Noah Pollak writes on the Commentary ‘contentions’ site:

The world’s nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear arms … The officials and diplomats said that the International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.

ElBaradei … has said that the agency does not have any evidence that suggests Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

But … new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in the Islamic Republic. The report was said to have been signed by the head of the IAEA team in Iran. The classified report, according to the sources, was not incorporated into the agency’s published reports. The details, they said, were censored by senior officials of the IAEA in the organization’s Vienna headquarters.

Paul Greenberg writes in Townhall:

The outstanding example of … cynical manipulation of justice is how a case against the New Black Panthers, which the Department of Justice described as a “black super-racist organization,” has been quickly and quietly shelved with minimal attention to the law and the Constitution. The evidence is right there on the videos recorded Election Day, 2008, when uniformed members of the Black Panthers showed up at a Philadelphia polling station, one of them wielding a billy club. They shouted insults and made threats: “Cracker, you about to be ruled by a black man,” one of the Panthers informed a voter. Two Republican poll watchers, a black couple, were called traitors to their race …

Thank goodness for modern technology, which can make any citizen with an iPhone and its camera a crusading reporter. When all this made the Internet, not even the Obama administration’s Justice Department could ignore what had happened on Philadelphia’s streets. Particularly after the department’s own investigation revealed that the New Black Panthers had called for “300 members to be deployed” at various polling places across the country.

So early this year, the Department of Justice proceeded to file a complaint against the Black Panthers, and specifically against the stormtroopers who were captured on video. So far, so fair.

A lawyer and survivor of many a legal battle for civil rights, Bartle Bull, filed an affidavit in support of the Justice Department’s complaint. He characterized the incident in Philadelphia as “the most blatant form of intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s.”

But the Black Panthers didn’t even bother to respond to the charges — as if they were above the law. And maybe they are. Because after a court had ordered a default judgment against them, including one of their national leaders, the Justice Department caved. It dropped all charges against the Panthers except one, and that one was settled with a light tap on the wrist…

There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for this perversion of justice except the Panthers’ political pull with this new administration. This case is no longer about the Black Panthers so much as it is about a newly politicized Justice Department. At some point the career lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division changed their minds about pressing charges — or had their minds changed for them. By whom? Why? Those questions need answering. Under oath.

The same voices that once complained about the politicization of the Justice Department under a previous administration have fallen noticeably silent. For once Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s senior nudnik, has nothing to say. And the only excuse the Department of Justice offers for its cave-in is that it didn’t want to interfere with the Black Panthers’ freedom of speech. That “explanation” is scarcely good law, but it deserves first prize for sheer chutzpah — even in a city as full of it as Washington, D.C. Shouting racial imprecations at voters, wielding nightsticks, dispatching bully boys in military-looking uniforms to polling places … all that is now exercising freedom of speech? In America? It sounds more like the kind of electioneering practiced by Iran’s supreme leader and holy fraud.

The leading lights of the Democratic Party in and out of Congress may have turned a blind eye to this outrage, but the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hasn’t. In a letter to the attorney general, it has demanded an explanation for this kind of “justice” from the Justice Department:

“We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law and raises other serious questions about the department’s law enforcement decisions.”

It sounds as if the commission is getting some subpoenas ready for high Justice Department officials, and it should be…

Nothing may actually be done to protect Philadelphia’s voters under this administration, but at least there ought to be a full investigation and comprehensive report by somebody official, even if it has to be somebody outside Congress. The record needs to show just how cynical this president and his attorney general can be when it comes to their promises about upholding the rule of law. Not to mention every American voter’s right to cast a secret ballot without being harassed.

Why hasn’t there been a greater sense outrage, betrayal or just disgust at the administration’s handling of this case? My theory: Because none of this comes as a surprise. What else could be expected when The People in their wisdom elect a president of the United States who’s a product of Chicago’s machine politics?

H. L. Mencken said it: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Our view expressed in A Pointless War (see below) is endorsed by a writer who knows Afghanistan intimately.

Mona Charen writes about the man, his book, and his argument:

He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That’s what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart’s “The Places in Between,” an account of the Scotsman’s 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That’s right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey. Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, in the dead of winter, in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the inhabited world, he went from village to village on foot. Relying on the tradition of hospitality, Stewart found welcome, sustenance, and shelter (mostly, but not always) graciously offered by people who had very little to share.

Stewart, a British Foreign Service officer … and a Harvard professor, relied upon his knowledge of Farsi and Urdu, his understanding of Afghan history and culture, and his own hardy constitution to get him through. The portrayal of Afghanistan that resulted was illuminating and honest. He was unsparing about the deception and cruelty he witnessed, as well as the warmth and fellowship. I recall in particular the vignette about local children throwing stones at a dog for fun. For several years, Stewart lived in Kabul, where he established a charitable foundation seeking to promote local crafts.

So when Stewart raises a yellow flag about our escalating commitment to Afghanistan, we should take notice.

The rationale that President Obama has offered for our ramped-up engagement in Afghanistan, Stewart argues in a piece for the London Review of Books, runs as follows: We cannot permit the Taliban to return to power or they will revive the alliance with al-Qaida and will plot more catastrophic attacks on the United States. In order to defeat the Taliban, we must create a functioning state in the country, and in order to create a functioning state, we must defeat the Taliban. Obama seems keen to increase our role in Afghanistan to highlight the contrast with his predecessor. Bush, Obama ceaselessly repeats, fought “a war of choice” whereas Obama will fight only “a war of necessity.”

Obama argues that Afghanistan represents such a war. But does it? In order to achieve the goal of a “stable” Afghanistan, President Obama has deployed (for starters) 17,000 more U.S. troops at a preliminary cost of $5.5 billion. His stated goals for this poor, decentralized, and shell-shocked nation match in ambition and grandiosity the claims that George W. Bush made for a revived Iraq — but with arguably less foundation. “There are no mass political parties in Afghanistan and the Kabul government lacks the base, strength or legitimacy of the Baghdad government,” Stewart writes. There is almost no economic activity in the nation aside from international aid and the drug trade. Stewart notes that while Afghanistan is not a hopeless case, it is not at all clear that it is “the most dangerous place on Earth” as advocates of a massively increased U.S. and British role argue. In fact, neighboring Pakistan, sheltering al-Qaida (including, in all likelihood, bin Laden) and possessing nuclear weapons, represents a far graver threat to our national security. Stewart believes that bin Laden operates out of Pakistan precisely because Pakistan, a more robust state than Afghanistan, restricts U.S. operations. Nor is it clear that Afghanistan poses more of a threat than, say, Somalia or Yemen. Obama promises a “comprehensive approach” that will promote “a more capable and accountable Afghan government … advance security, opportunity and justice … (and) develop an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs.”

This is more than we have the knowledge or ability to accomplish, Stewart argues. As for the necessity, he is unconvinced that the Taliban should loom so large as a threat to the West. He thinks it unlikely that the Taliban will regain control of the entire country (though they do control some provincial capitals). Unlike the situation in 1996, the Afghans now have experience of Taliban rule. “Millions of Afghans disliked their brutality, incompetence and primitive attitudes. The Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek populations are wealthier, more established and more powerful than they were in 1996 and would strongly resist any attempt by the Taliban to occupy their areas.” In any case, a more circumscribed foreign role should be sufficient to prevent the revival of terrorist training camps — as it has since 2001.

One might have thought, listening to the opponents of the Iraq War, that a certain modesty about nation building would be axiomatic among liberals. Instead, we are witnessing something else entirely — the approach is now brainlessly partisan. Your nation building is a war crime. My nation building is a national security necessity. …

Michelle Malkin writes:

Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod’s former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad contracts supporting Obamacare — along with another PR firm, GMMB, run by other Obama strategists.

The ads are funded by Big Pharma, the AARP, AMA and the powerhouse Service Employees International Union (whose Purple Shirts dumped $80 million in independent expenditures to get Obama and the Democratic majority elected). In trademark Axelrod style, the special interest coalition adopted faux grassroots names — first under the banner of “Healthy Economy Now” and more recently as “Americans for Stable Quality Care.” …

Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until last December, when he resigned to take his White House position. His son, Michael, works there. So does former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Axelrod is prominently featured on AKPD’s website, from a founder’s quote on the front page (“CHANGE IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR”) to the glamorous election night photos of Plouffe and Axelrod with the Obamas. AKPD still consults with Axelrod on “strategy and research” for the Democratic National Committee. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million … That Axelrod and his old firm benefit mutually from their respective roles selling Obamacare should be gobsmackingly obvious. Axelrod pushes the White House plan on TV news shows. AKPD derives mega-income from ad contracts selling the White House-endorsed plan. The windfall allows AKPD to settle its debts with Axelrod, whose name, face and high-powered ties are critical to future wheel-greasing for AKPD — and future salary-earning for Axelrod’s son and close associates.

White House flack Gibbs called any suggestion that Axelrod benefits from the relationship “ridiculous.” Retorted Gibbs: “David has left his firm to join public service.” So when Republicans trade power and access, Team Obama calls that being “in cahoots” with business. But when noble servants like Axelrod do it, it’s called “public service.”

What else is Axelrod keeping from full public view? AKPD is just one of his influence-peddling operations. Housed in the same office as AKPD is Axelrod’s secretive former PR shop, ASK Public Strategies. That firm also owes Axelrod money from a buy-out deal — five annual installments of $200,000 each. Axelrod has remained notoriously tight-lipped about ASK’s corporate business. One client that came to light: utility company Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. Axelrod ran a fear-mongering campaign in Illinois for ComEd in support of a huge utility rate hike — and failed to disclose that his bogus grassroots ads (under the guise of public interest group “Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity”) were actually funded by the utility…

Charles Krauthammer calls the release of al-Megrahi (see our two posts below) ‘decadence masquerading as compassion’.  Brilliantly right-on!

Abe Greenwald writes at Commentary’s ‘contentions’ website:

Qaddafi is due in New York next month to address the United Nations. In preparation for his first-ever trip to the U.S., the arms supplier for everyone from Idi Amin to Charles Taylor has requested that he be allowed to set up his Bedouin-style tent somewhere on U.S. soil and reside in it when not at the General Assembly lectern. Whether Qaddafi ends up on Central Park’s Great Lawn or at the New York Palace, the Libyan leader, who himself is believed to have played a crucial role in the Lockerbie bombing, will be hosted in the U.S. It kind of takes the sting off the moralistic denunciations which emanated from Washington yesterday.

The American State Department and the UN are hardly alone in pretending that Qaddafi has become a reliable Western ally. He was an honored guest at last month’s G8 meeting in Italy, where he met personally with England’s prime minister, Gordon Brown. Moreover, British Petroleum is launching its biggest exploration project in oil-rich Libya. Needless to say, the Russians are also interested in Libya’s oil and natural-gas reserves, but so far Qaddafi seems partial to Western countries whose technologies hold the most promise for full production.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton condemned Megrahi’s release. But on what grounds can Secretary Clinton denounce the actions of Scotland’s authorities? She is on the record as a fan of Qaddafi’s “rehabilitation.” So too is President Obama. In all likelihood, the thriving, jet-setting Qaddafi played a more important role in the killing of 189 Americans in the 1988 midair bombing than did the dying Megrahi.

Not incidentally, it is Qaddafi, and not Megrahi, who presides over a government that is a human-rights abomination. A still active law passed in 1972 states that Libyans who “exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association may face the death penalty.” There are no independent human-rights NGOs in Libya, there is no asylum law, and foreign nationals are tortured and sometimes executed without recourse.

As the U.S.—the indispensable guardian of justice and human rights—continues to buddy up to individuals like Qaddafi (and Kim Jong-il and Manuel Zelaya and Gen.Than Shwe and Hosni Mubarak et al.), Americans should not be surprised if other governments ease up on similar and lesser monsters. And our statespeople will sound ever more hypocritical in their condemnations of the moral laxity and bad judgment demonstrated by our allies.

The son of Qaddafi [or Kadhafi] confirms our suspicion that a dirty deal was done and political pressure  brought to bear where it should have no influence (the decision of a British court of law) in connection with the release of al-Megrahi, the Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing (see the post below).

From Breitbart:

The release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was linked to trade deals with Britain, Seif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, said in a interview broadcast Friday.

For confirmation that the release was arranged by the British Foreign Office go to this article at Power Line:

I thought you might be interested in a conversation I had in London in mid-April (!) with very senior UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials about al-Megrahi. After leaving the Bush Administration in January I was on a work trip to London in mid-April and dropped by the FCO to check in with a couple of my former FCO colleagues. One high ranking British diplomat – a personal friend – complained to me that the release of al-Megrahi was forthcoming…

Not only is Andy McCarthy on the right track, it’s even worse than that. We spoke (complained?) at length about the issue and it was very from my conversation that the decision was left to Number 10, and was being driven by the FCO in part to curry favor with Qaddafi after a rocky “rebooting” period.

I’ve been quite perplexed at the characterization of this as a Scottish decision, as my friend spoke of it in terms of something that had already been cleared conditionally by the courts and had been signed off on by the Prime Minister. In fact, he pointed me toward this February 2009 AFP article, mentioning that it was a trial balloon from the British government to test the reaction in the US and UK.

And there is this from Investor’s Business Daily (22 August):

Curiously, last November, just after President Obama’s election, Britain’s Parliament passed a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya. We say “curious” because it appears the only prisoner it could have related to was al-Megrahi. Was he sick then? If not, why was it passed?

We wonder, and we’re not alone, if this was a deal to curry favor with Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who sent his private jet to pick up al-Megrahi. After all, energy giant BP has contracts and business dealings in Libya and no doubt wants more.

It is incomprehensible why some people’s hearts bleed for terrorists when they are punished for committing their atrocities. The fuss made over those Taliban monsters, all too cushily accomodated at Guantanamo!  Now Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, convicted of blowing up the Pan-Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland on December 21, 1988 , killing 270 people (259 in the plane, 11 on the ground), has been released from prison, after serving a mere 8 years of a ‘minimum 27 year’ sentence, ‘on compassionate grounds’ because the wretch is dying of cancer. What moral right has this Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose decision it was, to forgive him any of his punishment time? It may make MacKaskill himself feel good, but 270 people dying a terrible death, and the lasting grief of those who survived them, is an exorbitant price to pay for him to have a feeling of personal virtue. To make the disaster matter so little is to mock the victims, the living and the dead.

And there is even more that is sickening about this story.

If al-Megrahi was guilty of planting the bomb on the plane [some doubts over his personal guilt have been argued not entirely unreasonably, but he was found guilty in a court of law and I thought at the time of the trial that the evidence was convincing  – JB], it was certainly not his own plan. Nothing of that sort could possibly be plotted in Libya without the say-so of Qaddafi. We’re talking about a dictator. There are no free-lance terrorists in a country like Libya. When there’s a Libyan terrorist strike it’s because Qaddafi orders a Libyan terrorist strike. Not just allows it. Orders it. And Qaddafi himself will suffer no lasting consequences.

What ‘negotiations’ – read ‘conspiracy’ –  went on behind the scenes between Qaddafi and British diplomats?

What message does the release send to other plotters of terrorist atrocities?

To look into these events is to look into a moral sewer.  Come to think of it, ‘moral sewers’ is an apt description of  the British Foreign Office and the  left-wing parties that govern Scotland and the United Kingdom.

From The Washington Post:

A majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting.

We atheist conservatives were all for the war in Iraq. We especially liked Rumsfeld’s ‘shock and awe’ idea, but in the event were not satisfied that it was shocking and awful enough. We shouted with glee when the sadistic despot Saddam Hussein was captured, and celebrated when he was hanged. (He was one of those aggressive, absolute rulers of Arab states who, like Colonel Qaddafi of Libya and the ‘Kings’ of Saudi Arabia, constitute a real threat to the West, with or without weapons of mass destruction.) However, we never did, and do not, expect Iraq to remain even as much of a ‘democracy’ as it is now.

We were against NATO’s intervention in the internecine wars in erstwhile Yugoslavia.

We were and remain unswervingly for the pursuit and destruction of terrorists.

We urge the prosecution of a sustained war of words (and cartoons) on Islam. We think it is a cruel, oppressive, and murderous ideology that must be argued against.

But we see no point whatsoever in carrying on the war in Afghanistan. It would be good if Osama bin Laden could be captured and killed. There’s no need to give up pursuing him. But expending blood and treasure on trying to turn Afghanistan into a democracy is a deplorable waste. The effort is doomed to failure.

This is one of the issues on which we find ourselves in agreement with ‘a majority of Americans’.

Daniel Pipes writes:

US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, conveniently outlined the administration’s present and future policy mistakes in a speech on August 6, “A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans.”…

Disturbingly, Brennan ascribes virtually every thought or policy in his speech to the wisdom of the One. This cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North Korean functionary paying homage to the Dear Leader.

Specifics are no better. Most fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing terrorists: “Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent.” Which legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think al-Qaida represents?

Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold threat, one being “al-Qaida and its allies” and the other “violent extremism.” But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter. This elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.

He also rejects any connection between “violent extremism” and Islam: “Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”…

[This is] a deeply deceptive interpretation [of the meaning of ‘jihad’] intended to confuse non-Muslims and win time for Islamists. The George W. Bush administration, for all its mistakes, did not succumb to this ruse. But Brennan informs us that his boss now bases US policy on it.

The speech contains disquieting signs of ineptitude. We learn that Obama considers nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists to be “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” Fine. But how does he respond? With three feeble and nearly irrelevant steps: “leading the effort for a stronger global nonproliferation regime, launching an international effort to secure the world’s vulnerable nuclear material… and hosting a global nuclear summit.”

Nor can Brennan think straight. One example, requiring a lengthy quote. “Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism. But just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death.”

Summary: Poverty and a lack of education do not cause terrorism, but a lack of education and a job make people more susceptible to the ideas leading to terrorism. What is the distinction? Woe on us when the White House accepts illogic as analysis.

Further, let’s focus on the statement “when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death,” for it contains two stunning errors. First, it assumes the socialist fiction that governments provide basic needs. No. Other than in a few commodity-rich states, governments protect and offer legal structures, while the market provides.

Second, every study on the subject finds no connection between personal stress (poverty, lack of education, unemployment) and attraction to radical Islam. If anything, massive transfers of wealth to the Middle East since 1970 contributed to the rise of radical Islam. The administration is basing its policy on a falsehood.

Where, as they say, is the adult supervision? Implementation of the inept policies outlined by Brennan spells danger for Americans, American interests and American allies. The bitter consequences of these mistakes soon enough will become apparent.

Chuck Norris writes:

Obama is not the leader of Obamacare. And neither is Congress. The one who has been spearheading the initiative behind the scenes is one who goes under the misnomer “adviser” to the Obama administration, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and breast oncologist and brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. And his bible for health care reform is his book “Healthcare, Guaranteed.”

Dr. Emanuel has served as special adviser to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy as far back as February, when he confessed to the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times that he was “working on (the) health care reform effort.” The first draft of Obamacare?

If you want to know the future of America’s universal health care, then you must understand the health care principles and plans of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. I find it far more than a coincidence how much Emanuel’s book parallels Obamacare’s philosophy, strategy and proposed legislation.

First, Emanuel rejects any attempts at incremental change or reform to our health care system (Page 185). What’s needed, he concludes in his book (Page 171), is an immediate and totally comprehensive reconstruction of health care as we know it. That, of course, describes the vision of Obamacare to a T.

Second, in the chapter “Opening the Door to Comprehensive Change,” starting on Page 171 (which reads more like a political and mass-manipulating strategy than a health care manual), Emanuel drives home “a key political lesson: the need to rush the legislation through.” (Seen this methodology being used lately?!)

Third, as Obama crusades around the country pitching Obamacare, he continues to avoid giving virtually any specific details of the program. That, too, is a strategy of Emanuel’s: “Americans need to avoid the policy weeds. Focusing on details will only distract and create tangles and traps (Page 183).” So “details” of health care reform are “weeds”? That is why we continue to hear only warm and fuzzy generalities from Obama, such as,”If you’ve already got health care, the only thing we’re going to do for you is we’re going to reform the insurance companies so that they can’t cheat you.”

Fourth, Emanuel describes a comprehensive government health care program that is run completely by a national health board and 12 regional health boards (“modeled on the Federal Reserve System” — Page 83). Critics would say, “But that is not the national board as described in Obamacare or H.R. 3200.” Not yet, anyway. Does anyone doubt that the duties and power of the national “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” will morph and grow over time? And what power will it wield when it is like the Federal Reserve?

Fifth, Emanuel believes in the “phasing out of Medicare (and) Medicaid (pages 88-89 and 94-95).” Could their eventual termination be the reason Obama’s administration won’t merely reform those programs to accommodate its universal health care desires?

Sixth, Emanuel believes in ending employer-based health care (pages 109-112). As any businessman knows, why would a company pay the exorbitant costs for employees’ private health insurance when it can benefit big-time from a free ticket for government health care coverage? Some have even proposed that provisions in the House’s health care legislation, under the titles “Limitation on new enrollment” and “Limitation on changes in terms or conditions” (Page 16 of H.R. 3200), could essentially make individual private medical insurance illegal.

Seventh, Emanuel believes a universal health care program could be paid for by phasing out Medicare and Medicaid, adopting a value-added tax of at least 10 percent, etc., and then allowing Americans themselves to “pay extra with after-tax dollars” (Page 100) for additional medical benefits (beyond the government program). The truth is that whether the money comes from higher corporate taxes, taxing employer-provided health insurance, eliminating health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts, limiting the deductibility of medical expenses, increasing taxes on selective consumptives or the middle class, etc., or all the above, trust me; sooner or later, we all will pay.

Eighth, enough has been written lately about Emanuel’s end-of-life counsel and consultation, including withholding his advice from The Hastings Center Report (in 1996) that medical care should be withheld from those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. … An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

I find it striking that Obama’s ethics similarly have allowed him already to pass more laws increasing the terminations of life in the womb than any administration since Roe v. Wade. To add insult to injury, Congress repeatedly has rejected amendments to this universal health care bill that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortions.

In short, whether in title or not, Emanuel is Obama’s health care czar. Obamacare is a junior version of Emanuelcare. Or should I say the beginning stage of Emanuelcare? What’s almost eerie is how they both could be juxtaposed to intersect in full bloom sometime in America’s future.