Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 74

Suspect in Baltimore Bombing Plot Is an American Convert to Islam

ABC-7 News in Baltimore is reporting on Twitter that the suspect in custody for plotting to blow up a military recruitment center is Antonio Martinez, an American convert to Islam who is now known as Muhammad Hussein.

UPDATE: We'll have to wait to see what the arrest complaint says once the U.S. attorney files it publicly, but early indications are that this is a lot like the Portland case, involving an undercover investigation of a jihadist who eventually tried to detonate an inert bomb. Inside baseball on such investigations is that, while attempted bombing is a very serious crime, the law can be a bit tricky on what legally constitutes an "attempt," as distinguished from "mere preparation" (which is not a crime ... unless there is more than one plotter involved, in which case it is almost certainly conspiracy). Consequently, prosecutors and investigators try to leave no doubt about the would-be bomber's intentions. An inert device allows them to prove a criminal attempt without endangering the public.

Andrew C. McCarthy

BREAKING: Plot To Blow Up Military Recruitment Center in Baltimore Reportedly Thwarted

Fox has the few details that are currently available.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Prosecuting Assange Under the Espionage Act

In today's WSJ, Gabe Schoenfeld provides a characteristically excellent explanation of why Julian Assange should be prosecuted under the espionage act for the Wikileaks dissemination of our national defense information.

While I concur with most of Gabe's analysis, I don't fully agree with him on the First Amendment. He assumes Assange has free speech and free press rights derived from the American Constitution. By this assumption, Gabe digs himself a hole from which he must then dig himself out in order to justify prosecution. He does so deftly, but I think the exercise is unnecessary because:

(a) In this context as in that of alien enemy combatants, we should presume that constitutional protections do not extend to aliens located overseas, particularly those who are hostile to our government. The Constitution is intended to protect Americans from arbitrary or abusive acts by their government, not to protect aliens outside our borders, much less enemy aliens. And

(b) Assange is not a journalist. As Gabe points out, the First Amendment has never immunized journalists from liability for publishing national defense information shielded by the Espionage Act -- the Pentagon Papers case merely held that there should not be a prior restraint against publication, not that there could not be a post-publication prosecution. Moreover, as Gabe further notes, prosecutors are leery of proceeding against journalists due to judicial interpretations of the espionage act that call for proof of "bad faith" on the part of the journalist. I think this hesitation is misplaced: at most, "bad faith" for these purposes means the prosecutor must show the journalist was aware that publication could harm the U.S. -- it doesn't matter if the journalist had what he subjectively saw as admirable motives. But such knotty journalistic intent issues are irrelevant when we are dealing with a non-journalist who acts with an unabashed goal of undermining the United States. (On Assange's anti-American rationale, I highly recommend Gordon Crovitz's insightful WSJ column from Monday, "Julian Assange, Information Anarchist.")

One final thought. Gabe relates that my old friend and colleague Baruch Weiss has opined that Defense Secretary Robert Gates would be a helpful witness for Assange because Gates has described claims of national-security damage by Wikileaks as "significantly overwrought." Gabe very effectively shows that Baruch has offered an incomplete version of Secretary Gates's assessments (Gates judged an earlier Wikileaks document dump to be "potentially severe and dangerous"). But beyond that -- as I imagine Baruch would have been among the first to point out when he was a very fine prosecutor -- the relevant issue in a prosecution is not the extent of the actual damage caused by the disclosure. What matters is whether the disclosure was prohibited under the act and whether the defendant intended harm. It is black-letter law that criminal schemes do not have to be successful, or even plausible, in order to be prosecutable as serious crimes. Osama bin Laden hopes to destroy the United States; that he is incapable of doing so would not be a defense against a terrorism conspiracy charge.

Andrew C. McCarthy

The 25 Percent Recidivism at Gitmo

Regarding this eye-opening new study to which Dan alluded, a few observations.

First, as I've been arguing ever since Obama counterterrorism advisor John Brennan absurdly claimed that a 20 percent recidivism rate for mass-murderers is pretty good, the truth is we have no idea how high the actual recidivism rate of former Gitmo detainees may be -- other than that it's probably a lot higher than the assessments we're getting from the intelligence community, alarming though they are. We cannot know with certainty whether a former detainee has gone back to the jihad unless (a) we encounter him on the battlefield, or (b) we are in the rare situation of having excellent intelligence about what that particular former detainee is up to. Everything else is guesswork -- and a lot of it is guesswork influenced by the hope that dubious initiatives like the Saudis' terrorist rehab program actually work.

Second, Tom Joscelyn, who has been following this as closely as anyone, has an excellent article at TWS, which begins:

150 former Guantanamo detainees are either “confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities,” according to a new intelligence assessment released by the Director of National Intelligence’s office on Tuesday. In total, 598 detainees have been transferred out of U.S. custody at Guantanamo. 1 out of every 4, or 25 percent, of these former detainees is now considered a confirmed or suspected recidivist by the U.S. government.

The DNI’s latest assessment is a significant increase over previous estimates. In June 2008, the Department of Defense reported that 37 former detainees were “confirmed or suspected” of returning to terrorism. On January 13, 2009 -- seven months later -- Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that number had climbed to 61. As of April 2009, the DoD found that same metric had risen further to 74 -- exactly double the Pentagon's estimate just 11 months before.

It's all worth reading, as is another TWS piece by Steve Hayes, contending that these latest figures mean you can forget about Gitmo being shuttered. Steve futher notes that although most of the known recidivists were released by the Bush administration (when there were hundreds more detainees at Gitmo), five of them were released by the Obama administration -- despite its ballyhooed enhanced review process.

On Obama administration stonewalling, Steve adds:

As the WikiLeaks cables related to Guantanamo Bay make clear, U.S. diplomats began a global effort to persuade allies to take detainees and, when that didn’t work, to bribe them to reconsider. But as the administration worked to empty Gitmo, reality was causing problems. The number of recidivists was growing steadily and the threat posed by those remaining at Guantanamo – the worst of the worst – was becoming clear....

After recounting the most transparent administration in history's information lock-down -- Obama turning a deaf ear to the press, congressional Republicans, and FOIA demands -- Steve concludes: 

The administration was undeterred and sought to downplay the dangers associated with releasing or transferring individual jihadists. In some cases, sources say, administration officials rewrote threat assessments on the detainees produced by the intelligence community and the U.S. military. And the only reason the administration is set to release the report now is that Congress, in the 2010 Intelligence Authorization bill, mandated that the office of the Director of National Intelligence make the information public by December 7, 2010. So despite its efforts to keep the information hidden, it will be made public. And despite the efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, it will remain open.

Yup.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Judge Dismisses Awlaki Assassination Suit

Federal Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., has dismissed the lawsuit brought by the family of al Qaeda operative and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki which alleges that President Obama's reported authorization of his (Awlaki's) assassination violated his constitutional rights.

Judge Bates's opinion is 83 pages long and I haven't been able to do more than skim it so far. Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism gives what appears to be the bottom line: the judge concluded (the quote is from the opinion) that a federal court "lacks the capacity to determine whether a specific individual in hiding overseas, whom the Director of National Intelligence has stated is an 'operational' member of [al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula], presents such a threat to national security that the United States may authorize the use of lethal force against him."

I want to digest the ruling before saying much more. Suffice it to say for now that if the judge is saying courts lack the institutional competence to second-guess the commander-in-chief's wartime judgments about how the enemy should be fought overseas, I would agree with that. But better to take the time to analyze exactly what the court said ... and to remember that this is just Round One.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Mohamud Was Not Entrapped

How easily could you be persuaded to murder thousands of Americans?

What would someone have to offer to entice you into killing someone? Or to entice you into killing thousands of people?

The FBI has just caught Mohamed Osman Mohamud trying to kill 25,000 Americans at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland. That means the silly season is once again upon us. Not the holiday season -- the entrapment season. It comes around, as surely as Cialis commercials follow NFL opening kickoffs, every time the FBI catches a jihadist trying to mass-murder Americans.

#ad#You may have noticed that jihadists try to mass-murder Americans with some frequency. One would think this stubborn fact would more than deserve the heightened attention it is reluctantly given by the FBI -- the politically correct, anti-profiling, “every culture has its violent extremists” FBI. But it does not -- at least not for CAIR’s pied pipers, dutifully trailed by defense lawyers, libertarian extremists, anti-American leftists, and the accommodating media. It seems no amount of Islamic outreach and sensitivity training will shield the bureau from caterwauling over its agents provocateurs. Again and again, these undercover operatives bamboozle some innocent “youth,” who just happens to be a Muslim, into an attempted slaughter whose selling point just happens to be the glorification of Allah through violent jihad.

The linchpin of this anti-enforcement campaign is always entrapment, which is the legal concept of being bamboozled into criminality. As a matter of law, the claim of entrapment in terrorism cases is nonsense. Still, regardless of how many times it fails, it is raised again -- another example of common sense taking a backseat to legal processes when a society becomes so “progressive” it can’t let a citizen eat a cheeseburger without first hearing what the experts (inevitably meaning the lawyers) have to say about it.

The lawyers, naturally, are very troubled by government “sting” operations. Lawyers, after all, are paid to be troubled, and to see to it that you knit your brow and get troubled, too. So we hear that Mohamud is just 19. He is an American citizen -- as American, one supposes, as apple pie . . . assuming that the pie is baked in Somalia, Mohamud’s birthplace, a no-man’s-land of Muslim fundamentalism and brutality (funny how the two seem to go together). Just a normal kid, we’re told: graduating from high school in Beaverton, Ore., attending the state university, drinking an occasional beer, etc. That’s no radical’s profile -- and isn’t it interesting that Islamists and leftists think profiling is just fine as long as it’s used to claim someone couldn’t possibly be guilty of something?

They ask: Have you heard about this investigation? The FBI wormed their way into Mohamud. They read his e-mail. They gave him money. They bought the bomb components. They paid for the safe house. They built the test explosive. They pretended to detonate it. Then they built the bomb. They provided not only the cell phone that was supposed to trigger the bomb but also the number code that had to be punched in. Mohamud was obviously set up: just a puppet at the end of their strings.

It is a tired script, and there are easy legal answers to all of it -- which is why the defense is batting exactly .000 despite many turns at bat over the last two decades. But the easiest answer has little to do with law, and you don’t need a juris doctor to grasp it. It is not about entrapment, but about us.

No rational human being can be enticed, against his beliefs, into murdering another person, much less murdering thousands of people, as Mohamud hoped and tried very hard to do at Pioneer Courthouse Square on November 26. No amount of money, cajoling, or appeals to anti-Americanism and cultural solidarity can get a person to take such an unspeakable action.

#page#Terrorism is not an everyday crime, driven by mundane motivations. Maybe overzealous police can get some sap to commit a fraud he’d never have dreamt of on his own, lead him to think he can make a few bucks that no one ever has to find out about. Maybe they can lure a curious loner into buying child pornography. Mass homicide is quite something else. It is not the work of the greedy or the curious, but of the committed.

#ad#The entrapment defense is always trotted out, because a defendant who is tape-recorded planning to slaughter thousands of people -- who enthuses over the prospect of killing infidel children toted along with their families to a celebration of Christmas, whose top recollection of 9/11 is how “awesome” it was to watch victims leaping to their deaths to escape the hellacious fires raging inside the skyscrapers, who actually tried to detonate the Portland bomb not once but twice as crowds gathered at the tree lighting -- does not have a lot to work with. He can’t credibly deny what he has done, so it is best to have his lawyers razzle-dazzle the paranoid with the idea that the government made him do it.

No one ever seems to stand up and say, Well, the government could never make me do it.

Instead, we get Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of CAIR of Greater Los Angeles, decrying the FBI’s “targeting” of Muslims, complaining about how it pushed a young Muslim man who was provided “with fake explosives by its undercover agents,” and citing sympathetic leftists who argue that the “frightening” but “fake, FBI-manufactured” plots deflect our attention away from the real issues -- like Guantanamo Bay. Why, it’s downright “immoral,” Ayloush asserts, for the FBI to lure “confused, socially alienated, and sometimes unstable individuals into becoming terrorists.” He is echoed, of course, by a spokesman for the Somali mission to the United Nations, which is concerned not about the fact that several Somali immigrants to the U.S. have aligned with al-Qaeda’s agenda but over the “tactics of federal agents” who are supposedly luring Somalis into illegality.

In fact, the FBI did not lure Mohamud into anything. They intervened while he was reaching out for terrorist training overseas.

The legal test of entrapment is straightforward. The defendant has to show both that the government instigated the crime and that it is a crime he would not otherwise have attempted -- i.e., he was not “predisposed” towards it. In Mohamud’s case, the defense is laughable: He had for years been yearning to participate in jihadist violence (even writing for terrorist publications). The FBI happened onto him because of this. He told its undercover operatives he wanted to conduct a horrific bombing, that he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible, and that he understood violent jihad to be an obligation imposed by Islamic scripture. He chose the tree-lighting ceremony as a perfect opportunity, and even selected the optimal spot near the revelry for placement of the bomb, hoping to maximize casualties. And then, once the crowd was gathered and what he thought to be the explosive was in place, he tried to detonate the bomb -- twice.

It is typical for FBI undercover agents to meet with jihadists in the thrall of Islamist ideology, which is preached in more mosques than we’d like to admit and easily available on the Internet. It is also a commonplace for the FBI, once such a jihadist has been identified, to provide him with the means to commit the atrocities he indicates he wants to commit. That way, federal agents -- rather than like-minded jihadists -- can maintain control over the plot, so innocent people are not harmed. If we want to have a counterterrorism approach that actually counters terrorism -- preventing it from happening rather than prosecuting it only after Americans have been killed -- then this is the way it has to work.

Necessarily, as long as things are working as they should, CAIR and its apologists will always be screaming, “Entrapment!” When they do, we should ask ourselves -- and them -- “Could you be entrapped into killing 25,000 people?”

-- 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.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Missile Malpractice

New START needs clarification.

Show me where in the Constitution it says the government -- created by the people in order to serve the people -- is empowered to mandate that those selfsame people buy health insurance as a condition of living and breathing in the United States.

That was the pointed demand put to Democrats during the Obamacare debate. You remember those months: threats and bribes for every wavering moderate on their side of the aisle, while Republican opposition was steamrolled with accounting voodoo and parliamentary tricks that would have made Saul Alinksy blush. And what was their answer on the Constitution? Why, it was right there in the preamble, they told us. It expressly says, in black and white, that it is government’s job to “promote the general Welfare.”

#ad#This was absurd, of course. The preamble? Never had it been understood to have the meaning ascribed by Obamacare proponents, nor to have such potent force. Preambles are just hortatory and self-justifying, right? It is the subsequent articles, terms, and conditions that have the force of law. Oh no, countered Democrats: The preamble is basic, foundational to our understanding of everything that follows -- and “promote the general Welfare” couldn’t be clearer. It was the license, we were to believe, for Leviathan to take over one-sixth of the private economy.

So, now comes the ludicrous strategic arms–reduction treaty (“New START”) with Russia that President Obama is curiously desperate to ratify before more Republican senators arrive on the scene next month. What does the president say about the treaty language that clearly straitjackets U.S. missile defense, holding our security in an ever more threatening world hostage to Soviet -- er, sorry, I mean Russian -- offensive capabilities?

He tells you, Don’t worry about it: That’s just the preamble. Doesn’t mean anything.

With his own credibility in tatters, the president has taken to channeling Ronald Reagan as he campaigns for New START. In that spirit, we should note that there are countless good reasons, substantive national-security reasons, for the senate to Just Say No. But how about we go with just two basic points, neither of which requires you to be an expert in telemetry or to know your ICBMs from your AMRAAMs? Let’s just focus on credibility and competence.

On New START, as on many other matters, the Obama administration has demonstrated that it is not to be trusted. That’s bad -- no matter who the president is, we want to be able to credit him on vital issues of national defense. Nevertheless, when we hear these incessant Democratic invocations of the Gipper’s bon mot, “Trust but verify,” we ought to be thinking Barack Obama, not Vladimir Putin.

Trusting the Russian strongman is out of the question -- wasn’t it only about ten minutes ago that President Bush was wiping egg off his face as the “strategic partner” whose soul he thought he had peered into rolled Red Army tanks into the heart of Georgia? But if we are going to trust Obama, we have to verify. The president notoriously says whatever he thinks he needs to say to achieve his objectives, and, with START in particular, the administration’s behavior has been abominable.

There is, as noted, the topsy-turvy matter of preambles. As National Review’s editors have pointed out, the New START preamble plainly touts “the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms.” It further purports to cement for all time the current posture of this purported interrelationship, asserting that “current strategic defensive arms do not undermine” stability, and that the “interrelationship” between missile offense and missile defense “will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.” That is, the more we shrink our inventory of strategic nukes -- the point of New START -- the less latitude we will have to beef up our defense against missile attacks.

#page#Let’s leave aside the patent stupidity of this theory, shown by (to take just a few examples) the fact that we will face far more worrisome nuclear threats than Russia in the future, the ample historical experience proving that reductions in U.S. missile levels do not (as Mr. Obama insists) discourage rogue governments from developing their own nukes, and the obvious conclusion that there is no necessary interrelationship between Russia’s offensive capabilities and our defensive needs (for ourselves and for the protection of our allies, a problem Russia doesn’t have) -- which is why, former UN ambassador John Bolton recalls, the Bush administration wisely decoupled these considerations. Let’s even ignore for the moment the flat-out lunacy of agreeing that our future security somehow hinges on maintaining Russia’s ability to attack us. Quite apart from all that, there remains the simple matter of the treaty’s text.

#ad#For the Russians, this is the ballgame. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov issued an unambiguous statement at the time the treaty was signed pronouncing the limitations on U.S. missile defense to be “clearly spelled out in the treaty” and “legally binding.” And why not? Besides the preamble, the treaty expressly prohibits offensive-missile launchers from being converted into defensive-missile interceptors. Moreover, beyond START’s own language, the Heritage Foundation’s Baker Spring observes that, in its February 2010 report on ballistic-missile defense, the Obama administration explicitly limited the program in order to maintain the strategic balance not only with Russia but with China, too.

In the face of all this evidence, the Obama State Department counters that New START imposes “no constraints on deploying the most effective missile defenses possible.” This just mulishly repeats the absurd denials of Ellen Tauscher, State’s big mahoff on arms control, which are captured in former Defense Department official Keith Payne’s recent NRO essay: “The treaty does nothing to constrain missile defenses#...#this treaty is about offensive strategic weapons”; “There is no limit or constraint on what the United States can do with its missile defense system”; and “There are no constraints to missile defense.” No, of course not#...#and the voice in the back of my head keeps chanting, “If you like your health insurance, you get to keep your health insurance!”

It’s a tad late in the day for the president to argue that he’s still your honey, so never mind what your lyin’ eyes and ears are telling you. But even if that weren’t true, the Obama administration never disappoints when it comes to your worst suspicions. Despite serial denials, some issued in congressional testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the Washington Times’s Bill Gertz reports that an internal State Department memo documents -- surprise! -- extensive secret talks between the Obama administration and the Russians regarding missile defense. Turns out the administration even proposed a draft treaty on missile-defense cooperation, notwithstanding its assurances that no such deal was in the works.

Which is all to say that Obama administration posturing cannot be taken at face value. That would probably be true in any case. It is especially true when (a) the stakes involve national security; (b) the language of the treaty cuts against the posturing; (c) the administration has already been caught playing fast and loose with pertinent facts; (d) Obama not only is philosophically opposed to robust missile defense but has actually reneged on missile-defense commitments the nation made to Poland and the Czech Republic; and (e) the other party to New START is publicly insisting on an interpretation of treaty terms that flies in the face of the administration’s stated construction.

Russia’s contradiction of the administration brings us to the second basic problem with New START: the failure to meet the minimal demands of competence. A treaty is like a contract between two parties that happen to be sovereign nations. A contract is a meeting of the minds on essential terms. When contracts get breached, it is usually because the parties thought they understood each side’s obligations when they signed, but some latent ambiguity unexpectedly led them to construe their obligations differently and defy each other’s expectations. That’s when the lawyers start getting sued for malpractice, for failing to make sure the terms were crystal clear.

Contrast that situation with New START, which is unratified -- meaning it’s not a contract yet, just a proposal. We don’t have to wait for a breach: We already know there is galactic disagreement between what Russia and the Obama administration say the treaty portends for missile defense.

So here’s a question for Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and other lawyer-senators who are said to support ratification: If it would be malpractice to counsel a client to sign an ambiguous contract that unexpectedly leads to a messy breach, what word should we use for the incompetence involved in counseling a country to enter a treaty about which we know, going in, that there are irreconcilable differences on the key point? Inexplicable? Reckless? Disbarment material?

If the Obama administration’s representations about New START’s benign treatment of missile defense are true, what could possibly be the problem with telling the president to go back to the Russians with a codicil that says exactly what the State Department has been telling us? You know: “Mr. Medvedev, just sign this piece of paper that says there are absolutely no limitations on U.S. missile defense and that you have no idea what Mr. Lavrov had been drinking when he said otherwise.”

At a minimum, the Senate ought to demand searching testimony and every iota of the negotiation record. Our security would be important enough to demand that in any event. What could possibly be the reluctance to demand it in a case where the parties are already at odds and the administration has a sorry history of making misrepresentations and stonewalling the inquiries that inevitably follow?

There is no reason to rush New START. It is an unnecessary treaty, and that which is unnecessary to do is even less necessary to do hastily.

– 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.

Andrew C. McCarthy

What Happens . . .

. . . when you lack strategic vision and decide nation-building is more important than defeating your enemies?

You get Iran in Iraq, that's what.

Underscoring this sadly predictable end, Michael Ledeen is encouraging everyone to read this Twitter (or, I guess, Twitlonger) account of the plight of Vahid (Wahyd) Ebrahami, a university professor whose family was tortured by the Iranian regime and who appears headed for that same fate -- like many Iranians in Iraqi captivity -- unless the Obama administration steps up to the plate and confronts the mullahs.

As Michael explains at his blog, Prof. Ebrahami's family

crossed the border into “free Iraq” to seek asylum.  He was arrested and jailed in an Iraqi prison, within which there is an Iranian government office.  So that officials of Iran determine the fate of Iranian refugees in Iraq.

I’m trying to get further information, but anyone in a position to help can contact the authors of the report.  Their virtual location–the Iran Information Project–is in the linked document.  I’ve spoken with the director, who seems serious and honorable.

As you know, I have always said that there will never be decent security in Iraq so long as the mullahs rule in Iran.  This is just one more grim confirmation of the accuracy of that assessment.  With “sovereignty” now in the hands of the Iraqis, their ability to resist Iranian demands is far less than it was when the country was under “American occupation.”  Just ask the Iranian refugees, desperately looking for freedom from a regime that wants them broken or dead.

The same goes for Afghanistan, and if the Western world continues to dither about supporting democratic revolution in Iran, this dreadful state of affairs will spread to Lebanon, and thereafter to other Arab lands.  You know, the ones whose leaders keep begging us to do something… But for now it would be a small but meaningful step forward if Secretary Clinton insisted on saving Professor Ebrahimi.

Yup.

Andrew C. McCarthy

Debt Commission, Obamacare, and the GOP -- a Question

I have a question for the house -- meaning our house here, not that one on Capitol Hill.

Put aside what one may think of the Debt Commission. I am not a fan, but I certainly understand the instinct to see good in anything that looks like an adult effort to grapple with our dire straits. In any event, there is no gainsaying that Bowles/Simpson does not deal with Obamacare at all. Its measures and projections assume the existence of Obamacare, which -- one would think -- could go a long way toward cementing Obamacare.

So here's my question (and I do not mean for it to be a loaded one; I seriously want to know the thoughts of people who know more about this stuff than I do): Is it serious for pro-Commission Republicans to claim that they also support the repeal of Obamacare? Does support for the Bowles/Simpson proposal undermine the commitment in the GOP's "Pledge to America" to repeal (or "repeal and replace") Obamacare?

I know Paul Ryan finds the failure to deal with Obamacare to be a key flaw in the Debt Commission proposal. (I agree, for what little that may be worth.) If an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare were really going to happen, would Rep. Ryan's criticism be a good reason to reject the Debt Commission plan?

Andrew C. McCarthy

Three Cheers for the Washington Post!

I am remiss in failing to laud the Washington Post for its excellent decision to bring aboard the invaluable Jennifer Rubin. Jen now provides her bounteous streams of conservative commentary in a regular Post feature called "Right Turn." The first batch of posts can be found here, and if you're smart -- or just want to sound smart -- you'll be returning there often.

Andrew C. McCarthy