-Americanism that is only quieted during periods when Euros have needed our help. The current period is not one of those times. Occasionally, we elect a president they like and the image they have of the US improves, but the underlying anti-Americanism will always be a constant, like death and taxes.
S.L. Toddard| 10.14.09 @ 1:49PM
"The only thing we have to fear is that not one of the world's bad guys fears Obama himself."
What a deeply stupid and baseless complaint. Anyone beyond the age of 11 who employs the term "bad guys" is impossible to take seriously.
Ken (Old Texican| 10.14.09 @ 2:17PM
Toddard: GO LOOK IN THE MIRROR!
SEE "BAD GUY"
Emergency powers? Can you read? Most here can. I don't have to re-invent "reading-up" for non readers.
S.L. Toddard| 10.14.09 @ 2:27PM
Of course I can read. What "emergency powers" specifically are you talking about?
Can't say I find it surprising you can't name any. More baseless, unnamed terrors from the frightened Right.
Helen Donnelly| 10.14.09 @ 3:04PM
Toddard: I am on the right and I am not frightened....except of people with their heads in the sand like you. When you get through with your name calling, there just isn't much else there.
John II| 10.14.09 @ 9:25PM
Yo Toddard! Figured I'd find you on this thread. (Shameless plagiarism, by the way: I'm thinking of the Kim Darby line in the 1969 flick "True Grit," for which John Wayne finally won the Academy Award. In response to the Glen Campbell line "I'm Episcopal myself," Darby responds: "Figured you for a kneeler." Being Catholic, I'm a kneeler too, Toddard, but I treasure anti-Catholic sentiment, even if indirectly administered. Now, where the hell was I?)
Oh yes, you insist that you can read. That's a good start. Now read the following Constitutional exegesis, delivered by your most obedient servant. To wit:
The philosophical tradition behind the idea of government by consent and by law has acknowledged that republican executives must have power to act in an emergency. In his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, Machiavelli wrote, “Those republics which in time of danger cannot resort to a dictatorship will generally be ruined when grave occasions occur” (book 1, chap. 34). In The Second Treatise of Government (1690), John Locke noted that, because it is “impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all accidents and necessities, … therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things … which the laws do not prescribe.” This power Locke called “prerogative”; it is the power “to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it” (Laslett, ed., 1988, p. 375).
By Locke's definition (that is, executive action in the absence of law or against the law), prerogative has become a pattern of presidential action, even for limited periods of time, only rarely. Clinton Rossiter, in his "Constitutional Dictatorship" (1963), regarded only Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt as “constitutional dictators,” presidents who acted on their own discretion during crises for which the laws did not provide adequate authority.
Lincoln was the prime example. To meet the challenge of secession, he acted, before Congress convened in a special session, to suspend habeas corpus, impose a naval blockade, and provide unappropriated funds for the purchase of military equipment. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, sitting alone on circuit, declared in Ex parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress had power to provide for the suspension of habeas corpus, but his decision was not enforced. In the Prize Cases (1863), the Supreme Court by a 5‐to‐4 margin upheld the blockade and supported the president's determination to preserve the Constitution, if necessary by the use of armed force and without lawful authorization, against citizens engaging in rebellion.
Once the Civil War was over, the Supreme Court sought to restore the notion that the Constitution was “perfect,” that is, able on its own terms to meet any emergency. In Ex parte Milligan (1866), the Court unanimously voided the conviction of a civilian by a military tribunal. In his opinion (representing the views of five justices), Justice David Davis wrote, “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace. … [T]he government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence” (p. 295). In the twentieth century Duncan v. Kahanamoku (1946), holding the wartime imposition of martial law in Hawaii unconstitutional, was a similar effort to restore constitutional protections after fighting stopped (see Military Trials and Martial Law). The same view was expressed even more emphatically by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, in Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934): “The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government … were determined in the light of emergency and they are not altered by emergency.”
The “perfection” of the Constitution was again sorely tested during the Great Depression of the 1930s. On the day following his inauguration, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a national emergency, decreed a “bank holiday” (thereby preventing people from withdrawing deposits or cashing checks), forbade the export of gold and silver, and prohibited transactions in foreign exchange. For authority he cited the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, empowering the president to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit, under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe, … any transactions in foreign exchange and the export, hoarding, melting, or earmarkings of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency.” This statute had been passed as a wartime measure. On the advice of his attorney general‐designate Thomas Walsh, Roosevelt based his actions on this dormant statute, rather than on his constitutional office and oath. Either way, the president's actions went beyond any precedent save Lincoln's and took the government, for the first time in peacetime, into the realm where constitutional legitimacy is maintained, if at all, by statutes that delegate discretion to the executive.
Another severe test of the constitutional basis of presidential emergency powers came in 1952 when President Harry S. Truman seized the steel mills. The Court, finding no basis for the president's action either in the Constitution or in statutes, ordered him to return the mills to their owners (Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952).
In a concurring opinion, Justice Robert Jackson classified the constitutional authority of the president in a situation he or she deems to be an emergency. If he can find legislation authorizing his action, his powers are virtually unassailable. If he acts in the absence of a statute, he must rely on his own independent powers. In that event his authority “is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than abstract theories of law” But if he takes action incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, “his power is at its lowest ebb,” wrote Jackson. The Court could sustain his action “only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject.”
Jackson thought Truman's seizure of the steel mills fell into the third category, and he concurred in the Court's decision not to permit it. He went on to note, however, that the preservation of the balance ordained by the Constitution depended in part on the willingness of Congress to meet the challenges presented by events. Control over emergency powers ought to be lodged elsewhere than in the executive who exercises them, he wrote, but if Congress refuses to respond adequately to crises, government by law cannot survive. Quoting a maxim attributed to Napoleon (“The tools belong to the man who can use them”), Jackson warned that “only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.”
The seizure of the mills “represents an exercise of authority without law,” wrote Jackson, and “men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.”
The other sources of presidential emergency powers are statutes that grant power to be exercised in the event of a declared emergency. Normally it is the executive who discerns and declares an emergency. When the executive does, he or she quickens many powers. According to a report issued by the Senate Special Committee on National Emergencies and Delegated Emergency Powers in 1973, there were at that time 470 provisions of federal law that delegated powers to the president in the event of a declared emergency. (Some of them contained legislative vetoes, a device declared unconstitutional in Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] v. Chadha, 1983. The status of powers linked to legislative vetoes is not clear in the wake of this decision.)
In the mid‐1970s, Congress became concerned about the possible abuse of these powers, especially because some declarations of emergency contain no termination date. In fact, the Senate study found that the nation had legally been in a continuous state of emergency since Roosevelt's declaration of 1933.
To correct this situation, Congress in 1976 passed the National Emergencies Act, which declared that any and all existing states of emergency would be terminated two years from the bill's enactment and that future presidential declarations would be subject to congressional review every six months. An example of the use of presidential emergency powers since the enactment of this statute came when President Jimmy Carter in November 1979 declared that the taking of American hostages in Iran created a national emergency and froze Iranian assets held in America. In January 1980, at the end of his term, he reached an agreement with the government of Iran to release the hostages in exchange for the transfer of the frozen assets to Iran and the extinguishing of any American claims to those assets. The Supreme Court, in Dames & Moore v. Regan (1981), found statutory authority for the transfer of the assets, but for the extinguishing of claims, the Court relied on “the general tenor of Congress' legislation in this area,” which, it said, could be viewed as an invitation to exercise independent presidential authority.
Now, it's true, Toddard, that I am of the "frightened Right," but the paranoia to which you seem to allude may perhaps be of a different character. For paranoia is a psychological malady characterized by fear of dangers that do not exist. But there is another term for the psychological malady characterized by denial of dangers that do exist: stupidity.
And now back to Laurel and Hardy.
Bydand76| 10.14.09 @ 9:21PM
Here Toddard.
Emergency Powers granted to the Executive Branch in times of a National Emergency.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/98-505.pdf
I guess The president must be included in your definition of not being able to take seriously. Because, if I am not mistaken, I am pretty sure he used the term not to long ago in referance to the Iranians.
Pete| 10.14.09 @ 11:54PM
Wow. I thought only the Turd posted novel-length posts. I never read them, but yours seems to have scared him away. I will try this tactic at the next opportunity.
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.15.09 @ 1:10PM
Thanks John II
Yeah, I read that exegesis on the web. Have you ever noticed that Toddard rails at anything we do, but never ever suggests what he would do instead?
Nahhh!
Basic turd shooting gripe artist.
John II| 10.15.09 @ 1:53PM
Well--yes, I've noticed, but this one really puzzles me. If I'm not mistaken, Toddard claims to be of the Buchananite Paleo-wham-wham variety of conservative who wants an impervious electromagnetic bubble-shield to cover the continental US of A (Hawaii and Alaska don't count because they are busybody imperial acquisitions), so that we can forget about foreign entanglements and live off the fat of the land, untouched by the imbecilities of world disorder.
He hates war not just because of its unspeakable destruction (which is pretty much my own complaint against the practice, but one must admit with Mencken that the practice has an undying fascination about it, and boys will be boys), but mostly because the pursuit of particular wars tends to be hazardous to economic prosperity and civil liberties alike.
And I seem to recall some complaints on his part about the constitutionally frisky policies of Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt. So I am left baffled: why on earth would Toddard blow off characteristically conservative worries about Executive hanky-panky under guise of emergency powers?
So perhaps you're right: he just rails at anything the rest of us say or do. He'd just better not rail
at Laurel and Hardy, though, or he's going to find his necktie buttered. So far, out of charity, I have spared him the full force of my rhetoric--but if he crosses THAT line, I'm going nuclear.
Are you eavesdropping, Toddard? If so, have a care.
And now back to "Way Out West," arguably Laurel and Hardy's masterpiece.
Mystery Mann| 10.17.09 @ 10:04AM
He is a self pronounced Muslim ( and has all of his records locked up, what happened to the freedom of imformation act). Hires radical extremeists from ACORN( he actually thought he'd get that past us?). Been accused of having homosexual sex and wants to write off " Don't ask, Don't tell." Once again, has been accused of smoking crack cocaine and sides with every third world dictator whom we have despised for their acts of genocide and make a huge part of their own GNP from drug trafficing. He's going to Sell us a health plan that he's already Taxed us for and then use it as a disguised form of genocide on the eldery in favor of elligal aliens. He really can't stand America or anything about it even though there are too many things to list here that are good, are working and need no change. How can we expect him to stand up for something he doesn't believe in. The only way he will stand for anything is if HE creates it. Talk about a GOD complex. We need to impeach this idiot and everyone who claims to be loyal to him before it is to late, if it is not already. And the Noble Peace Prize? There are poor people who have lost their minds all over the world who say that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, tooth fairy and space aliens really do exist. Maybe we ought to listen. Maybe we ought to chose one of them to run our Country and the free world. Makes about as much sense as Barak H. Obama winning the NPP and all of the stuff he is proposing and NOT. HE IS A FRAUD!!! Reminds me somewhat of a movie titled " The Manchurian Candidate". Common people we are too intelligent and strong to let this happen to our country overnight when we and our ancestors have been working, fighting, dying and yes, slaving to get it right. I cahallenge you to get up right now, go to the nearest door or window, open it and from the depths of your lungs scream " I sick of Obama and am not going to put up with him any more." Then go right straight back to your computer and write. Write to your Governor, Senator and Rep. Write on blogs. Write to anyone who will listen and lets get rid of this phoney once and for all.