Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 58

With Dodging and More Dodging, Holder Admits DOJ Dumped CAIR Case

Ah, there's nothing like transparency.

U.S. attorney general Eric Holder has finally confirmed that Justice Department headquarters intervened to quash the prosecution of a top official of CAIR -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The attorney general did not identify the CAIR official by name, although, at Pajamas Media, Patrick Poole reports that he is Omar Ahmad -- who was in attendance at a 1993 meeting of what the FBI described as Hamas leaders, and who later founded CAIR, an Islamist organization designated by prosecutors as an unindicted coconspirator in a Hamas financing scheme.

(In the just released report by Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, "The Case Against Omar Ahmad," IPT notes that Ahmad actually "planned, convened and moderated an October 1993 meeting of the Palestine Committee [a Muslim Brotherhood front] in Philadelphia where members discussed ways to 'derail' a U.S.-led peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. The group knew that their Hamas support was problematic. They agreed to reference the group as sister 'Samah' [Hamas spelled backward] and warned each other that the U.S. had just proposed legislation that would designate Hamas as a terror organization.")

Holder initially dodged questions about Poole's reporting which, relying on Justice Department sources, relates that political appointees in the Obama Justice Department prevented the prosecution not only of Ahmad and CAIR but of other Islamist organizations designated as unindicted coconspirators in the Hamas financing case -- the prosecution in which five officials of an Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) were convicted and given long sentences. As Poole noted yesterday, Holder first deflected the questions, by claiming that DOJ has been aggressive in prosecuting terrorism cases and by defending the Justice Department's "outreach" to Muslim groups (including, as Poole has reported, Muslim Brotherhood connected groups identified as unindicted coconspirators).

Nevertheless, Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that Holder has confirmed that DOJ declined to prosecute the top CAIR official. Yet again, the attorney general appears to have been disingenuous.

As Gerstein observes, Holder claimed that the decision not to prosecute was made by "career folks looking at the evidence." But Poole's reporting has related that, in point of fact, the career folks looking at the evidence -- namely, the prosecutors in the Dallas U.S. attorney's office -- were in favor of moving forward with a second round of post-HLF prosecutions against the unindicted coconspirators. It was Main Justice political appointees who put the kibosh on the effort. Specifically, and quite contrary to Holder's intimation, Poole has stated that the case against CAIR's Omar Ahmad was torpedoed by a memo, dated March 31, 2010, from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. DOJ officials have declined to provide Poole with a copy of the memo, so he is pursuing it through the Freedom of Information Act . . . notwithstanding that the "most transparent administration in history" is infamous for FOIA non-compliance. (See, e.g., here.)

Looks like Pat Poole had it right. As Gerstein reports, moments after Holder claimed the non-prosecution decision was made by "career folks," a Justice Department spokesman "clarified" that the decision was actually made by (as Josh puts it) "senior officials who are not career, but political appointees." (My italics.)

In his remarks, Holder predictably argued that his Department had merely made the same decision reached by the Bush Justice Department in 2004. As I contended last week, that argument is as frivolous as it is predictable: The Bush DOJ decision is highly suspect, but even if it weren't, much has changed in the last seven years . . . including the disturbing appearance that the Obama Justice Department has adopted a policy -- whether formal or unannounced -- against prosecutions involving Muslim charities.

Tellingly, Holder also took pains to distance himself from the non-prosecution decision, saying that, because he is attorney general, "some folks think that my hands are in every decision that's made, especially those they disagree with, but that's not the case." Of course, that cop-out would have more weight if the non-prosecution decision had actually been made by career prosecutors, as Holder claimed, rather than by political appointees (most of whom, like Kris and Grindler, report to Holder -- the top DOJ political appointee). Recall, for example, that earlier in Holder's tenure, career appointees had determined that there was insufficient evidence to warrant prosecuting Bush-era CIA interrogators . . . but that didn't stop Holder and other Obama political appointees from making the transparently political decision to reopen the investigation.

In any event, House Homeland Security chairman Peter King (R., N.Y.), who has been pursuing DOJ's non-prosecution decision on the HLF unindicted coconspirators, is singularly unimpressed by Holder's effort to duck responsibility: "I think the attorney general's hands should be involved in any case involving CAIR and a possible terrorism indictment. . . . He should not be hiding behind the decision of the Bush administration, because that decision was made before the Holy Land Foundation was convicted . . ."

Al-Qaeda, Yes; DOMA, No

The modern-day John Adams brigade down at King & Spalding has finally found a client too unpopular to merit representation: the American people. That is exactly the same conclusion drawn by Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

Like the DOJ, the Atlanta-based white-shoe law firm asks “How high?” when left-wing agitators tell it to jump. In this instance, the agitators were gay-rights activists. They were in a snit because K&S -- in particular, K&S partner Paul Clement, the former Bush-administration solicitor general -- agreed to represent the American people in litigation involving challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA denies federal recognition of same-sex marriage. It was reluctantly signed by President Clinton in the stretch run of his 1996 reelection campaign, huge congressional majorities having acted out of concern that leftist judges would impose gay marriage on a very unwilling public.

#ad#Defending DOMA against court challenges is supposed to be the Justice Department’s job. As Attorney General Holder has declared, DOJ has “a longstanding practice of defending the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes if reasonable arguments can be made in their defense.” But with Holder in charge, that claim is fraudulent.

Under Holder’s stewardship, duly enacted statutes are deemed infirm when the Left disapproves of them -- despite powerful constitutional arguments to be made in their behalf. When Holder was Clinton’s deputy attorney general, DOJ refused to defend a congressional statute that had reversed the Miranda decision. There were well-grounded arguments in the statute’s favor -- the Supreme Court had many times denied that its judicially manufactured Miranda rule had constitutional pedigree, and it is black-letter law that Congress may reverse judicial decisions not rooted in the Constitution. But no matter. For the Left, Miranda is a sacred cow, a cornerstone of its criminal-rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. To protect it, Holder’s minions abandoned the statute -- taking the side of a convicted bank robber to do so.

That was preferable to Holder’s diabolical approach to DOMA. For a long time, DOJ pretended to defend DOMA but sabotaged cases by abandoning the arguments that best supported the statute. Politics put an end to that charade. The president is unpopular and needs his base energized if he is to have a chance at re-election. He could no longer afford to be seen by the Left as being on the wrong side of gay marriage -- even as a sham. So Holder dutifully pulled the plug on DOMA. Ever incoherent, the attorney general also announced that the administration would continue enforcing the statute it claims is clearly unconstitutional.

DOMA was thus defenseless, even though it is a popular law enacted by the people’s representatives. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives tried to retain counsel to do the job DOJ refused to do. That’s no easy task: The Lawyer Left’s mission in life is to eradicate our principles under the guise of upholding “our values” (by which it means its own agenda), and it has no more use for the people’s attachment to traditional marriage than it does for the people themselves. Enter King & Spalding, at least briefly.

Paul Clement is a brilliant lawyer. Putting two and two together, gay-rights groups realized they would face one of the nation’s most polished appellate advocates, one who would effectively employ all the compelling DOMA arguments the Obama Justice Department had been burying in the sand. Predictably, they went postal on K&S, threatening a boycott of their clients. The firm folded like a cheap tent, abandoning the representation while muttering some gibberish about how the “vetting process” had failed.

#page#Clearly, K&S had not taken the measure of Mr. Clement, who is of the old school, in which lawyers were taught not to abandon clients they’d agreed to help just because the heat gets turned up. Upon hearing of his firm’s decision, he promptly resigned from K&S and announced that he is keeping the case. In a nice touch -- and one that signals the long day the gay-rights lawyers are in for when they tangle with him -- Clement closed his letter by shaming the Chicken Littles with the words of a K&S eminence, the late Griffin Bell: “You are not required to take every matter that is presented to you, but having assumed a representation, it becomes your duty to finish the representation.”

#ad#Judge Bell, of course, was a U.S. attorney general, but his words have no more resonance at today’s Justice Department than at his former firm.

Which brings us to the Obama DOJ’s al-Qaeda Seven. Can we finally agree that they really are the “al-Qaeda Seven,” just like lawyers who choose to represent mobsters are commonly called “mob lawyers”? Caterwauls cascaded down upon Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol, and Debra Burlingame several months back when their organization, Keep America Safe, had the temerity to apply the “al-Qaeda Seven” label to seven DOJ lawyers who volunteered their professional services to our enemies, gratis, to help them file lawsuits against the American people, challenging their detention as enemy combatants in their war against the United States. 

How dare anyone suggest that volunteering to help the enemy during wartime might somehow intimate a teeny bit of sympathy for the enemy, carped Mr. Holder -- having himself voluntarily filed an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, the “dirty bomber” sent to America by al-Qaeda to attempt a second wave of post-9/11 attacks. The case of Padilla (who has since been convicted in yet another terrorist plot) was just one of the many matters Holder’s firm, Covington & Burling, handled while devoting hundreds of pro bono hours to at least 17 terrorist enemy combatants.

Yes, pro bono publico: work that law firms do for free because it is supposedly for the public good. Of course, they don’t really do it for free -- it is a redistribution of wealth from the paying clients to lucky indigents the firm chooses to help: social justice in action. It turns out that King & Spalding has a pro bono practice so thriving it has appointed a partner to handle it full time -- a former member of the ACLU of Georgia’s advisory board, who oversees the firm’s work on issues such as “prisoner rights,” as the K&S website delicately puts it.

We learn from the website that K&S is especially proud of the work it does for convicted murderers on death row. And back in 2004, the firm also dove into the Supreme Court’s Medellin case, trying to reverse the murder convictions of Mexican gangsters -- like the two who had carried out the brutal rape-murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena -- on the grounds that police had failed to notify the Mexican consulate of their arrests.

But here is the real feather in the K&S cap: In 2009, the firm brought aboard the husband-and-wife team of John Chandler and Beth Tanis, with the understanding that the couple would continue representing six enemy combatants to whom they had devoted thousands of pro bono hours since taking the cases in 2004 -- because, as Mr. Chandler helpfully explains, “Guantanamo is as much a symbol of American torture as Abu Ghraib.” Chandler and Tanis had some trepidation about whether they’d be able to continue volunteering their time to the terrorists, but Ms. Tanis was relieved to find that “King & Spalding was very supportive” of their Guantanamo work.

What else would you expect? The high dudgeon about lawyers heroically taking on unpopular causes is malarkey. DOMA is unpopular only on the left -- but that is enough to ensure that the lawyer Left won’t touch it. But terrorists, murderers, illegal aliens, animal-rights activists, and global-warming alarmists? Count them in.

Social justice is not about ensuring a fair process. It’s about achieving outcomes of which the Left approves, by any means necessary. You can tell what they’re for by what they volunteer to do and what they’re against by what they won’t go near. That’s not John Adams. It’s Barack Obama.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Zakat is not "charity" as that concept is understood in the West

Zakat, often mis-translated as "charitable giving," is the topic of my weekend column. The column has provoked some push back, including this, from a Muslim site called the "Qudosi Chronicles" -- operated by Shireen Qudosi, a self-described "moderate Muslim reformer," who immoderately (albeit predictably) accuses me of bigotry. As one who champions authentic Muslim moderates, it is always remarkable to me that one can portray oneself as a "reformer," yet go into attack mode whenever a non-Muslim has the temerity to point to an Islamic doctrine that quite obviously needs reforming.

In any event, Ms. Qudosi identifies various "misstatements" in my column. The first two are easier to respond to if taken together. She objects to my assertion that many Muslims intentionally contribute to terrorist activity through zakat donations because Islamic doctrine -- which is to say, an entirely mainstream interpretation of Islam -- holds that one purpose of zakat is to fund violent jihad. Though Ms. Qudosi concedes that some "small percentage of Muslims" no doubt "redirect" donations "to fund jihadi objectives," she maintains that "such actions are the cause of individual choice and cannot be ascribed to the faith nor be treated as a blanket statement stereotyping all Muslims."

I didn't stereotype all Muslims or accuse all Muslims of intentionally funding jihadist activity. But many more do so than Ms. Qudosi suggests, and it is undeniable (to anyone not in denial) that they do so because they construe their religion to require it. Which brings us to Ms. Qudosi's second, blinkered complaint -- that I have purportedly made up the connection between contributing to jihadist violence and the commands of the Koran. "I invite Mr. McCarthy to share where in the Quran Muslims are supposedly urged to fund violent jihad," says she. But I did it that right in the column -- citing the verse she remarkably refuses even to mention, much less discuss, in the course of cataloguing verses about Islamic charity.

Sura 9:60 explicitly says that one category of Muslims to whom alms are to be given is those toiling "in the cause of Allah." This passage is interpreted by classical Islamic scholarship to refer to those engaged in violent jihadist operations -- a proposition for which I cite Reliance of the Traveller and the annotations to the official Saudi version of the Koran that interpret sura 9:60.

It is not an answer to this to say, as Ms. Qudosi does, "I am not an Islamic scholar." She makes that concession, by the way, in order chastise National Review because "all it takes is a little bit of research and fact-checking to make sure you know what you’re talking about, rather than indulging in bigoted statements that ensure higher readership among a fringe audience." But who is the one who has failed to do the research and fact-checking? I'd be delighted if Ms. Qudosi's jihad-bleached version of Islam enjoyed such broad acceptance among Muslims that the interpretation I am writing about could be described as "fringe." Unfortunately, it is accepted by millions of Muslims the world over, precisely because it represents the Islam of authoritative Islamic scholars and jurisprudents. Saying, "I'm not a scholar," and putting your head in the sand rather than giving us a compelling reason why these scholars have it wrong may win you applause from Westerners desperate to be convinced, or from Muslims whose idea of "reform" is to pretend that the bad stuff is not in the doctrine. But it is not going to get you anywhere with the millions of Muslims who believe al-Azhar sheikhs and other scholars who've spent their lives studying authoritative sources like Reliance of the Traveller are a more reliable guide.

Ms. Qudosi admits that, though shot through with blinding bigotry, I have somehow managed to get right the fact that zakat may only be given to Muslims. This is not a problem, though, because besides zakat, she tells us there is also the concept of sadaqa -- a more general sort of charitable giving. This ignores, however, that only zakat, not sadaqa, is one of the pillars of Islam. Muslims are required to make zakat if they are financially able; by contrast, Islam is indifferent about sadaqa (as Ms. Qudosi might put it, charitable giving to non-Muslims is a matter of "individual choice and cannot be ascribed to the faith" of Islam).

Moreover, it was zakat, not sadaqa, that President Obama falsely claimed U.S. law was inhibiting -- which is the reason why I wrote about it. And as for Ms. Qudosi's claim that there are numerous stories about everyday Muslims going "above and beyond the call of duty to help non-Muslims," I have no doubt that this is true, but she's been living on another planet if she really thinks we just haven't heard such stories because they "simply do not garner mainstream media interest."

 On that last point, the final "misstatement" Ms. Qudosi complains about is my demonstration of the sparseness of Muslim charitable giving to non-Muslims in comparison the millions that pour out of the U.S. and non-Muslim countries when catastrophies like the Haiti earthquake occur. Again, Ms. Qudosi doesn't argue that my "misstatement" is actually wrong, she just objects to my (accurate) citation of Saudi Arabia's parsimony. "The House of Saud hardly represents Muslims (especially when considering that most Muslims aren't Arab)," she says. The Saudis, however, are among the wealthiest Muslims per capita, and Ms. Qudosi provides no data about giving by non-Arab Muslims that would undermine my figures -- she carps about the numbers but doesn't challenge them. 

Instead, she conclusorily asserts that "Islam itself [cannot] be held responsible for the disproportionate giving among failed Muslim leadership." But of course it can. As Ms. Qudosi grudgingly acknowledges, zakat can only be given to Muslims. Zakat, furthermore, is required of Muslims -- other charitable giving is not, which means non-wealthy Muslims will often have nothing left for others after making zakat. 

It may be difficult for Ms. Qudosi to believe this, but I support her cause of Muslim reform. I am not optimistic about its chances, though, because too many of its champions seem to think denial is an adequate substitute for confronting and refuting Islam's unsavory aspects. I don't know if convincing refutation is possible, but I do know the reformers play right into the fundamentalists' hands when they demonstrate that they have no real answers.

Uncharitable

‘In the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation,” President Obama claimed during his 2009 Cairo speech. “That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.”

This statement contained two falsehoods. One, as I’ve previously detailed, was obvious: There are, in fact, no American laws or rules that make it harder for Muslims to give to charity. What we have are laws against material support of terrorism -- against using devices like charitable fronts to channel money to jihadists. Those laws are not directed at Muslims. They apply to everyone but are applied most often to Muslims, because Muslims carry out most anti-American terrorism.

#ad#The other falsehood was more subtle: the president’s suggestion that the religious obligation of zakat -- one of the “five pillars of Islam” -- is the equivalent of “charitable giving.” It is not. Zakat is every Muslim’s obligation to contribute to the fortification of the ummah, the notional worldwide Islamic nation. And that very much includes the funding of violent jihad against non-Muslims.

When an earthquake devastated Haiti last year, the West, led as always by the Great Satan, instantly opened its heart and pocketbook. Within days, as the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Claudia Rosett reported, the U.S. government had pledged $90 million in public funds, 44 percent of the total anted up by governments worldwide. That was just a fraction of the true American contribution. Despite a deep recession and widespread unemployment, private citizens contributed tens of millions of dollars to the relief efforts. In addition, our armed forces mobilized to provide food, medical treatment, and other humanitarian aid. Untold additional millions in American aid backed relief efforts by the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the World Bank. The economic downturn was global, but still European, Canadian, Japanese, and South American governments and citizens also donated millions.

What of the world’s Muslims? Over the same period of time, they accounted for a whopping 0.1 percent of the total donations committed by governments -- basically, a rounding error for a Saudi sheikh’s weekend in Vegas. Drawing a telling contrast, Ms. Rosett noted that the House of Saud’s annual contribution to ICRC operations in 2008 came to a grand total of $216,460 -- less than a penny per Saudi, though quite generous compared with the $50,000 kicked in by Iran, whose population is three times larger. By contrast, the United States gave $237.8 million.

How could it be that the oil-drenched realm of zakat -- of what we are to believe is obligatory benevolence -- lags so embarrassingly behind Dar al-Greed? Very simple: Zakat is not “charity” as we understand that term.

Muslims are taught that charity means Muslims aiding Muslims, for the purpose of fortifying and extending the ummah until all the world is Islam’s domain. “Of their wealth, take alms,” instructs Allah in the Koran (9:103), “that so thou mightest purify and sanctify them.” Thus, zakat may be given only to Muslims.

Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Umdat al-Salik) was compiled by the renowned Muslim jurisprudent Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri in the 14th century. It is the most authoritative source on the subject of sharia (Islamic law), having been certified by al-Azhar University in Cairo -- the font of Sunni learning -- as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.” In fact, when an English edition of Reliance (now available through Amazon.com) was published in 1994, it won gushing praise from the government of Saudi Arabia (where sharia is the only law), as well as the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, all of which incorporate sharia in their legal systems. Reliance is quite blunt on the matter: “It is not permissible to give zakat to a non-Muslim.”

#page#That is mainstream Islam, as the Haiti earthquake-relief effort reaffirms. In Social Justice in Islam, the late but still highly influential Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained that zakat is the “share taken by the [Islamic] state and spent on the welfare of Muslims to supply their bodily needs, to preserve their dignity, and to protect their power of conscience.” More recently, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani at Sunni Path, the “Islamic Academy” that has become popular among Muslim web-surfers, observed that in all major schools of Islamic jurisprudence “there is consensus#...#that a non-Muslim (dhimmi) cannot be given any zakat.” We grubby capitalists may see Haitians as suffering beyond calculation, but for Muslims there is a calculation: The Haitians are infidels. The families of Palestinian suicide bombers and imprisoned al-Qaeda terrorists rate a brotherly helping hand, and the Haitians don’t.

#ad#In fact an essential purpose of zakat is to underwrite jihad. Americans see it as a dangerous fraud when Islamic charities are used as fronts for terrorist organizations. In mainstream Islam, however, there is no fraud at all -- not if your understanding of “charity” is zakat.

“It is obligatory,” according to Reliance of the Traveller, “to distribute one’s zakat among eight categories of recipients, one-eighth of the zakat to each category.” The manual goes on to describe these categories, the seventh of which is “those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army roster.” 

Al-Misri, the 14th-century scholar, did not dream that one up -- and there was no al-Qaeda around to “hijack” Islam from him. He pulled it right out of the Koran. Sura 9:60, the verse most often associated with zakat, directs that “alms are for the poor and the needy, and those employed to administer the funds; for those whose hearts have recently reconciled to Truth [i.e., to Islam]; for those in bondage [like those imprisoned terrorists] and in debt; in the cause of Allah; and for the wayfarer. Thus is it ordained by Allah.” Echoing Reliance, the official Saudi version of the Koran annotates this verse with the clarification that “in the cause of Allah” refers to “those who are struggling and striving in Allah’s cause by teaching or fighting#...#[and] who are thus unable to earn their ordinary living.”

The stark fact is that the Islamic conception of alms unabashedly embraces what the brilliant scholar of Islam Raymond Ibrahim describes as “the money jihad” (jihad al-mal). A canonical hadith quotes Mohammed’s sentiments: “He who equips a raider so he can wage jihad in Allah’s path#...#is himself a raider.” That is, he achieves the same status as those Mohammed said would be most richly rewarded in the afterlife for having done the greatest service to Allah. Indeed, the Koran actually prioritizes the need to fund violent jihad over the need to fight it. Sura 9:41 declares: “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if you but knew.” As Ibrahim elaborates, several other verses “make the same assertion and, more importantly, in the same order: striving with one’s wealth almost always precedes striving with one’s life, thereby prioritizing the former over the latter.”

Ibrahim is quite right when he says the West’s tireless portrayal of Islamic charities as akin to “the Salvation Army, a Christian charity organization whose ‘ministry extends to all, regardless of age, sex, color, or creed,’” is flatly false. In Islam, it’s all about Islam. Zakat, like all Islamic tenets, serves the overarching cause of elevating Islam, to the exclusion and at the expense of nonbelievers. When President Obama proclaims his determination to ensure that Muslims “can fulfill zakat,” and when his Justice Department follows up that proclamation by relaxing the enforcement of federal laws against material support of terrorism, this is the system they are abetting.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Gas Price Problem, Mr. President? The Most Politicized Justice Department in History Is at Your Service!

As the "Arab Spring" spooks the market, and Obama's economic, monetary and energy policies increase inflationary pressure, gas prices keep pushing upward, now well over $4/gallon in many places. So, rather than look in the mirror, President Obama has reached again for his dog-eared copy of Rules for Radicals and searched out a culprit to demonize. And the winner is ... those bad "traders and speculators," who, he suggested yesterday, could be "taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains."

In order to carry out this farce, he has directed his ever accommodating attorney general, Eric Holder, to head up a "task force" to "look into any cases of price gouging." Thus, yet again, we have the Obama Justice Department putting the public's law-enforcement power in the service of the White House's political agenda -- this time, deflecting blame.

There is no need for a task force on gas price gouging. The Federal Trade Commission already is a task force on gas price gouging. As the Congressional Research Service reported in 2007, the FTC has long been responsible for monitoring gas prices. In 2005, the Energy Policy Act tasked the commission to investigate whether gas prices were being "artificially manipulated by reducing refinery capacity or by any other form of market manipulation or price gouging practices." Following Hurricane Katrina, the gouge-hunting mandate was further enhanced. And the extensive FTC scrutiny is separate and apart from investigative action in most states, which already have gas price-gouging laws.

What the president gave us yesterday was pure theater: Make a show of aggressively investigating a phantom -- one that is already scrutinized to a fare thee well -- in order to obscure the real problem: the president himself. It was Barack Obama who told us, back when he was a candidate, that he doesn't have a problem with high gasoline prices and that they are caused not by "traders and speculators" but by increasing demand on a limited commodity supply -- one that his policies adamantly refuse to allow us to replenish, let alone increase. 

If Mr. Holder is looking for some real work to do, maybe he could start up a task force to prosecute Islamist organizations that have used charitable fronts to funnel money to Hamas and other Muslim terrorists. There seem to be a number of those cases wrapped up and ready to go -- they're just waiting for a Justice Department willing to do them.

"Uncle!"

Kevin wins. If Obama agrees to give that speech, I am all for raising the debt ceiling!

Don't raise the debt ceiling

Senator Pat Toomey has an important op-ed today at Real Clear Politics (see the NRO web briefing), pointing out that refusing to raise the already gargantuan debt ceiling would not cause a catastrophic U.S. default. Such a default could only be caused by the reckless Obama administration's fear-mongering treasury secretary. Sen. Toomey writes:

On last Sunday morning's talk shows, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner once again implied that, if the debt limit is not promptly raised, the United States will default on its debt and the resulting catastrophe will be the fault of congressional Republicans.

But Secretary Geithner knows that congressional delay in raising the debt limit will in no way cause a default on our national debt. If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will still have more than enough money to fully service our debt. Next year, about 7 percent of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt. Tax revenue is projected to cover at least 70 percent of all government expenditures. So, under any circumstances, there will be plenty of money to pay our creditors.

Moreover, as the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage occurs. Thus, it is he who would have to consciously, and needlessly, choose to default on our debt if the debt ceiling is not promptly raised upon reaching it. It takes a lot of chutzpah to preemptively blame congressional Republicans for a default only he could cause.

Our Cornerite, Veronique de Rugy, in a terrific Washington Times op-ed co-authored with Jason Fichtner last month, convincingly made the same point:

While it is true Congress has never before refused to raise the debt ceiling, it has frequently taken its sweet time to do so. In 1985, Congress waited nearly three months after the debt limit was reached before authorizing a permanent increase. In 1995, 4 1/2 months passed between hitting the ceiling and congressional action. And in 2002, Congress delayed raising the debt ceiling for three months. In each case, the U.S. and the economy survived.

Obviously, without enormous increases in taxes that the public does not want, there is not enough money to pay for the Leviathan the Obama Left insists we must have (and to which we have been led by the years of out-of-control spending by both parties that President Obama has wildly intensified). This impasse will saddle us with another $1.7 trillion deficit for this year ... adding to the already accumulated trillions of debt (reputedly $14 trillion but, as our Kevin D. Williamson has shown again and again, actually more like ten times that unfathomable amount). That is why Sen. Toomey (along with Senator David Vitter) proposed the Full Faith and Credit Act, which would require Treasury to prioritize the payment of interest to America's creditors -- a demonstration of seriousness that we will not default.

That would force the government and the country to deal with urgent choices we can no longer afford to ignore. As Veronique and Mr. Fichtner elaborated:

[F]ederal revenues will reach $2.17 trillion this fiscal year. Interest payments on the nation's debt are estimated to be $205 billion this year, or about 10 percent of revenues. Taking that payment off the top, as Mr. Toomey's plan would, leaves $1.9 trillion for Congress to spend. That's enough to pay for Social Security ($741 billion), Medicare ($488 billion), and Medicaid ($276 billion), with $395 billion left for other programs.

Clearly $395 billion is not going to pay for the massive government the country has come to assume without thinking about how to pay for it. Assuming entitlements are not touched, that $395 billion wouldn't come close to paying the defense budget alone -- DoD having requested a staggering $553 billion for next year ... and that's without the additional $118 billion the Pentagon says "overseas contingency operations" will cost us (long before we know what the contingencies may turn out to be).

There is no more money. The $395 billion can't cover the nearly $700 billion for the Pentagon, and it certainly can't be further stretched to cover another $115 billion or so for homeland security, $82 billion for HHS, $77 billion for Education, $42 billion for HUD, $21 billion for DOJ, $22 billion for agriculture, $14 billion for Treasury, $13 billion each for the Labor and Transportation Departments, $12 billion for Interior, $10 billion for EPA, and on and on and on (see here for relevant OMB tables -- discretionary spending is table S-11). And all of that doesn't count the prohibitive costs of Obamacare down the road.

The people running this government are never going to deal with this untenable situation unless and until it becomes untenable for them. The only way that will happen is if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling and forces the administration to prioritize payment of those obligations that must be paid to maintain our full faith and credit -- for as Kevin and Veronique point out, this already perilous situation could be blown sky high if the interest rate we must pay to borrow spikes. Only when there is no way around it will we get serious consideration of what government should and should not do, and what kind of welfare state the public is willing to pay for.

If we put it off, if we expand the credit card of a bankrupt Washington whose credit card needs to be cut to pieces right now, not only will our dire straits get worse. We won't get to deal with them -- we will be at the mercy of how they deal with us when the music finally stops. 

Annals of the Arab Spring: Egyptians Demand Blind Sheikh's Release

The Islamic Group (Gama'a al-Islamiya) is the Egyptian terrorist organization led by Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. penitentiary for conspiring to wage a terrorist war against the U.S., conspiring to murder former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and other charges. With Mubarak now sacked, and Egypt enjoying that spontaneous urge for democracy, the IG and its Islamist allies have renewed their campaign to pressure the United States for the release of Sheikh Abdel Rahman.

This campaign has been ongoing since Abdel Rahman was first imprisoned following his 1993 arrest (he was convicted at our little nine-month trial in 1995, and sentenced a few months later). It was from this confinement that he issued the fatwa Osama bin Laden has credited as the Islamic authorization for the 9/11 attacks. The Sheikh had decreed that Muslims must fight for his release, exhorting "Muslims everywhere to dismember their [i.e., our] nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them." That would seem to cover it.

Meanwhile, in Luxor in 1997, the IG massacred 58 tourists, leaving behind leaflets (including one inserted into the severed torso of one victim) demanding that Abdel Rahman be freed. Months earlier, the group warned that it would "target . . . all of those Americans who participated in subjecting his life to danger" -- meaning "every American official, starting with the American president [down] to the despicable jailer." In March 2000, jihadists from the Abu Sayyaf group kidnapped a number of tourists in the Philippines and threatened to behead them if Abdel Rahman were not released. Authorities later recovered two decapitated bodies -- several other hostages were never accounted for.

On September 21, 2000, just three weeks before al-Qaeda's bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, al-Jazeera (that favorite network of Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House) showcased a "Convention to Support the Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman," with featured speakers Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's no. 2 and the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad), and Rifai Ahmad Taha, the leader of IG in the Blind Sheikh's absence. Also wowing the crowd was Sheikh Abdel Rahman's son, Mohammed, who urged Muslims to "avenge your Sheikh" and "go to the spilling of blood."

And now, having dispensed with Mubarak -- the American ally who cooperated with us against jihadists while keeping the peace with Israel -- Egyptian Islamists are flexing their muscles once more. Today, the newspaper Al-Masry al-Aloum reports, they will be protesting outside the American embassy in Cairo to demand that Abdel Rahman be turned over either to Egypt or another Muslim country. Helping spearhead the effort is none other than the Muslim Brotherhood's favorite cleric, Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, the Blind Sheikh's fellow Egyptian and al-Azhar University alum. As head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Qaradawi has been trying to persuade the government of Qatar to petition the U.S. for Abdel Rahman's relocation there. (Qatar is home-base for Qaradawi and al-Jazeera.) A Qatari prince had apparently agreed to try to "mediate," but the government is said to have decided not to intervene . . . at least for now. 

Yes, spring is in the air!

Re: When the President Does It, It Isn't Illegal

Kevin, I doubt anyone has done as much as you have to demonstrate that Washington holds itself to a much more forgiving standard than the one it imposes on American business. If a corporation that had over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, kept most of those obligations off-budget, and tried to pretend on its disclosure statements that its debt was a "mere" $14 trill, a lot of corporate officers (and probably some of their outside accountants and lawyers) would be looking at prison time that made Bernie Madoff's look like a slap on the wrist. On the Obama administration's attempted sleight of hand with S&P, we see the same thing.

Actually, the securities laws that everyone else but Leviathan have to follow are even more draconian than your question suggests. To prove someone guilty of this type of deceptive scheme, a prosecutor would not have to prove either that the scheme was successful (i.e., it wouldn't matter whether the securities-rating firm obliged) or that you had even had an interest in the corporation. Rule 10b-5 (the prosecutor's favorite when it comes to insider trading or other "manipulative and deceptive devices and contrivances") criminalizes (a) "any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud"; (b) "any untrue statement of a material fact or . . .  omi[ssion of] a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstance under which they were made, not misleading"; or (c) "any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person."

The law requires only that these broadly defined deceptive practices be undertaken "in connection with the purchase or sale of any security." It doesn't matter who engages in the fraud or whether such a person had an interest in the corporations involved.

I would have to double check this, but my recollection is that my old office prosecuted Martha Stewart for false representations about her company that were made in a press conference -- the theory being that these statements affected the market price of the stock (i.e., masked the deteriorating financial health of the company) even though they were not required disclosures on official SEC disclosure statements. That is to say, when corporations are involved, the government can be very aggressive about policing and punishing fraud -- even though what is involved there is a pittance compared to what Kevin is talking about.

Allahu Akbar! It's Our Friends 'the Rebels'

A beheading, a few summary executions, a lynching, torturous interrogations, gross violations of the Geneva Conventions -- directed at black African captives, with many performed before crowds yelling, "Allahu Akbar!" Those are some of the escapades of the Libyan mujahideen -- those lovable "rebels" struggling for democracy in the Arab Spring. John Rosenthal continues his reporting at Pajamas, with the warning that some of the video accompanying his latest article is sickening. A sampling of his story:

What is probably the most harrowing of the clips depicts a public beheading. A man with a long knife can be seen alternately sawing and hacking at the neck of a man who has been suspended upside-down. The victim’s inert body is soaked in blood. The beheading takes place in front of a burnt-out building in what appears to be a public square. The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has identified the location as the main square of the rebel capital of Benghazi.

A crowd numbering at least in the hundreds cheers on the assailants. At one point, a man begins chanting “Libya Hurra!”: “Free Libya!” According to the NOS translation, someone can be heard saying, “He looks like an African.” As the principal assailant begins to saw at the victim’s neck, members of the crowd yell “Allahu Akbar!” Dozens of members of the crowd can be seen filming the proceedings with digital cameras or cell phones.

There's much more where that came from. John concludes by pointing out that, while it may seem odd that the "rebels" would tape record their own atrocities, that is what is typically done by . . . jihadists -- who use the ghoulish recordings for intimidation and other purposes.