According to President Obama’s top counterterrorism official, we should no longer use the term "war on terror" to describe the struggle against jihadis.  Oops, sorry, John Brennan also said we’re not at war with jihadis either, since "jihad" is, "a legitimate term, ‘jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal".  No, this should just be called a "war with al Qaeda", because after all, they’re really the only jihadi terrorists that hate us. 

Oh, and World War II is to be renamed in all future textbooks as the "War Against Adolf Hitler, Personally".  Otherwise, it would sound like it took place everywhere and was against the whole country of Germany.  Well, and Italy, but the "War Against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Personally" doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely.

And it’s not a global war either, says Johnny.  Just because al Qaeda operates in the Middle East and Africa, and attacked the US on its home soil, we don’t want to risk making it sound like they really are all over the place.  It’s an image thing, you know.  Control the message.

So my question is this; if this counterterrorism official says we’re not fighting terrorists, what does that say about his position as a … counterterrorism official?  Perhaps he’d just rather put up a sign over his door saying, "Mission Accomplished" and hit the golf course.

Billy Hollis, writing at the Q&O blog, has a breakdown of Obama’s successes and failures in his first 6 months in office.  He comes away very unimpressed.  No President should be ultimately judged on his first 6 months only, but given how big a bite Obama has taken and the promises he led his supporters to believe, the trend is not looking good for him at all.

If you have said, "Obama is doing a great job", or substituted "good" or even "OK" instead of "great", you owe it to yourself to read this.

James Taranto had a great take-down of all the Obama "birther" brouhaha (is Obama a "natural-born citizen for purposes of running for President) in his "Best of the Web Today" column yesterday.  For those who don’t get his e-mail every day (and you should get it; very highly recommended), here’s a link to the article.  Taranto really does his homework when opining on a subject, and this is no different. 

Scott Ott, of ScrappleFace blog fame and occasional CNN guest, is running for Executive of Lehigh county in Pennsylvania.  Tuesday night, he went strolling around Allentown, looking to strike up conversations, maybe hand out a few campaign bookmarks; no real agenda in mind.

Turns out that when he enters a store and starts talking to the guys there, a chance to really discuss the issues crops up and he has what he called "an intensely practical, intelligent discussion about political ideology and freedom".  The conversation begins:

"What will you do for me if I vote for you?" the shop owner said. "Will you get me a grant for my store?"

I’m a bad politician.

I said (paraphrasing from memory), "The first thing I’ll do for you is put an end to the idea that public servants should hand out special favors to people who support them."

I told him that the next thing I could "do for him" was to abolish the idea that government is going to save you from your troubles, and to exchange that for the idea that you are responsible and free, and that no one cares more about your children, your business, your home and your neighborhood than you do. In addition, no one is better equipped to deal with the challenges of your neighborhood than you and your neighbors. But it won’t happen until you stop thinking that someone else is to blame, or that some outside agency is going to intervene to fix things.

He looked at me and said, "You’re a Republican."

I was delighted that he associates freedom and responsibility with my party.

His thoughts on that discussion, what the aims are (or should be) of the Republican party, and a sense of community that’s been lost elsewhere can be found here.

That was then:

BARACK OBAMA: …When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what’s in them and nobody has read them.

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA:  Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen.  And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

This is now.

Facing criticism from both sides of the aisle that he’s pushing too hard and fast on health care reform, President Obama on Wednesday defended his "rush" to get it done and said Congress must take advantage of this rare opportunity.

"The stars are aligned," Obama said in prime-time news conference, and the American people are depending on Congress to reach a compromise promptly. He wants a deal by Congress’ August recess.

"If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen. The default position is inertia," the president said, singling out his critics for playing political "games" with health care reform.

Versus, say, playing political "games" with national defense (without which, health care soon becomes moot). 

The old phrase goes, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"  Well, here’s another:  What if they gave a universal health care support rally…

Local MoveOn.org members had penciled in on today’s schedule a protest in front of Senator John Cornyn’s Spring Valley Road office, during which they had hoped to pressure the senator to support President Barack Obama’s public health care legislation.

…and a tax protest broke out?  (I know, not as catchy.)

But when Paula Anderson, a MoveOn.org member and spokeswoman, showed up at 11:30 a.m., she found another contingent had beat her to the proverbial punch: A large number of Dallas Tea Party members were already set up, voicing their opposition to the proposal.

Anderson was stunned: "We really did not expect them to show up." She estimated the crowd at about 130. "From our perspective we took names of everyone there, and we had about 30 people," she told Unfair Park. "And I would assume they maybe had 100."

The Tea Party movement ain’t going away so easily.

Those campaign promises are reaching their expiration dates quite quickly.  Back during the campaign, Obama ran hard against Hillary Clinton’s mandatory health insurance.  PoliFact.com has the quotes.

"Hillary Clinton’s attacking, but what’s she not telling you about her health care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don’t," said one of his television ads .

His mailings made similar claims, which we rated Half True . At one campaign stop, Clinton waived the mailers and declared, "Shame on you, Barack Obama!"

"Meet me in Ohio," she added. "Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign."

Obama was vigorous in his attacks on Clinton for including an indvidual [sic] mandate in her plan. Now that the Democrats in the House have included a mandate in health reform legislation, he’s fine with it. He admitted he changed position in the interview with CBS. Full Flop!

All that talk of Hope and Change is really just subject to political expediency.  If you believed what he said, what you need to hope for is that he doesn’t change.  (If you didn’t, well then, this is not a real surprise.)

Y’know, that whole "signing statement" thing wasn’t apparently so bad after all.  So says one man who used to decry the use of it.

Congressional Democrats warned President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he sounded too much like George W. Bush when he declared this summer that the White House can ignore legislation he thinks oversteps the Constitution.

In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were "surprised" and "chagrined" by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Obama said he wouldn’t allow the provisions to interfere with his authority as president to conduct foreign policy and negotiate with other governments.

The rebuff was reminiscent of Bush, who issued a record number of "signing statements" while in office. The statements put Congress on notice that the administration didn’t feel compelled to comply with provisions of legislation that it felt challenged the president’s authority as commander in chief.

See, it’s not that it’s a bad thing in and of itself.  It’s just that it sounds so much like…well, you know.

"During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce," the lawmakers wrote. "We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude."

Let’s see if this matters to him.

Headline: Clinton likens North Korea to unruly children

Well, except for the nuclear bomb stuff.  But yeah, otherwise they’re just like ’em.

Yesterday, Senator Orrin Hatch, who has voted on 11 Supreme Court nominees, had very good opening remarks in the Sotomayor confirmation hearing.  His whole speech is worth reading (or watching, if you prefer), but I’d like to highlight a section where he notes that Senator Obama seemed to have a different standard for judicial nominees than he has today.  Senator Hatch pointed this out.

I have also found guidance from what may seem to some as an unusual source. On June 8, 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama explained his opposition to the appeals court nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American woman with a truly compelling life story who then served as a Justice on the California Supreme Court. Senator Obama made three arguments that I find relevant today.

First, he argued that the test of a qualified judicial nominee is whether she can set aside her personal views and, as he put it, “decide each case on the facts and the merits alone….That is what our Founders intended….Judicial decisions ultimately have to be based on evidence and on facts. They have to be based on precedent and on law.”

Second, Senator Obama extensively reviewed Justice Brown’s speeches off the court for clues about what he called her “overarching judicial philosophy.” There is even more reason to do so today. This is, after all, a nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Judge Sotomayor, if confirmed, will help change the very precedents that today bind her as a U.S. Circuit Judge. In other words, the judicial position to which she has been nominated is quite different than the judicial position she now occupies.

This makes evidence, outside of her appeals court decisions, regarding her approach to judging more, not less, important. Judge Sotomayor has obviously thought, spoken, and written much on these issues and I think we show respect to her in taking that entire record seriously.

Third, Senator Obama said that while a nominee’s race, gender, and life story are important, they cannot distract from the fundamental focus on the kind of judge she will be. He said then, as I have said today, that we should all be grateful for the opportunity that our liberty affords for Americans of different backgrounds.

We should applaud Judge Sotomayor’s achievements and service to her community, her profession, and her country. Yet Senator Obama called it “offensive and cynical” to suggest that a nominee’s race or gender can give her a pass for her substantive views. He proved it by voting twice to filibuster Judge Janice Rogers Brown’s nomination, and then by voting against her confirmation. I share his hope that we have arrived at a point in our country’s history where individuals can be examined and even criticized for their views, no matter what their race or gender. If those standards were appropriate when Senator Obama opposed Republican nominees, they should be appropriate now that President Obama is choosing his own nominees.

But today, President Obama says that personal empathy is an essential ingredient in judicial decisions. Today, we are urged to ignore Judge Sotomayor’s speeches altogether and focus only on her judicial decisions. I do not believe that we should do that.

Indeed, Sen. Hatch continues on to note other double standards that Senator Obama applied, based, one can only imagine, solely on the way the judge is expected to rule on particular cases.  Democrats have politicized this process (just ask Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas), but Republicans, like Senator Lindsey Graham, have been much more fair (just ask Ruth Ginsberg), and indeed, as he said, "Now, unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed." 

When George W. Bush was elected, Republicans defended his policy decisions, in part, with the phrase, "elections mean things".  If the country votes in a President, they vote in his policies and, if the occasion presents itself, Supreme Court nominees.  And so Graham also said, "But President Obama won the election and I will respect that."  Not as a rubber stamp, but the President does get the benefit of the doubt.  Republicans are being consistent in this, and in doing so are trying to hold back or reverse the politicization of the process that Democrats have pushed.

While watching Fox News cover the hearings, as each speaker began their remarks, you saw some information about them; personal information (age, service in politics, etc.), what they’ve said about Sotomayor, and how they voted in past Supreme Court nominees.  It was interesting to see how many Republicans voted for every nominee they ever saw, including Hatch’s 11 Yes votes, but how so many Democrats haven’t yet voted Yes.  In confirming Sotomayor, the Republicans will once again lead by example, hoping perhaps that the Democrats will see this and act likewise when the situation is reversed.  History does not seem to indicate that this will happen, but you can always hope.