Columnist.
Within 24 hours of the nightclub massacre in Orlando committed by Islamist terrorist Omar Mateen, reports came out that the perpetrator had been a person of interest known by the FBI. In 2013 Mateen was interviewed twice by the FBI after he had made inflammatory comments to workplace colleagues asserting his ties to ISIS. In 2014 he was questioned again about a reported connection to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, who attended Mateen's radical mosque in Fort Pierce, Fla., and who had carried out a suicide bombing in the Syria conflict. The FBI says the bureau dropped Mateen from being a person of interest or being on a terrorist watch list because of insufficient and inconclusive evidence.
When James Comey was appointed FBI Director by President Obama, he became the "hands on" chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. As he laid his hand on the Bible and recited his oath of office on September 4, 2013, swearing to "faithfully discharge the duties of the office… without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion," Mr. Comey never thought he would face indicting the heir apparent leader of the party under which he would serve.
One of the most extraordinary things about Donald Trump's primary victory in the Republican Party is that he received more votes from people identifying as Christian than his closest competitor Ted Cruz — the son of an evangelical pastor and one who profusely displayed his Christian identity in speech and temperament. In contrast, by standards that many believe to be the essence of Christian character as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, Donald Trump has been anything but meek, merciful, or peacemaking in his political rise. Some have likened him to a one-man wrecking ball. So what's going on?
There should be no surprise that former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, who played a role in launching the political career of Barack Obama, was found among the street demonstrators in Chicago who succeeded in forcefully disrupting and shutting down Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's campaign rally on March 11, injuring two police officers who were trying to maintain order.
A critic of the French Revolution, Joseph de Maistre, is said to be first to proclaim that "a country gets the government it deserves." The same observation actually was made much earlier by numerous figures in the Bible. And what was true about ancient rulers and kings is probably just as germane to democracies like the United States today. In general, people support leaders that tell them what they want to hear. But what people hear and want to hear is not always what they need to hear. Additionally, what they hear and accept is affected by standards of behavior, cultural norms, media, and educational systems that are shaped and accepted by the ruling class.
Obsession with the extent and legal culpability of Hillary Clinton in her handling of classified information as secretary of state through a private, home-based and unsecure email server makes for intrigue and anticipation of a perp-walk indictment and ensuing political drama. But it misses the mark on what voters need to understand. Clinton's repeated claims that she neither received nor sent classified information through her private email system and her tacit assertion of good judgment and accomplishment in national security matters as secretary of state were incredulous from the very beginning. Consider just two things.
Today, with the U.S. facing its greatest threat — that of irreversible decline — a new kind of presidential leadership is desperately needed. For the Republicans, it is not only vital to elevate and deliver a candidate with the character, courage and capability to lead in this time of crisis. It is also essential that the candidate has the ability to get in the ring and decisively defeat the Democrat Party nominee.
For some years, below the surface, a quiet counter-revolution has been advancing in the base of the Republican Party and in the country in general, while the party's establishment elites in Washington have continued on with business as usual, seemingly oblivious to the unrest of the rank and file, as if fly-over red state voters could be taken for granted. This counter-revolution was conceived and undertaken to change the trajectory of America's departure from its founding principles — to bring reform to the GOP rather than to overthrow the party. In short, the hope was to reverse Republican establishment diffidence about out-of-control, unaccountable government and its attendant crony corruption.
Frustration with division and gridlock in Washington lead many Americans to impugn both political parties for the current broken and ineffective state of government. There is plenty of blame to go around, but below the surface there has been a quiet revolution going on in only one of the two parties — the Democratic Party — which is the main source of today's irreconcilable division and moral confusion. What's remarkable is how the political and cultural center of American values has collapsed in the last two and a half decades with the Democratic Party having moved dramatically to the left. Recently, Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not explain the difference between the modern Democratic Party platform and that of socialism, while at the same time gushing over the prospect of Socialist Bernie Sanders having a prominent place at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.
An important recommendation of the 9/11 Commission was to tighten up the student-visa program after it was determined that the hijacker who flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had entered the U.S. on a student visa.
Most common-sense people rightly assume that establishing stable uniform rules of engagement and reducing trade barriers is good in and of itself. But it's a mistake to think that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving 11 countries in addition to the U.S. — which is close to being concluded after six-plus years of negotiation under the Obama administration — is only a free trade pact. It's also a misstep to grant the Obama administration with fast-track authority and the attendant secrecy on all details of this trade pact. The experience with Obama's Affordable Care Act, his executive order on immigration and his ongoing nuclear agreement negotiations with Iran remind us that the devil in the details, once passed and implemented, can be harmful and problematic to correct.
The U.S. dollar is getting perilously close to losing its status as the world's reserve currency, and the current nuclear deal with Iran could push it over the edge. For years much has been written about the risks from debasing our currency as a result of deficit-spending, debt-accumulation and reckless money-printing. What's vital to grasp now is that Americans will experience an abrupt decline in living standards once the dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency. Worse, the dollar's demise would also precipitate a new financial crisis — one that would make the 2008 collapse look like a summer storm. The U.S. is a relatively benign economic world power. No one knows what it would be like if, say, the Chinese yuan becomes the reserve currency for global trading. But it's apt to be far less benevolent than the dollar norm we all now just take for granted.
The most quoted political wisdom from Machiavelli regarding adversaries is that "it is better to be feared than it is to be loved." President Barack Obama's Middle East policy may well go down as the turning point in U.S. foreign policy in which Machiavelli was turned on his head, setting the stage for the whirlwind of chaos and war. What is one to think about the Obama administration's extended talks and unilateral concessions on forging a nuclear agreement with Iran that undermines long-standing U.S. allies in the Middle East and invites greater tumult in an already unstable region? It is not just the alliance with Israel that is being frayed, it is also the alliances with Sunni Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates who find their security interests critically jeopardized by a deal that virtually guarantees a future nuclear Iran. Prospects of hegemonic nuclear power by the Shia Republic of Iran will compel other states, notably Saudi Arabia — the home of the Sunni's Mecca and Medina holy sites — to go nuclear.
2015 is off with a bang of higher currency volatility than in past years. Switzerland's mid-January surprise abandon of its currency peg to a declining Euro -- causing an overnight 16 percent upward spike and instant revaluation of the Swiss Franc -- looks to be followed by Denmark. The long established exchange-rate of the Krone that Denmark pegged to the German mark and now the successor Euro currency is about to break for the same reasons that prompted the Swiss move. These are the consequences of currency wars from countries seeking to "beggar-thy-neighbor" through currency devaluation, a policy with winners and losers that has led to real wars in the past. Surprisingly, the legitimacy of currency wars has just been embraced at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers on Feb. 11. Currency devaluation helps export-dependent countries, like Japan and Germany, by making their exported goods cheaper foreign markets.
With a new year often comes anticipation and optimism. And this year the State of the Union address will be delivered before a new Congress -- a Republican majority in both the House and Senate. President Obama's State of the Union speech will likely have its smallest audience to date. That is the price that any leader pays for being dissembling on a range of important issues -- from Benghazi to IRS misconduct and censorship -- and showing disrespect for the voting public. After all, when after the November 4 election results came in, and Obama said that he heard the message of "two-thirds of the people who chose not to vote," that was final confirmation of rigidity and denial that turns people off.
Ordinarily, the plunging oil prices experienced during the last three months would be welcomed as beneficial for the economy -- lowering transportation costs and stimulating consumer spending. But these are not normal times, and the sharp 45 percent drop in oil prices can trigger a larger financial market crisis and a recessionary contraction. The debt crisis that brought the U.S. economy to its knees in 2008 has been largely absorbed and papered over by prolonged deficit spending and the Federal Reserve's easy money policies of debt monetization and zero interest rates. Consider that when the subprime debt crisis unfolded in 2008, total U.S. Treasury debt, including IOUs to HHS and Social Security, stood at about $10 trillion. Today, just six years later, it exceeds $18 trillion, with the Federal Reserve's balance sheet having grown by 425 percent -- all in Treasury and mortgage debt.
Fresh off their midterm tidal wave, the Republicans now face the same dilemma as in the story line of "The Untouchables" -- the 1987 classic about dealing with Al Capone in Chicago. As Sean Connery asked Kevin Costner, "What are you prepared to do?" Republican leadership must now decide what they are prepared to do to stop a president hell-bent on taking executive action that ignores the Constitution and overturns current U.S. immigration law by granting amnesty to four million or five million illegal immigrants -- a policy objective a majority of Americans reject.
Critics of growing inequality who blame the market for distributing wealth unfairly and rewarding the rich at the neglect of the poor have it partially correct. Everyone knows that in competitive markets, as in sports and academics, outcomes are not equal. The problem of flagging upward mobility is rooted in subpar economic growth and lackluster creation of the specific kind of job that leads to more and better opportunity. Those who think government should fix this problem need to first recognize that Washington's current trajectory of regulatory and monetary policies has crimped economic growth and widened the gap between rich and poor.
Recently, Pope Francis declared that "the persecution of Christians today is even greater than in the first centuries of the church, and there are more Christian martyrs today than in that era." The slaughter of as many as 500,000 Christians in South Sudan since 2011 may not have received the attention it deserved. However, now the religious cleansing of Christians in Iraq resulting from Islamic jihadists' conquest of lands Christians had called home since the first centuries A.D. cannot be ignored. In a region where Christians and Muslims had previously lived in relative peace side by side for centuries, the past 10 years have witnessed some 1.1 million Christians being killed or driven from their homes. Since June, the fall of northern Iraq to the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has created more than a half-million refugees -- both Christian and non-Christian.
What has suddenly become obvious is the extent to which President Barack Obama's imprudent policy-making decisions have compounded problems with unintended and unacceptable consequences. Now that Iraqi and Libyan oil may be at risk of going off-line as a result of terrorist control, Obama's recent decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport a million barrels of oil per day from friendly Alberta, Canada to the United States, seems astonishingly shortsighted.
