Feed: Weekly Standard Blog - AggScore: 70.2

Michael Barone devotes his latest column to immigration in the world of the Great Recession:

[T]he flow of immigrants into the United States is slowing dramatically and may be reversing. The Pew Hispanic Center notes that the number of immigrants from Mexico in 2008-09 is down three-quarters from four years before. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the number of illegals in the U.S. declined by 1.7 million, or 14 percent, in 2007-08. Government figures show that border apprehensions, a statistic that is often taken as a proxy for illegal crossings, fell 23 percent in 2008-09 from the previous year and was only one-third the number in the peak period of 2000-01.

Those numbers obviously reflect a response to deep recession as well as the effects of tougher enforcement.

They suggest a much smaller immigration flow and significant reverse migration back to countries of origin in the years ahead.

How to deal with these changing circumstances? Barone suggests that the place to start is "Breaking the Immigration Stalemate," a report from the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable.

Via Hot Air, Saturday Night Live had a remarkable opening sketch this weekend that took aim at Obama's policies from the right and was actually funny. In a press conference between Obama and Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader inquires about whether the U.S. will pay back its debt and asks, "How exactly is extending health care coverage to 30 million people going to save you money?"

"I ... don't know," replies Obama.

"You know as I listen to you, I am noticing that each of your plans to save money involves spending even more money," says Hu. "This does not inspire confidence."

Watch it here:

Peter Beinart:

[I]n voting to allow debate, Landrieu and Lincoln hammered some nails in the coffin of a robust “public option” that would allow the government to compete with private insurers. Both senators stressed that if the Senate bill includes a public option, they will ultimately oppose the whole thing. And since apostate Democrat-turned-independent Joseph Lieberman and moderate Republican Olympia Snowe have said something similar, and since health-care reform requires 60 votes, that means that liberals will likely face a choice: between a robust public option and a health-care reform bill that can pass.

In my view, the health care bill faces three hurdles in the Senate. The first is the public option. The second is the abortion language included in the bill. And the third is the Medicare cuts that in the coming weeks will drive seniors to light up the Capitol switchboard. If Beinart is right, then the Democrats will clear the public option hurdle. We'll see about the other two.

I gather Rasmussen will report today that its latest survey shows support for the Congressional health reform legislation falling to a new low -- 38 percent favor, 56 percent oppose. The lowest support level prior to now has been 41 percent.

The polling data will have an effect. But it needs to be supplemented by citizen activism. Senators are especially responsive to their constituents in their home states. Senators are home this week for Thanksgiving break. If you live in Nebraska, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Connecticut -- but also Florida, Maine, Colorado, and elsewhere (quiet nervousness by Senators can have an effect along with public opposition) -- or if you have friends, relatives, and colleagues in those states, you and they might want to weigh in on this tax-and-spend-and-Medicare-cutting monstrosity.

The QotD(SF!) comes from Mark Shields. I was happy to discover that he and I share a favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. Here's Shields:

Do you know why Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday? Because since 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln first declared it a national holiday, no robber baron or swindler has figured out a way to commercialize Thanksgiving. No expensive gift purchases required, no credit-card debt incurred, no fancy costumes to be paid for, no semi-mandatory and painful hangover the next morning.

Thanksgiving belongs to everybody. It is not the property of any one religion or faith tradition. You need not belong to any particular religion — or any religion — to celebrate fully.

Even with the nation's economy in tatters and millions among us suffering the pain of forced unemployment, there are still reasons in 2009 to be thankful.

Excellent points. Pass the pumpkin pie!

(In other Thanksgiving news, see this week's Parody.)

I still haven't seen the new disaster flick 2012, but NPR's Ken Rudin did and discovered the movie's fatal flaw:

It wasn't the fact that the movie was about an hour too long. Or that the plot and dialogue were inane. Or that John Cusack managed to make every traffic light as his car was improbably escaping the apocalypse. And as far as the implausability of having an African-American as president (in this case, Danny Glover) -- well, don't you remember David Palmer on "24"? That proves that a black president is possible.

I could live with that stuff. But what really destroyed, for me, any chance of credibility was the scene in which the governor of California, whose accent and physical presence made it clear it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, was telling residents about the impending horrors they were going to face.

Folks, this was taking place in 2012. Arnold Schwarzenegger is TERM LIMITED, and will be out of office after 2010.

Exit question: How would the end of the world affect Barack Obama's reelection chances?

Lost in the media focus on health care and Asia over the past week is the growing scandal surrounding the shootings at Fort Hood.

Within four hours of the shootings, the FBI told Fox News that the terrorism angle was "not being discussed." They continued to downplay terrorism as a motive throughout that first weekend and when the public first learned about emails between the shooter and an al Qaeda cleric named Anwar al Awlaki, the FBI told reporters on background that the communications were "benign." The bureau had failed to open an investigation of the emails -- which were intercepted in real time -- because their content was determined to be consistent with the kind of research the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, was conducting in his capacity as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed.

This alone is a scandal. The fact that Hasan was communicating with Awlaki at all should have triggered an investigation. Awlaki had ties to three 9/11 hijackers, had twice been investigated for his connections to al Qaeda over the past decade, had been imprisoned in Yemen at the request of the US government, and was concern enough that the US government was monitoring his communications when Hasan reached out to him. So emails between Hasan and Awlaki could not have been "benign."

Over the past several days we've learned more about the content of the emails. According to reports by ABC News and the Washington Post, Hasan specifically asked Awlaki about jihad, about the permissibility of killing innocents in attacks, and about confronting American soldiers who were killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one email, Hasan tells Awlaki he can't wait to discuss these matters and others in the afterlife.

Now, the Post reports

In the months before the shootings, the two discussed how Hasan could make several transactions of less than $10,000, a threshold for reporting to U.S. authorities, according to the source who spoke extensively. Hasan did not explicitly vow to fund terrorist activities or evade tax and reporting laws for contributions, the source said.

"I believe they were interested in the money for operational-type aspects, and knowing that he had funds and wouldn't be around to use them, they were very eager to get those funds," he said.

Hasan, of course, wouldn't need to "explicitly" vow to fund terrorist activities to be a concern. He had emailed with a known al Qaeda radicalizer and recruiter with a history of inspiring attacks on American soldiers.

More disturbing, though, is the second comment from a source familiar with the content of the emails. Why does this source believes that the money was meant to be used for operations? And why does the source believe that both Hasan and Awlaki understood that Hasan "wouldn't be around to use them?"

One could certainly speculate, just given the information that is now public, that Hasan was contemplating an attack of one kind or another. But is there more? Is there information beyond Hasan's questions about the afterlife and about jihad that confirms that Awlaki could have understood that Hasan planned to die?

Those are just the problems on the FBI/law enforcement side of things. Then there is the Army. It is now clear that many of Hasan's colleagues expressed serious concerns about his behavior and his jihadist rhetoric. But other colleagues, including those in positions of leadership, failed to act -- some of them out of concern that focusing on Hasan would be discriminatory.

Then, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, with 13 people dead and 40 injured, Army chief of staff George Casey said publicly that his greatest worry was that the "diversity" of the Army would be compromised if they focused on Hasan's radical Islamic views. "I think the speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here," Casey said.

Instead, leaks from the Army and speculation from many in the media focused on PTSD -- post-traumatic stress disorder -- as the main reason behind Hasan's attack. That Hasan hadn't actually seen combat was a pesky detail, explained away by the fact that he had counseled soldiers who had been in combat -- the transitive property of PTSD or something.

Now comes the news that the Army has chosen General Carter Ham to lead the investigation of the Army's handling of Hasan. Perhaps Ham has unique insight into the flow of information in military bureaucracies. It's possible that he is an expert on rhetoric of jihad. But Ham is best known for his views on -- PTSD. However admirable Ham's willingness to discuss his own experiences, let's hope they don't color his review of Hasan and the shooting.

Ham's review is one of several being conducted by the Obama administration. The Army is reviewing the Army's handling of Hasan. Elements of the intelligence community are examining the community's work related to Hasan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has named former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy chief Vernon Clark to take a big-picture look at the shooting. Meanwhile, however, the administration is stonewalling congressional requests for information. And demands for an outside investigation go unanswered.

All this as the evidence continues to mount of a significant intelligence failure before the attacks and gross incompetence after the attacks. George Casey worries aloud about diversity. The FBI downplays damning emails between the shooter and an al Qaeda cleric.

These are serious problems. They deserve a serious inquiry.

Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats claim that the cost of the Senate's health care bill is $849 billion over the first ten years. But, as Jeffrey Anderson pointed out in the New York Post on Friday, they get this figure by using "the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don't kick in until the fifth year of that "10-year" period. The true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid's advertising: $1.8 trillion."

Here's a chart Anderson made using CBO projections to show that the Senate health care bill costs $1.8 trillion during the first ten years that the program is up and running (download the PDF here):

With the release of hundreds of emails by scientists advocates of global warming showing obvious and entirely inappropriate collusion by the authors -- including attempts to suppress dissent, to punish journals that publish peer-reviewed studies casting doubt on global warming, and to manipulate data to bolster their own arguments -- even the New York Times is forced to concede that "the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists." But apparently the paper's environmental blog, Dot Earth, is taking a pass on publishing any of the documents and emails that are now circulating. Andrew Revkin, the author of that blog, writes,

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

This is the position of the New York Times when given the chance to publish sensitive information that might hinder the liberal agenda. Of course, when the choice is between publishing classified information that might endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs vital to national security, that information is published without hesitation by the nation's paper of record. But in this case -- the documents were "never intended for the public eye," so the New York Times will take a pass. I guess that policy wasn't in place when Neil Sheehan was working at the paper.

As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published. If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day -- though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived "consensus" on global warming.

If Revkin's position is that he will not reproduce publicly available emails simply because they put the authors -- whom he happens to agree with and whose increasingly questionable agenda he happens to support -- in a bad light, than he ought to consider another career.

It's a fair question from a man who lost his son on 9/11:

Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut?

The Obama administration decided to trash the detainee policies of its predecessor before the inauguration -- and before they'd even looked at the case files of the detainees being held at Gitmo. But when Obama came into office and signed the executive order setting a January 2010 deadline for closing Gitmo, detainee policy was placed under the purview of Obama's White House counsel Greg Craig. That is, detainee policy was to be set by the White House, not the Department of Justice. Now Craig is gone and all of a sudden the American people are to understand that these decisions need to be made independently of the White House, by an attorney general who isn't even asked to bounce his new policies off the president before announcing them to the public.

Beamer wants to know why Obama has shirked a decision with obvious implications for U.S. national security. There is no precedent that demands the president maintain distance from this process, and, of course, the administration had, for most of the last year, run this process out of the West Wing. Ultimately, Obama will be held responsible for whatever fallout comes from this decision -- from the spectacle of KSM berating the American people and calling for ever more jihad from his stand in federal court to the legal ramifications of giving full due process rights to terrorists picked up on foreign battlefields -- whether he was in the room or not.

So why wasn't he in the room? Obama has plenty of time for golf, failed Olympic bids, fundraisers, dozens of meetings on Afghanistan in which no decision is made, and apology tours on three seperate continents. Was Obama too busy even to vote 'present' on one of the most important national security decisions of his presidency?

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has taken another shot at the administration's war on terror policies with a letter yesterday to AG Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates questioning the decision to put the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks on trial in federal criminal courts rather than military tribunals:

Skelton, a fellow Democrat of President Barack Obama, asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to brief the committee about the decision to use the criminal courts instead of the revamped military commissions.

"As a former prosecutor, I am not yet convinced that the right decision was made in these cases, nor that the presumption in favor of federal criminal trials over military tribunals for these detainees should continue," Skelton said in a letter to the two officials.

You have to think that Gates isn't particularly pleased about getting caught up in Holder's ill-conceived plan to make American great again by giving terrorists a microphone and a platform in New York City. Skelton has already broken ranks with his party to support McChrystal's call for more troops in Afghanistan, giving Gates (and Obama) much-needed cover in in the fight to fund any additional forces. Now Holder is mucking things up and putting Gates in the position of defending a policy that, by all accounts, he has no interest in defending.

Mark Hemingway: Won't somebody think of the trustafarians?

Worse than waterboarding: Iraqi detainees use Favre to taunt Wisconsin soldiers.

Jay Cost: Of course 60 Democratic senators will vote yes on Saturday night's motion to proceed to debate on the health care bill.

Wesley Smith: Senate health care bill is assisted suicide friendly.

Sarah Palin is concerned that panels made up of health care bureaucrats recommend scaling back on mammograms and cervical cancer screenings.

Obama campaign calls Palin "dangerous" in fundraising letter.

Jim Geraghty: Fox finds no significant wrongdoing in henhouse.

Ace: Gallup shows Obama is under 50 for first time; Cook Political Report says he's "beyond radioactive" in many districts held by Democrats.

Ed Morrissey: Do hacked e-mails show global-warming fraud?

Andrew Malcolm wrote this up yesterday, news from the last stop of Obama's Asia trip:

Even President Obama himself during his just-concluded trip to Asia admitted that he was surprised to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year without actually producing any peace.

In fact, the rookie American president ordered his own troop surge, boosting U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan to 68,000. Now, the Democrat may be preparing to send more. And a Gallup Poll showed 61% of Americans didn't think he deserved the prize either.

Anyway, there he was in Seoul, the last stop of his journey.

And out of the Seoul sky, President Lee Myung-bak hands over to the American leader a tae kwon do outfit. And then Lee, who practices tae kwon do himself, presents Obama with a coveted black belt.

After zero long years of study.

A friend sends along this picture, which has been making the rounds and goes quite well with the story:

Sen. Chuck Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder in a hearing Wednesday for a list of the employees at Dept. of Justice who might have to recuse themselves due to conflicts of interest over detainees. Some DOJ employees and their former firms represented and defended detainees in the past, raising questions about how DOJ might deal with their cases in the future.

Holder was cagey, promising only to "consider the request" despite Grassley's repeated requests.

Today, the Washington Times reveals some of the recusals already made:

The Obama Justice Department is having problems prosecuting terrorist cases because top department attorneys have conflicts of interest.

According to documents obtained exclusively by The Washington Times, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, No. 3 official in the Justice Department, had to recuse himself on at least 13 active detainee cases and at least 26 cases listed as either closed or mooted...

Mr. Perrelli's recusals presumably stem from the work that either he or his former firm, Jenner & Block LLP, did on behalf of detainees while Mr. Perrelli served on the firm's management committee and on its appellate and Supreme Court practice groups. And Mr. Perrelli is just one official; a number of other Justice Department officials apparently did private-sector work on detainee cases.

DOJ has not provided a list to Grassley yet, but the list of Perelli's recusals was circulated at the department before being acquired by the Times.

John Noonan is correct in stating that NORAD will be sorely stretched by the requirement to stand alerts against incursions by Russian bombers and reconnaissance aircraft (even if these pose only a minimal objective threat, air sovereignty must be maintained). He overlooked, I think, the implications of long range Su-30 fighter/attack aircraft being acquired by Venezuela, which could pose a threat to Florida and the Gulf Coast, further increasing stress on NORAD. At the present moment, it does not appear that the administration will reverse its decision to terminate the FA-22 Raptor at just 183 aircraft, or that a larger number of F-15C Eagles will be modernized to provide front-line fighter-interceptor capabilities. The backbone of NORAD at present consists of aging F-15Cs (whose structural problems were recounted a couple of years ago), and F-16 Air Defense Variants, whose range and sensor capabilities are not really optimized for the continental air defense mission.

It is ironic, therefore, that the U.S. was sitting on a stockpile of perhaps the best bomber interceptor aircraft ever produced, the Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat (of "Top Gun" fame). Retired from service in the U.S. Navy in 2006, the F-14, particularly in its upgraded B and D variants, combined long range and excellent performance with a powerful AWG-9 or APG-17 multi-mode radar capable of tracking 24 incoming targets while targeting six simultaneously, and a Television Camera Set (TCS) that allows long-range visual identification of potential targets (to avoid embarrassing and tragic accidents). Originally, the primary armament of the Tomcat was six AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles, backed up by a pair of AIM-9 Sidewinders and an M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun. A true beast of a missile, the 1000-lb. Phoenix has a maximum speed of Mach 5 and a range in excess of 100 nautical miles. It can attack targets flying anywhere between sea level and 100,000 feet -- and has demonstrated this capability. The ability to engage and detect very low flying targets will become more important as potential adversaries acquire or develop land attack cruise missiles.

It would have been a simple thing for DoD to transfer surviving F-14s and their Phoenix missiles to NORAD, but apparently long-range planning is not a Pentagon strong point. Instead, both missiles and aircraft were placed in the infamous "Boneyard" at Davis-Montham Air Force Base. There, they were placed in a state of preservation which could have allowed them to be reconditioned and reactivated under Air Force colors to meet the present crisis. However, in 2007, DoD decided to shred almost all of the 165 surviving F-14s to prevent spare parts from being sold to Iran (which says something about the USAF's security system, if nothing else). By the end of 2007, 23 of these magnificent aircraft had been shredded and sold for scrap; probably only a handful remain intact, mostly intended to become "gate guards" at various naval air stations.

With a little foresight, these aircraft could have been preserved and modernized to provide NORAD with a highly capable gap-filling interceptor at relatively low cost. Instead, we are likely to find ourselves short-handed just at the time when we would need them most.