President Obama knows the power of the faux. The President has trouble with the U.S.Constitution most days of the week and today was one of those days. A reasonable facsimile will do as White House correspondent Jake Tappe found out. “No, that was not an actual copy of the Constitution behind President Obama as he spoke today.”
So the facsimiles were brought out for this event.. The impact of President Obama speaking in the echo-filled chamber with the words “THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERCA” etched in marble behind him were not accidental.
Update: And I was right. Says Brett Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “He wraps himself in the Constitution, talks about American values and then proceeds to violate them.” Preventive detention seems to be a sticking point, don’tcha know.
Charles Krauthammer is my hero in these days of twitter and inanity. He actually refutes, and argues with more than emotion. He thinks, reasons, remembers and researches before he writes. So it is disturbing to see him belittled in any way especially be a A Small Man as John Podhoretz counters Joe Klein’s assessment.
AllahPundit writes dismissing in disbelief at the apparent diss by Joe Klein:
“He became Ground Zero among the neo-cons, but he’s vastly smarter than most of them,” said Time’s Joe Klein, an admirer and critic who praised Krauthammer’s “writing skills and polemical skills” as “so far above almost anybody writing columns today.”
“There’s something tragic about him too,” Klein said, referring to Krauthammer’s confinement to a wheelchair, the result of a diving accident during his first year of medical school. “His work would have a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he’s writing about.”
“My writing speaks for itself,” Krauthammer responded in a curt email.
He won’t like me saying it, but Charles Krauthammer, who is more than a friendly acquaintance, is far from a tragic figure. He is a miraculous figure. He has, through a combination of raw will and a sagacious mind and a rigorous temperament that, were it possible, he should leave to science so that it can be studied and bottled and sold, lived a life both triumphantly important and triumphantly ordinary. (Although his wife, Robbie, is far from ordinary. For one thing, she is from Tasmania. For another, she is an artist of great skill. For a third, she has the dirtiest and liveliest mouth in either her forsaken hemisphere or her present one.) If you are his friend, in a fashion that I can’t quite explain, you come to have no sense whatever that he is in that chair. He may be right about what he argues (obviously, I think so, most of the time). He may be wrong. But whatever he is or is not, to argue that Charles’s views are restricted by the restrictions on his physical form is do violence to the most basic notions of civil discussion. “Klein” means small in German. Trollope could not have come up with a more apt name for a character.
Podhoretz contends:
Is it conceivable that Joe Klein is saying a man in a wheelchair is incapable of understanding the nuances of Iraq and the war on terror because he can’t get on a plane and go there like Joe Klein can? Is it possible, in this day and age, for someone seriously to argue such a thing? We cannot go back in time and visit the battlefields of the Civil War, or Agincourt, or the Peloponnese—are we therefore incapable of seeing their nuances? FDR was in a wheelchair and did not visit the battlefields of World War II-—were its nuances beyond him as well?
President Obama, by his actions to date, has left the U.S.A. weakened. He has handed terrorists information that can help them better prepare their trained operatives to attack us and hold out when interrogated.
First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.
I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.
Still without a Gitmo plan, Obama claims high moral ground for himself while playing to the camera and Europe, who as Charles Krauthammer has pointed out has been sucking on the American teet for 60 years. Personally, in defending my country both morally and ethically, I’d rather see a machine gun on that high ground than pretentious rhetoric. Mich McConnell says what we need is a plan not another speech. No mention from Obama of a plan.
In a remarkable split-screen presentation of opposing worldviews, former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke across town moments later, saying he supported the controversial policies “when they were made, and without hesitation would do so again in the same circumstances.”
“The point is not to look backward,” Cheney said. “A lot rides on our President’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.”
Dick Cheney in response to Obama’s speech struck at the yellow underbelly of belly-aching and defended the defenders of this country after 9/11. (Obama still doesn’t seem or won’t admit this country was kept safe on President Bush’s watch.) Cheney astutely and pointedly argued from a position of experience and knowing our country’s need for expediency at the time of 9/11;
“To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.”
Obama for his part argued that water-boarding and other harsh interrogation methods “did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them.”
Cheney about enhanced interrogation:
“I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed,” Cheney said during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
“They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
Cheney noted that Obama has reserved enhanced interrogation unto himself:
This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It’s almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.
Missing words, addressed my Cheney:
President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration – the missing 26 words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn’t change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”
This is a curious administration – in love with America’s power and seizing it, while demeaning America before the world for Obama’s own aggrandizement as though morality began with his administration. Most countries on earth owe this country a debt of gratitude, which they can never repay; just as our citizens can never repay the men who defended this country with their limbs and lives. The Ivory Tower academic community organizer in the White House has yet to appreciate his country’s real history as told my the blood of it’s builders and martyrs.
More from:
Sam Stein in the Huffington Post : A Civil Libertarian rips Obama’s Speech: All Bells and Whistles
“Obviously, he is a very effective speaker, but of course we have major problems with what he is doing,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “He wraps himself in the Constitution, talks about American values and then proceeds to violate them.”
Allah Pundit, “In a fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground.”
There was an eerie stillness and silence across the Notre Dame campus as my colleagues, a few of the seniors and I walked across the campus very early on the morning of Commencement Day. It was the calm before the storm of what we knew was an historic day. I started with a national Fox News interview along with Fr. Richard McBrien. We were asked our views of the Commencement. My message was: Everyone can imagine people they would protest speaking at a commencement: an avowed racist, anti-Semite, or advocate of terrorism. So the failure to object to one who is unwilling to call for an end to abortion is the failure to see that abortion is as bad or worse than those other evils. We have to stop trivializing abortion. Moreover, the university gave the President an honorary law degree. Law exists to protect human rights; but this president has admitted that he doesn’t know when a child receives human rights. How can he defend human rights when he doesn’t know who has them? After speaking to various media, I greeted people on campus who were coming from all over the country to stand with the courageous students who boycotted their own commencement and invited me to lead them in an alternate ceremony. After I greeted and blessed the demonstrators who were at the campus entrance, and concelebrated a special Mass for Life, I led the Class of 2009 Vigil for Life. We meditated on the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, on the victory of life over death, and on the fact that Jesus is King over every nation, over the courts, the Congress, and the White House. As I gave the students and their families reflections on these truths, the current occupant of the White House was calling the graduates to have “open minds, open hearts” and a spirit of dialogue. Now dialogue with our opponents on this issue is something we at Priests for Life specialize in. I maintain friendships with abortion advocates and practicing abortionists. The clarity of our own convictions never means we despise, demonize, or shut out other people. And yes, we are willing to collaborate with others in morally legitimate ways to reduce the numbers of abortions. But the President’s remarks had a glaring omission. While willing to dialogue and to promote adoption, he gave no indication of any willingness to protect the children in the womb. And that’s the crux of the issue. In his remarks, he referred to the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation. Certainly, his call for open minds does not include openness to reconsider the segregation issue. There’s a right answer to it, period. So it is with the protection of the unborn. And as quiet again descended on campus at the end of the day, I reflected… Open minds, yes, but for the purpose of eventually firmly closing upon the truth! And isn’t that supposed to be the purpose of Catholic universities?
Archbishop Chaput on Notre Dame – “Notre Dame’s leadership has done a real disservice to the Church.”
“I have found that even among those who did not go to Notre Dame, even among those who do not share the Catholic faith, there is a special expectation, a special hope, for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.”
~ Reverend John Jenkins, C.S.C., May 17, 2009
Most graduation speeches are a mix of piety and optimism designed to ease students smoothly into real life. The best have humor. Some genuinely inspire. But only a rare few manage to be pious, optimistic, evasive, sad and damaging all at the same time. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, is a man of substantial intellect and ability. This makes his introductory comments to President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement speech on May 17 all the more embarrassing.
Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man. The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life. We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good — insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning.
We also have the duty to oppose him when he’s wrong on foundational issues like abortion, embryonic stem cell research and similar matters. And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness. Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade.
In doing so, Notre Dame ignored the U.S. bishops’ guidance in their 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life. It ignored the concerns of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Notre Dame’s 2009 Laetare Medal honoree – who, unlike the president, certainly did deserve her award, but finally declined it in frustration with the university’s action. It ignored appeals from the university’s local bishop, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, more than 70 other bishops, many thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics. Even here in Colorado, I’ve heard from too many to count.
There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it.
These are hard words, but they’re deserved precisely because of Father Jenkins’ own remarks on May 17: Until now, American Catholics have indeed had “a special expectation, a special hope for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.” For many faithful Catholics – and not just a “small but vocal group” described with such inexcusable disdain and ignorance in journals like Time magazine — that changed Sunday.
The May 17 events do have some fitting irony, though. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Notre Dame provided the forum for Gov. Mario Cuomo to outline the “Catholic” case for “pro-choice” public service. At the time, Cuomo’s speech was hailed in the media as a masterpiece of American Catholic legal and moral reasoning. In retrospect, it’s clearly adroit. It’s also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses. Father Jenkins’ explanations, and President Obama’s honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education. Together, they’ve given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be “Catholic” in the public square.
Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George has suggested that Notre Dame “didn’t understand” what it means to be Catholic before these events began. He’s correct, and Notre Dame is hardly alone in its institutional confusion. That’s the heart of the matter. Notre Dame’s leadership has done a real disservice to the Church, and now seeks to ride out the criticism by treating it as an expression of fringe anger. But the damage remains, and Notre Dame’s critics are right. The most vital thing faithful Catholics can do now is to insist – by their words, actions and financial support – that institutions claiming to be “Catholic” actually live the faith with courage and consistency. If that happens, Notre Dame’s failure may yet do some unintended good.
Read Catholic Online for Deacon Keith Fournier’s take on Archbishop Chaput: ‘Notre Dame, the Issues that Remain’
Amy Welborn responding to Obama’s speech at Notre Dame doesn’t see a real opening here for true dialogue. However, referring to the Catholic Church’s long “and vibrant history of engagement with political philosophy from Augustine on,” Welborn strains to get beyond Obama’s words, catchphrases and code phrases for ambiguity (e.g.”sound science” = a dismissal of ethical considerations.) Discussion on a goal to decrease abortions, which Obama says he wants, without an openess to core Church teachings on life and recognition of the humanity of the unborn in little more than an expansion of birth control availability and continues to circumvent the moral dimension of abortion.
Obama – and Jenkins – both emphasized dialogue. Obama said, “But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” I agree. And when those supporting Obama and Obama at Notre Dame stop referring to those standing in opposition as “GOP hacks,” “ultraconservative minority” and “Catholic Sharia” – and actually engaging the arguments instead – we know we’re getting somewhere.
The political realities are this, and have been forever: Self-described abortion “moderates” accuse pro-lifers of being “all or nothing” in their approach. The reality is that smaller measures to limit and regulate the abortion license are never proposed by abortion proponents, but by pro-lifers, and, further, are always opposed to the death by abortion-proponents. Have you ever heard of an parental notification law or laws requiring abortion facilities to be regulated at the same level as medical clinics being co-sponsored by a state branch of NARAL and the NRLC?
To put it bluntly – until we are ready to “dialogue” about the possibility that law might play a role in decreasing the number of abortions, as is the work that goes on in Crisis Pregnancy Centers and in front of abortion facilities on Saturday mornings, the dialogue is extremely limited. Until those who are actually working with the stated, explicit goal of discouraging women from having abortions are included in the dialogue, there is really no dialogue.
Meanwhile check out this ACLU blog to see just how ecstatic President Obama is making the ACLU. “It’s been a whirlwind, but rewarding, three months.”
“The first 100 days of the Obama administration have brought us more victories than we had in the eight years of the previous administration.”
“On his first Friday in office, President Obama rescinded the Global Gag Rule, restoring U.S. funding to international organizations that use their own, non-U.S. dollars to provide, refer for, and/or advocate for safe and legal abortion in their countries.”
Welborn writes:
And one more nod to reality – here’s a subject for dialogue based on as much evidence as we can muster, rather than platitudes: how is expanded funding for abortions both in the United States and overseas contributing to the cause of “reducing the number of abortions?” If we’re dialoguing, those are the questions that must be asked.
The perfect ironic conclusion to yesterday’s paean to tolerance and dialogue at Notre Dame: The leader of a Catholic school sneering at student protesters for practicing freedom of speech in defense of Church teachings. Rarely have liberal Catholicism and campus Orwellianism meshed more beautifully.
Quoting Trinity President Patricia McGuire, AllahPundit reports:
McGuire continued, “The religious vigilantism apparent in the Notre Dame controversy arises from organizations that have no official standing with the church, but who are successful in gaining media coverage as if they were speaking for Catholicism. . . . They have established themselves as uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue. They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock social justice as a liberal mythology.”
Be Holy! 