Despite President Hopenchange’s herculean efforts to kow tow to his fellow Islamist, he doesn’t seem to be doing too well on the popularity front in Muslim countries.

A Pew Research survey released on Wednesday showed that President Barack Obama’s popularity has reached record lows among Muslims.

Okay…

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey found the approval of Obama’s policies in Muslim-majority countries plummeted from an average 34 percent to 15 percent. In Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was killed, approval is the lowest — coming in at 7 percent. Muslim attitudes toward America and confidence in Obama also decreased.

More than 26,000 people from 21 countries took part in the survey, taken between March 17 and April 20.

As an aside, though, Ol’ Barry’s popularity doesn’t seem to be reaching any sort of pinnacle elsewhere, either.

Worldwide approval of Obama has also declined significantly, especially with regards to foreign policy, and overall confidence in Obama and attitudes toward America have declined modestly.

Obama focused much of his early foreign policy on improving what he called America’s global standing, saying in 2008 that he wanted “to go before the world community and say ‘America is back,’” and “send a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says: You matter to us, your future is our future, and our moment is now.”

When selecting Vice President Joe Biden, Obama said he wanted to put an end to failed foreign policy and “renew America’s security and standing in the world.”

But the Pew numbers show that even in Europe, approval of Obama’s policies decreased from 78 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in 2012. European confidence in Obama decreased from 86 to 80 percent, and favorable attitudes toward America decreased from 67 to 60 percent.

Pew’s survey marks a significant turning point from surveys conducted at the end of Obama’s first year. A 2010 Gallup poll found that global approval of the United States’ global leadership increased from 34 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009.

The survey also found more than half the people in 17 of 20 countries disapprove of the use of drone strikes to target extremist leaders and groups, and clear majorities in Britain, Germany, France and Spain say China is the world’s economic leader.

In 2008, before the worldwide financial crisis, 45 percent said the U.S. economy led the world, and only 22 percent said China. Today, only 36 percent say the U.S., and 42 percent believe China’s economy is leading.

Obama for America has thus far remained silent about the recent Pew survey, focusing their attention instead on Romney’s foreign policy.

They probably figure that if zeroing in on Mitt doesn’t work, they can always go bck to blaming Bush.

But back to the Muslim angle, you’d think the Islamic folks would still love Obama. He does, after all, bend over backwards, through the workings of his administration, to give their “spokespersons” every possible advantage to express themselves.

He really does, doesn’t he?

The Department of Justice and the FBI are revising their counterterrorism training material to remove “inaccurate and biased information” at the direction of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. The Department of Homeland Security, which uses the most funding for counterterrorism training, recently issued new guidelines on “countering violent extremism.” Why the sudden need for drastic change?

On Nov. 15, 2011, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) National launched a coordinated campaign across the country, with its various chapters requesting records from local, state and federal agencies on their use of taxpayer dollars to fund “Islamophobic training.” The campaign involves 87 filings for records requests across 15 cities nationwide.

CAIR-Michigan’s civil rights director claims CAIR wants these records to ensure that law enforcement is using trainers who provide “objective and unbiased information” to protect Americans from “violent extremists.” CAIR expressed particular concern that tax dollars are being “wasted” on “agenda-driven, inaccurate, or Islamophobic” training and materials.

For years, CAIR has led an aggressive campaign against “Islamophobia.” In the past, its targets have included individuals and corporations whose words, actions or package designs smack of insults to Muslims, as seen through the eyes of CAIR.

Now CAIR’s target is national security. CAIR’s professed goal is to wipe out bigotry, insensitivity and “unfair” bias. So what’s wrong with that?

CAIR, which presents itself as the country’s leading American-Muslim civil rights organization, is, in fact, a radical Islamist organization that is extreme in its goals and tactics. It was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-funding trial in the history of the United States.

Yes, and the Obama Administration does its best to kiss–kiss–kiss CAIR’s U-KNOW-WHAT.

What a friend we have in CAIR.

Though it is expert in public relations, it cannot escape the fact that its roots stem from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Association of Palestine and that it has close ties to Hamas. Several of its former leadership members have been arrested and convicted on terrorism-related charges or other felonies, and numerous others are being monitored by the FBI. Despite its claims of representing “mainstream Muslim Americans,” the FBI finally has wised up and cut all ties with CAIR.

Of course they have…

Now, CAIR’s document requests and demands for “investigations” not only pressure conformance in wiping out alleged “Islamophobia,” but hinder national security procedures. The document reproduction, litigation preparation, replies to letter and phone campaigns, and constant barrage of pressure constitute the true waste of taxpayer resources.

Whether out of political correctness or this administration’s love affair with political-Islamist organizations, a multitude of government agencies across the country on local, state and federal levels is cleansing themselves of any mention of Islamic terrorism.

Expert trainers in counterterrorism who have worked for years with the CIA, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center and local police departments are suddenly being told to stay home. Counterterrorism training material is being rewritten, as are the underlying facts.

Sometimes, the truth hurts. Although mention of Islamic terrorism should not serve to indict all Muslims, it is equally false to believe that Islamic terrorism is nonexistent.

It is somewhat understandable that individuals and corporations have capitulated to CAIR in the face of severe financial or existential threats, but there is no excuse for the government to succumb. To pretend that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all playing an equal role in the global terrorist network and the movement to undermine Western freedom from within does not constitute “fairness.” Rather, it’s flat-out false. What’s fair is placing fault where it belongs. To do otherwise is not only foolhardy, it constitutes a national security threat.

The most recent moves by this administration seemingly in capitulation to a terror-affiliated entity are unprecedented and must be stopped. Those who truly care about national security should keep these facts in mind when election time rolls around in November.

Did anybody mention OBAMACAIR?

To be blunt, even though he or she is a presidential appointee, there’s a reason an A.G. has to be confirmed by Congress: a U.S. Attorney General is there to serve the American People, to serve Justice; Not to function as a tool, a political hack for the president.

What Wolf would call “the president’s butt-boy”.

But that’s what this specimen (Eric Holder) has turned out to be, just a despicable creature serving the whims of a president whose ambitions for this country are the direct opposite of what the founding fathers intended, what the Constitution lays out.

Now Congress is calling him to task for his sorry performance, his betrayal of the American People, his reticence where embracing the truth is concerned.

Attorney General Eric Holder is used to being treated as a punching bag on Capitol Hill.

But the ire directed his way on Tuesday topped even the normal pummeling.

There was the old standby — Holder’s response to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal — and a new flurry of criticism over his refusal to appoint an independent counsel to investigate leaks of national security secrets.

Republicans unleashed a two-front attack on the attorney general. They assailed him during a regularly scheduled oversight hearing, where he faced new calls for his resignation, and on the Senate floor, where Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced a resolution, urging a special counsel for the leak probe.

Several GOP senators tried to weave the Fast and Furious and leak-related stories into a common narrative. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) linked the two as he called for the first time for Holder to step down.

“There has been zero accountability at the Department of Justice. … The leaking of classified information represents a major threat to national security, and your office faces a clear conflict of interest, yet you will not appoint a special counsel,” Cornyn told the attorney general. “Meanwhile, you still resist coming clean about what you knew and when you knew it with regard to Operation Fast and Furious. You won’t cooperate with the legitimate congressional investigation, and you won’t hold anyone — including yourself — accountable.

“It is more with sorrow than regret and anger that I would say that you leave me no alternative than to join those who call upon you to resign your office,” Cornyn said, joining three other Republican senators and several dozen House members who have called on Holder to go. “Americans deserve an attorney general who will be honest with them. They deserve an attorney general who will uphold the basic standards of political independence and accountability. You have proven time and time again, sadly, that you’re unwilling to do so. … You have violated the public trust, in my view.”

Bravo, Mr. Cornyn! Talk about hitting the nail squarely on the head…

Holder said he has no plans to quit.

“I don’t have any intention of resigning. I heard the White House press officer say yesterday that the president has absolute confidence in me. I don’t have any reason to believe that, in fact, is not the case.”

Of course not: A weasel like the guy occupying the Oval Office at the moment undoubtedly treasures a co-weasel who so completely covers his every political whim, legal, moral or otherwise to both.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also linked the day’s two primary GOP critiques of Holder, arguing he was complicit in a kind of selective transparency being practiced by the Obama administration.

“You’ve got one program called Fast and Furious that’s been an embarrassment to the administration, and it’s been like pulling teeth to get information about Fast and Furious: who knew what and when. And when you have programs on the national security front that seem to show the president as a strong leader, you can read about it in the paper,” Graham said. “I’m very disturbed about the inability to get information regarding programs that are embarrassing and the tendency of this administration to tell the whole world about things that are good.”

Double Bravo, Mr. Graham!

Who would have thought dreamed, less even than a generation ago, that the American People would ever actually vote in an Administration as dangerous to the future of our country as the present one?

Third world country? Communist country? Lived in one that was both, don’t want to do it again here, too, thank you!

Where the parties within the Obama Administration who are leaking, or behind the leaking of national security secrets are concerned, up to and including the president, Hard Astarboard completely agrees with this man.

What they are doing, purely to glorify the Obama Administration for political gain is, purely and simply, TREASON.

Well, we did say that for any blogger critical of Barack Hussein’s personal little dynasty, this is one administration that is truly a target rich environment, right?

I don’t think there’s ever been a bunch of thugs people in the White House at one time that featured even one tenth as many reasons to “vote the bums out” at the first opportunity which, in the present case, is coming up in just under five months (yippieeeeeee!).

In addition to the myriad reasons we’ve posted on, here we have Obama Rex looking to slip past Congress and be all the monarch he can be by issuing lots and lots of executive orders.

President Obama has signed 127 Executive Orders to date during his Administration. Includes a Free Download of the Official Executive Orders as they become available. This list was originally started here on the 1461 on January 25 2009.

Read On.

Whew, that’s quite a list!

He left out, probably an oversight, an executive order whereby the president (at least him , at any rate) should be issued a diamond and jewel encrusted sceptre and matching crown.

I never thought I’d use this term to describe a President of the United States, but this Obama character, who has absolutely no shame and is singularly unqualified for the office he holds unless one believes that the entire purpose of being POTUS is to act out ones narcissist fantasies while campaigning for reelection, but B. Hussein Obama is…contemtable.

But then, so are his attorney general and the rest of that cabal over there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

All in all, what we have is the proverbial “sad state of affairs”, one which needs desperately to be corrected by right thinking (for that matter, all thinking) Americans this November.

I’ll say one thing for the Obama Administration: It’s definitely what Seth and Wolf would agree is what’s referred to as a Target Rich Environment.

If this cluck is somehow reelected to the presidency for a second term it will make the American voter, as a whole, look pretty bad, like Mr. Magoo meets Dumb & Dumber.

To add to everything else (what, like four or five things a week, minimum?) we now have a “Leak-Gate”!!!?

President Obama takes umbrage at the idea that a spate of leaks of highly classified national-security information is somehow purposefully intended to bolster his leadership credentials. His resistance to an independent investigation will only make things worse for him. The Obama White House is leaking like a sieve. Trying to cover it up will only make the scandal bigger.

Never mind what these “birthers” are trying to say about POTUS not being U.S. born, this Obama character is, like, from another planet!

If he were doing to some other country, say Zimbabwe or someplace, what he’s doing in and to America, Barack Hussein’s exploits would make for great comedy, but unfortunately he’s doing it to us, so it’s not that funny. He’d make a really good secret weapon: The CIA plants him in an enemy nation’s political system, he gets elected president over there, and we just sit back and watch as he destroys their country from within.

Worse, yet, in view of all his strange ways of discharging his responsibilities as president, he believes we’re all even dumber than he is (the liberals said George W. Bush was dumb, but whether he was or not, Obama makes him look like an Einstein in every way. Of course, Obama even makes Jimmy Carter look good).

I mean:

On Friday, Mr. Obama took the charges of selective leaks head-on: “The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national-security information is offensive,” he said. “It’s wrong, and people I think need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me here approach this office.” His protestations carry little credibility. On the previous day, the White House rejected a bipartisan call by leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees to appoint a special counsel to investigate the leaks.

What a frigging bone head!

Even very liberal legislators are worried about the brewing crisis of administration staff leaks. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, told CNN on Thursday, “I’ve been on the Intelligence Committee for 11 years and I have never seen it worse.” Mr. Obama’s high dudgeon about the temerity of accusations of White House impropriety will not be enough to save his team from scrutiny.

There have been leaks about drone strikes, U.S. special operations and foreign classified information such as Israel’s alleged deal with Azerbaijan to support a military strike against Iran. There have been leaks to newspapers, TV and Hollywood screenwriters. Some leaks have been more damaging than others. One story that broke last month detailed a CIA informant penetrating high levels of al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, making off with their most sophisticated new bomb and providing information leading to a successful drone strike on a leading militant. The information fed to the public portrayed the operation as a major success, but intelligence specialists were alarmed at the amount of detail that was leaked. Embarrassingly, it soon turned out that this was not an American-led effort at all but a long-term British-Saudi operation that was compromised by the very leaks that trumpeted its success and erroneously attributed credit to the United States. “This does seem to be a tawdry political thing,” former CIA bin Laden hunter Michael Scheur said at the time.

Yes, by a tawdry, all politics, all the time president.

Even his own party is worried, including the far left liberals within.

This guy is just too much, and the cabal of political hacks cabinet secretaries, czars, proprietary lobbyists and advisors he has surrounded himself with are right off the same bizarre comedy page he is.

Come on, November!

Well, do you think we, the taxpayers owe enough money?

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the Federal Reserve’s holdings of U.S. government debt have quintupled, according to the Fed’s official monthly balance sheet.

On Jan. 28, 2009, a week after Obama’s nomination, the Fed owned $302 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. On April 25, 2012, the latest date reported, the Fed owned five and a half time that much in U.S. Treasury securities–$1.668 trillion.

That is an increase from January 2009 of $1.366 trillion—or 452 percent.

Wow! And wasn’t Obama the guy who accused Bush of being “unpatriotic” for running up debt that he, the hopeful changer, has already surpassed?

Wow!

Under Obama, the Federal Reserve has become the single largest owner of U.S. government debt. When Obama entered office, entities in the People’s Republic of China were the largest holders, followed by entities in Japan. At the end of January 2009, China owned $739.6 billion in U.S. government debt and Japan owned $634.8 billion.

By the end of March 2012, China’s holdings of U.S. debt had grown to $1.1699 trillion and Japan’s holdings had grown to $1.083 trillion.

Together, the Federal Reserve, China and Japan had increased their holdings of U.S. debt by $2.2445 trillion since Obama took office.

The total U.S. government debt grew from $10.6179 trillion to $15.6233 between Jan. 28, 2009 and April 25, 2012. Leaving out the intragovernmental debt—which the federal government owes itself—the publicly owned part of the U.S. government debt has climbed from $6.2955 trillion to $10.8607 trillion, an increase of $4.5652 trillion.

Now we’re talking real money!

The $2.2445 trillion of that new publicly owned U.S. government debt that was purchased by the Fed, China and Japan equals 49 percent of all the new debt the U.S. government has sold to the public since Obama took office.

Here’s a president who truly needs to be voted out come November, because we simply can’t afford him anymore.

There was once a time when the United States of America led the world not only economically, but in the pursuit of freedom and justice, as well. Despite criticism from one country or another or from liberals within, we injected ourselves into situations where our might was needed to defend the freedom of victims of conquering dictatorships (nazis, communists…), not only or always militarily, but we were there playing some decisive role.

Of course, that kind of thing requires leadership, and for a country to lead, its leaders must be able to lead.

That said, enter Saddam Barack Hussein (Obama), a leader who doesn’t lead or, if what he does is said to be leading, then it is from the Lemming school of leadership.

Yes, FORWARD!…off a cliff.

From Oliver North, his column appearing in Guns and Patriots

The once highly touted Arab Spring has become the Arab Summer — scorching hot, unbearably dry and very brutal and bloody. Last weekend, as Americans prepared to celebrate Memorial Day and commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, Bashar Assad unleashed tanks, artillery and his Quds force-trained shabiha militia to kill more than 100 Syrian civilians — most of them women and children. Though the atrocities and carnage in Syria continue, little but bluff and bluster is produced by the United Nations and the Obama administration.

Ah, yes, the infamous “bluff and bluster”, Obama hallmarks and as for the U.N., well, we all know about the U.N.

In the aftermath of the May 25 massacre, 11 nations — the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Turkey — expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — on a visit to Turkey, Syria’s neighbor and former ally — told the Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul, “The U.N. did not deploy in Syria just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents. … We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities.”

But that’s exactly what the 300 U.N. “observers” in Syria have become in the six weeks since they were deployed in support of Kofi Annan’s so-called Syrian peace plan. Worse, the vicious Assad regime and its principal backers in Russia and Iran know that this is all hollow rhetoric. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — vying for the title of “The Most Traveled U.S. Secretary of State in History” — ought to know it, too.

This is all a little too much, watching as our “fearless leader” and the rest of the world’s “powers that be” do nothing but make noise while events and the opportunity to shape them in a nondestructive way pass them by; Those powers that be, that is, who aren’t actually looking to profit politically or economically from the gradual demise of the United States and the west, or from lending their tacit support to leaders like Assad when they commit the kinds of atrocities with which any civilized man or woman should take umbrage.

Of course, Osama Obama takes great pride in having been “the only senator to vote against the Iraq war from the beginning”; If he didn’t give a good gahoot about the inhumanities the Husseins were inflicting on their people, why should he care about the massacres the Syrian government is perpetrating on its own civilians.

Worse yet, while Assad is hanging onto control (ownership) of Syria, other Arab nations that have managed to succeed in dumping their leaders, like Egypt, are now looking at very good odds that their new leaders will be Muslims of the militant variety who would think nothing of using their countries as staging areas for terrorist acts against the west and westerners abroad, especially Americans.

Yes, Assad would fit right in with that bunch, as he does with Iran.

No, “O”, don’t do anything concrete, just stand there watching while the Arab world, wherein lies the potential for the exportation of a whole lot of future misery for the United States and some of our allies, reshapes itself into our worst nightmare.

But back to Hillary (ous) diplomacy:

In Copenhagen, on “a weeklong diplomatic trip to Europe’s capitals,” she said the Obama administration is “committed to preventing a civil war in Syria” and baldly claimed that she is “pushing” the government in Moscow to help: “I have been telling them their policy is going to help contribute to a civil war.” That kind of talk is unlikely to produce a favorable outcome in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, no matter how many times President Barack Obama pushes the “reset button.”

After 15 months of butchery — and 13,000 dead civilians (the U.N. says it’s 10,000) — it ought to be clear to all that the U.N. can’t “prevent” a civil war in Syria; it already has started. Toothless sanctions, such as last week’s decision by the Obama administration to bar the Syria International Islamic Bank from doing business in the U.S., won’t stop the fighting. And no one, particularly the 22.5 million people living in Syria under the sanguinary Assad regime, should expect any help from Russia or Iran.

Moscow will do all in its power short of war to keep its Mediterranean naval installation at Tartus, Syria, in “friendly” hands. Tehran, striving for regional hegemony while it builds nuclear weapons, must have an ally in Damascus to keep open its supply lines for arms and materiel to Hezbollah — Iran’s proxy for what it repeatedly describes as a coming “fire that will destroy the Zionist regime.”

When asked about a U.N. resolution for military action — like the support given rebels in their effort to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi — Clinton said, “Every day that goes by makes the argument for it stronger.” She knows better. The Russians and the Chinese would veto such action in the U.N. Security Council before it could be written.

What a joke we have in the current administration!

****************

By the way, His Majesty was here in New York yesterday, presumably to panhandle more campaign money (”Change…change…change”, as he used to say).

What a mess, trafficwise and what an expense to new York taxpayers for all that police deployment.

He was staying at the waldorf, of course, which was shielded by an unbroken line of Sanitation dump trucks. It would have been more fitting had they simply deployed garbage trucks!

This one caught my eye this morning and my first thought…

Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department.

…was what Seth or Wolf would have remarked after a gruff laugh.

I could just hear Seth chuckling, “That would be something to see, those two pansies going at it with limp wristed little slaps.” or Wolf, with his patented sardonic grin: “Two of Saddam Hussein Obama’s pet fairies (that isn’t the word he’d use) havin’ a cat fight! Man, I’d of loved to see that!”

God, I miss those two (not the president’s pair of matched wussies, but Seth and Wolf. I wish they’d get home already!)

He writes that Mr Holder and Mr Axelrod were separated by Valerie Jarrett, a White House adviser and confidante to Mr Obama. Ms Jarrett “pushed her way between the two men, her sense of decorum disturbed, ordering them to ‘take it out of the hallway’,” says Klaidman.

Anyway, back to It’s beginning to look like…the Kremlin:

The argument is said to have erupted over attempts to add a political official to the staff of Mr Holder, who has presided over a handful of political and public relations blunders since taking office in 2009.

…attempts to add a political official to the staff of Mr Holder…

Like a Zampolit in the Soviet military!

In the Obama organization, huh? It’s funny how the communist fruit never falls far from the tree!

Speaking of Obama and his Kommissars…

Pastors meeting in Washington have been warned about political activities that could jeopardize their churches’ tax-exempt status.

IRS regional manager Peter Lorenzetti told the Faith Leaders Summit that prohibited activities include endorsing or opposing candidates, campaigning for them, or making contributions to their campaigns.

However,

But pastors are free to do any of those things as private citizens, according to Congressman G.K. Butterfield. The North Carolina Democrat, a former judge, said, “You simply cannot do it in your capacity as the pastor of the church and give the implication that the church is endorsing the candidate.”

Lorenzetti said churches can distribute voter guides that educate about political issues without favoring a particular candidate.

A couple of the comments below the linked article sum up our stance at Hard Astarboard, as well.

One Robert LaCoe:

I’ll bet it only applies to non-Muslim, non-black churches. Why did Holder just brief black pastors on how to influence the vote in their church. We have the most crooked regime in history in the Kremlin on the Potomac.

and one Stan Mason:

Jeremiah Wright clearly endorsed Obama in the last election. Remember his famous “Hillary ain’t never been called a N****” speech? Why didn’t Obama’s former church lose their tax-exempt status?

It appears that King Barack Hussein Obama considers it perfectly acceptable to use the power of his office to implement whatever double standards and heavy handedness he deems necessary to prolonging what he obviously considers not his term in office, but his reign.

Did I say, “It’s beginning to look a lot like…the Kremlin?”

In my various and sundry meanderings through the news this morning I ran across a column by Rich Lowry that bears reading by anyone who even dreams that most of the remnants of our once (long, long ago) great and reasonably fair/ impartial news media are even worth the time to peruse them, let alone pay for any of their publications.

Remember how the MSM and that “Hope and Change” presidential candidate, Barack Obama, criticized (nastily and mercilessly) Prersident George W. Bush for every last thing he decided regarding the handling of terrorists that didn’t fit into our own judicial system’s policies of prosecuting criminals (like purse snatchers, dope dealers, litterbugs, drunk drivers and those who tore the “do not remove” tags off their new bed mattresses)? How waterboarding, raising a voice to or otherwise not providing every murderous terrorist with every courtesy of a visiting VIP was a dastardly event?

Well, here we now have good ol’ “Barry” Obama, the good, all American hypocrite-next-door, firming up his own assassination policies.

“This,” he and his assassination czar will now decide, “is whom we’ll have killed…”

Killing has never been so discriminating, so urbane, so cool.

The New York Times and Newsweek both ran long, largely admiring articles on how President Obama selects individual terrorists to terminate with extreme prejudice. The administration’s “smart power” isn’t working out so well, but smart killing is a smash success.

Obama’s national-security team — as well as his top political adviser, David Axelrod — gather on “Terror Tuesdays” to go over an expanding “kill list” that the president examines with the aid of capsule biographies of the terrorists, or “baseball cards.” Then the president decides who lives and who — if we get him in our sights — dies.

Needless to say, had Dick Cheney consulted “baseball cards” to decide in weekly meetings attended by Karl Rove who deserved to have close encounters with drone-fired missiles, Nancy Pelosi would have drafted the articles of impeachment herself.

The Obama killings vindicate the core premises of the Bush War on Terror: This is a war, and the protections of our criminal-justice system don’t apply to the enemy.

In light of the kill list, it’s a wonder anyone ever objected to Bush-era detentions or interrogations. If we can pick someone off a roster of names and sentence him to death without due process, surely we can capture and hold that same person.

If we can execute someone — and any of his associates who happen to be in the vicinity — from on high, surely we can keep him awake at night and otherwise discomfit him should he fall into our hands.

The Times notes that “Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced.” True enough. It hasn’t been subjected to a highly politicized assault at home and abroad by people desperate to put it in the worst possible light and even make it a war crime.

As they say, SNIP!

For most of the left, the highest principle of just war theory is licet si Obama id faciat — it’s OK if Obama does it. This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama.

As it happens, the president holds exactly the same Obama-centric view. So long as the kill list is overseen by him as judge and executioner, it’s beyond reproach.

The press tends to agree. Newsweek reports, “The choices he faces are brutally difficult, and he has struggled with them — sometimes turning them over in his mind again and again.”

Really? He thinks about who he is deciding to kill? The nation is blessed to have such a scrupulous leader.

The Times maintains that the president parses the kill list as “a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” If no anecdotes have yet emerged about Obama justifying a particular kill with reference to the Summa Theologica, it’s probably only a matter of time.

In authorizing the strikes, Obama is to be commended for his coldbloodedness, although no tactic is perfect or without costs. The war in Yemen is sliding the wrong way’ relations with target-rich Pakistan are at a low ebb. But there should be no doubt now that the commander in chief possesses fearsome powers in the War on Terror. All it took for Democrats to accept that was for President Obama to begin exercising them.

I wonder when Barack Hussein will write an executive order commanding that all people refer to him as Obama Rex…

Like this one, for example.

From Real Clear Politics

When asked why she is so confident the Supreme Court will uphold the health care law, Pelosi says, “Because I know the Constitution.”

“This bill is ironclad,” she continued. “It is ironclad. Nobody was frivolous with the Constitution and the health of the American people in writing the bill,” she said. “So, that’s where my confidence springs from, the merit of the bill and the nature of the Constitution. The makeup of the court, well, we’ll see.”

There is also a video at the above link.

We’ve always known that there’s a liar of one degree or another lurking within every politician. After all, most of them are lawyers.

However, where Pelosi and most other liberal politicians of today are concerned, the lies are the binding element without which they would simply fall apart (in Nancy Pelosi’s case, well, she would melt).

“Because I know the Constitution.”

Right, about as well as she knows how to tell the truth.