Has anything been heard from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lately?

Has she nothing to say about al-Qaeda in Nigeria apparently plotting to blow up a plane over Detroit?

What about the incident in Israel when the driver of a car carrying US diplomats tried to run over an Israeli border guard?

Why did the diplomats refuse to show their identification papers?

And why did a US consulate car try to transport a Palestinian woman without permits between Jerusalem and the West Bank?

The identification of American diplomats from the consulate at IDF checkpoints has been a major sticking point for several years.In January 2008, the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria filed complaints with the Foreign Ministry after both US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton and then-consul-general Jacob Walles refused to roll down their windows or open their car doors and show identification papers at a checkpoint.

However, Israel’s ire reached a new level after an incident on November 13 in which a five-car convoy of consulate vehicles with diplomatic plates arrived at the Gilboa crossing.

According to a detailed official Israel Police description of the incident obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, the drivers refused to identify themselves or open a window or door. The drivers, according to the report, purposely blocked the crossing, tried running over one of the Israeli security guards stationed there and made indecent gestures at female guards.

The entire incident was documented by cameras at the crossing.

Following the incident, the head of the police’s Security Department, Lt.-Cmdr. Meir Ben-Yishai, convened a meeting on November 18 at police headquarters inJerusalem with the regional security officer at the consulate, Tim Laas. Also present were officials from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, and the regional security officer at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Dan Power… [read more here]

Are these diplomats acting under orders? Whose? And why such orders?

Is it true that the US now recognizes East Jerusalem as the ‘capital of Palestine’, while refusing to recognize the city as the capital of Israel?

Why is a person known to have terrorist connections granted a multiple-entry US visa?

Please tell us, Mrs Clinton.

The Obama administration is taking steps that will most likely lead to the US joining the International Criminal Court. It is also ‘developing its relationships’ with a variety of international organizations, some of them economic unions, and some of them positively sinister, such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference – the body chiefly responsible for launching and promoting the Islamization of Europe – and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) which has a far-left international redistributionist agenda (see here, and here for information on its co-operating Skoll Foundation).

From ThreatsWatch.Org, by Steve Schippert:

Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.

By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. …

Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece:

Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.

Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery. …

Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.

The importance of this last crucial point cannot be understated, because this immunity and protection – and elevation above the US Constitution – afforded INTERPOL is likely a precursor to the White House subjecting the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). INTERPOL provides a significant enforcement function for the ICC, just as our FBI provides a significant function for our Department of Justice.

We direct the American public to paragraph 28 of the ICC’s Proposed Programme Budget for 2010 …

Additionally, the Court will continue to seek the cooperation of States not party to the Rome Statute and to develop its relationships with regional organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League (AL), the African Union (AU), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and CARICOM [Caribbean Community]. We will also continue to engage with subregional and thematic organizations, such as SADC [Southern African Development Community] and ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], and the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OIF. This will be done through high level visits, briefings and, as appropriate, relationship agreements. Work will also be carried out with sectoral organizations such as IDLO [International Development Law Organization] and INTERPOL, to increase efficiency.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute – the UN treaty that established the International Criminal Court…

President George W. Bush rejected subjecting the United States to the jurisdiction of the ICC and removed the United States as a signatory. President Bill Clinton had previously signed the Rome Statute during his presidency. Two critical matters are at play. One is an overall matter of sovereignty and the concept of the primacy of American law above those of the rest of the world. But more recently a more over-riding concern principally has been the potential – if not likely – specter of subjecting our Armed Forces to a hostile international body seeking war crimes prosecutions …

President Bush in fact went so far as to gain agreement from nations that they would expressly not detain or hand over to the ICC members of the United States armed forces. The fear of a symbolic ICC circus trial as a form of international political protest to American military actions in Iraq and elsewhere was real and palpable.

President Obama’s words have been carefully chosen when directly regarding the ICC. While President Bush outright rejected subjugating American armed forces to any international court as a matter of policy, President Obama said in his 2008 presidential campaign that it is merely “premature to commit” to signing America on.

However, in a Foreign Policy in Focus round-table in 2008, the host group cited his former foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power. She essentially laid down what can be viewed as now-President Obama’s roadmap to America rejoining the ICC. His principal objections are not explained as those of sovereignty, but rather of image and perception.

[She] said in an early March (2008) interview with The Irish Times that many things need to happen before Obama could think about signing the Rome Treaty.

“Until we’ve closed Guantánamo, gotten out of Iraq responsibly, renounced torture and rendition, shown a different face for America, American membership of the ICC is going to make countries around the world think the ICC is a tool of American hegemony.”

The detention center at Guantánamo Bay is nearing its closure and an alternate continental American site for terrorist detention has been selected in Illinois. The time line for Iraq withdrawal has been set. And President Obama has given an abundance of international speeches intended to “show a different face for America.” …

When the paths on the road map converge – Iraq withdrawal, Guantánamo closure, perceived American image improved internationally, and an empowered INTERPOL in the United States – it is probable that President Barack Obama will once again make America a signatory to the International Criminal Court. It will be a move that surrenders American sovereignty to an international body whose INTERPOL enforcement arm has already been elevated above the Constitution and American domestic law enforcement.

For an added and disturbing wrinkle, INTERPOL’s central operations office in the United States is within our own Justice Department offices. They are American law enforcement officers working under the aegis of INTERPOL within our own Justice Department. That they now operate with full diplomatic immunity and with “inviolable archives” from within our own buildings should send red flags soaring into the clouds.

[An] explanation is due the American public from the President of the United States detailing why an international law enforcement arm assisting a court we are not a signatory to has been elevated above our Constitution upon our soil.

A Nigerian engineering student from University College, London, tried to blow up a plane with 278 passengers as it was approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

Wonder what his religion is? Don’t let such a thought sully your mind.

Fox News reports:

A male passenger on an international flight bound [from Amsterdam] for Detroit Friday tried to blow up the plane with an explosive device in an incident that the White House is labeling an attempted act of terrorism.

An attempted  act of ‘terrorism‘ ?! Not an attempted  ‘man-caused disaster’?

The suspect, who ABC reported suffered second-degree burns, told federal investigators he was connected to Al Qaeda …

No … surely not?

… authorities are questioning the veracity of that statement …

We should hope so! Likely story! At any rate, nobody’s being so racist and Islamophobic as to mention the words ‘Islam’, or ‘Muslim’, or jihad’.

A federal situational awareness bulletin noted that the explosive was acquired in Yemen with instructions as to when it should be used …

Yemen? Hey! What’s going on here?

Eyewitness Peter Smith said one passenger climbed over passengers, went across the aisle and tried to restrain the alleged attacker. The heroic passenger appeared to have been burned.

Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Multiple law enforcement officials also said the man appeared badly burned on his legs, indicating the explosive was strapped there. The components were apparently mixed in-flight and included a powdery substance, officials said.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) identified the suspect as 23-year-old Abdul Mudallad [full name Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] of Nigeria, and King said Mudallad “definitely has connections” to Al Qaeda. …

Naaa! Couldn’t have! Anyway, things like that will be taken care of in a caring way by Obama.

White House officials confirmed Friday that the attack was an attempted act of terrorism. “He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite,” said one of the U.S. officials. …

One law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the case, said Mudallad’s name had surfaced earlier on at least one U.S. intelligence database, but not to the extent that he was placed on a watch list or a no-fly list.

Of course not. No profiling please. Better to risk a plane full of people than descend to that sort of thing.

President Barack Obama was notified of the incident and discussed it with security officials, the White House said. It said he is monitoring the situation … Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed on the incident and is closely monitoring the situation.

There you are! They’re monitoring. Told you it would be okay.

Yet again Ahmadinejad has said NO to Obama’s gently proffered suggestion that he abandon Iran’s nuclear program.

Charles Krauthammer  advocates American support for regime change in Iran. We agree with him that Obama’s policy is ‘unforgivable’ and that America should have been wholeheartedly supporting the brave men and women of the resistance movement. However, we doubt that it would be safe to let Iran become nuclear-armed under any government, even one that looks to be pro-Western. Here in part is what he writes:

So ends 2009, the year of “engagement,” of the extended hand, of the gratuitous apology — and of spinning centrifuges, two-stage rockets and a secret enrichment facility that brought Iran materially closer to becoming a nuclear power.

We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.

Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime. With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it.

Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?

Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. …

Forget about human rights. Assume you care only about the nuclear issue. How to defuse it? Negotiations are going nowhere, and whatever U.N. sanctions we might get will be weak, partial, grudging and late. The only real hope is regime change. The revered and widely supported Montazeri had actually issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

And even if a successor government were to act otherwise, the nuclear threat would be highly attenuated because it’s not the weapon but the regime that creates the danger. (Think India or Britain, for example.) Any proliferation is troubling, but a nonaggressive pro-Western Tehran would completely change the strategic equation and make the threat minimal and manageable.

What should we do? Pressure from without — cutting off gasoline supplies, for example — to complement and reinforce pressure from within. The pressure should be aimed not at changing the current regime’s nuclear policy — that will never happen — but at helping change the regime itself.

Give the kind of covert support to assist dissident communication and circumvent censorship that, for example, we gave Solidarity in Poland during the 1980s. … But of equal importance is robust rhetorical and diplomatic support from the very highest level: full-throated denunciation of the regime’s savagery and persecution. In detail — highlighting cases, the way Western leaders adopted the causes of Sharansky and Andrei Sakharov during the rise of the dissident movement that helped bring down the Soviet empire.

Will this revolution succeed? The odds are long but the reward immense. Its ripple effects would extend from Afghanistan to Iraq (in both conflicts, Iran actively supports insurgents who have long been killing Americans and their allies) to Lebanon and Gaza where Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are arming for war.

One way or the other, Iran will dominate 2010. Either there will be an Israeli attack or Iran will arrive at — or cross — the nuclear threshold. Unless revolution intervenes. Which is why to fail to do everything in our power to support this popular revolt is unforgivable.

With the Senate health care legislation, America is going over that precipice Obama shouted about with such eager excitement.

From REDSTATE:

With the passage of ObamaCare, the United States may be passing the point of no return on its downward journey to becoming a middling country, shorn of the sheen and substance of Exceptionalism. It will become but another average player in a United Nations of the World where the rhetorical goal of government is to ensure that everyone has their equal share, where no one ever wants for anything, where everyone lives in perfect harmony. This is not just because the basic elements of the legislation are sufficiently onerous as to cause America to spiral into a third world country, which it is, but rather by unconstitutionally forcing citizens to purchase a “good” in order to retain their liberty, it explicitly elevates the whims of the federal government above the rights of the citizens. Now that police power of the state can be used to force citizens to pay for health care, how long will it be before those same powers are used to force citizens to pay for food that is provided at the direction of the government, to pay for clothing provided at the design of the government, to pay for transportation or leisure activities provided or approved by the government?

Madison and the Founding Fathers understood that man is prone to anger, passion, faction and hubris and that neither the Constitution nor any government could change that. What the Constitution and its resulting government could do however was provide a framework where free men could live together as equals as they pursued their individual notions of happiness and basked in the exercise of their liberties. … [Obama] believes that with ObamaCare America will parachute into a land of milk and honey. He’s wrong. There is no parachute, there is no milk and honey and there will be no soft landing. A mirage of rhetoric, fables and lies hide the gritty reality of the soon to be rusted hulk of American enterprise that for two centuries was an engine that drove the advancement of the human condition. That train spent 212 years charging over the horizon, into the great unknown, into a universe of possibilities on the rails of a U.S. Constitution that let free men create and innovate and build a better world. With ObamaCare we will see the removal of those rails and with them the essence of American Exceptionalism. As the engine that has provided so much to so many careens, buckles and lurches forward without the constraints of Madison’s Constitution, we can no doubt expect that the vices which it was constructed to contain will begin to rear their ugly heads. …

Yes, but the future of America looks even worse than that.

Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York state, lists 10 dreadful provisions in the bill. Read them all here. They take away your freedom of decision. Even if you want to and can pay for treatment the government denies you, you may not be allowed to do so. If you are old, you may not be admitted into a hospital. If you are hospitalized you will have little comfort, because the egalitarians whose ideology is now beginning to shape our lives believe that austerity is best for us (though not for themselves).

Hospital budget cuts will mean shortages of nurses, equipment and cleaning staff. The president’s chief health advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, argues that hospitals in the U.S. offer more privacy and comfort than hospitals in Europe, and this “abundance of amenities” drives up costs.

And then there is this:

Money is allocated for adult preparation activities, including lessons on positive self-esteem and relationship dynamics, friendships, dating (and) romantic involvement (Senate bill, p.612).

Let’s ponder that for a moment.

Your friendships, your love life, the way you think and feel about yourself, is the government’s business?

Nosy little bureaucrats are charged with poking into your emotions and your intimate relations?

This is super-totalitarianism. Not even Mao or Pol Pot thought of reaching that deeply into the entrails of the people they trod on to squeeze them into conformity.

Invention depends on individuals, even if they work in teams, having new ideas and incentive to develop them.

Socialized medicine takes away incentive for innovators to advance medical research.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

There are many problems on the health care road the country is being forced to take. But one not getting as much attention as it should is the harm done to a critically important sector: medical innovation.

The high costs, restricted choices and eventual rationing that will result from the Democrats’ health care plan are being discussed to varying degrees by those who are uncomfortable with what’s being rushed through Congress. But the final legislation’s effect on medical innovation has been somewhat lost with so much attention focused elsewhere. So let us clarify:

The Democrats’ plan will slow innovation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. …

If the profit motive is removed or weakened by legislation increasing Washington’s control of health care, drug companies and medical device makers will lose the incentive to bring lifesaving and life-enhancing products to market. For now, the rest of the world follows America because the socialist health care systems abroad discourage innovation. But the U.S. will fall back to the pack under a health care regime designed by the Democrats.

One of our readers, bill, points out in a comment on A congress of whores below, that ‘the very act of government involvement in the health care industry is unconstitutional’.

Larry Elder agrees, in an article titled ObamaCare: Freedom on Life Support at Townhall:

What words in the U.S. Constitution allow the federal government to compel every American to purchase health insurance? Where does the Constitution allow the federal government to take money from some Americans and give it to others so that they may purchase health insurance?…

The same people who railed against the Patriot Act, the terror surveillance program and “illegal” torture happily unleash the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth for ObamaCare … Never mind the absence of authority in the Constitution.

The left tells us that “health care is a right, not a privilege.” Surely the Constitution says so. No, it does not. Article I, Section 8 details the limited power, duties and responsibilities of the federal government. Extracting money from your paycheck and giving it back to you when you retire — Social Security? Not there. Taxing workers to pay for the health care of seniors — Medicare? Not there. Mandating that employers pay workers a minimum wage? Not there.

This is not hypothetical. During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court struck down much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal on constitutional grounds. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate virtually all economic activity. No, said the Court, the federal government cannot use the welfare clause to redistribute wealth, whether or not it accomplishes a socially or economically desirable objective.

The Court asserted that the Constitution meant what it said and said what it meant. …

Bribery has secured enough votes to pass the Senate’s unpopular health care legislation. In plain truth, the Senators who have shamelessly sold their votes to their own party are political prostitutes.

It does not matter to them that it is a bad bill. They got their price.

Among the many bad provisions there is one that may even be unconstitutional.

From Erick Erickson at REDSTATE:

[Sen. Harry] Reid has slipped a provision into the health care legislation prohibiting future Congresses from changing any regulations imposed on Americans by the Independent Medicare [note: originally referred to as “medical”] Advisory Boards, which are commonly called the “Death Panels.”…

On December 21, 2009, … Harry Reid sold out the Republic in toto. … Senators discovered section 3403 [of the health care bill]. That section changes the rules of the United States Senate.

To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels. …

Senator Jim DeMint confronted the Democrats over Reid’s language. In the past, the Senate Parliamentarian has repeatedly determined that any legislation that also changes the internal standing rules of the Senate must have a two-thirds vote to pass because to change Senate rules, a two-thirds vote is required. Today, the Senate President, acting on the advice of the Senate Parliamentarian, ruled that these rules changes are actually just procedural changes and, despite what the actual words of the legislation say, are not rules changes. Therefore, a two-thirds vote is not needed in contravention to longstanding Senate precedent.

How is that constitutional?

The Senate Democrats are ignoring the constitution, the law, and their own rules to pass Obamacare….

Erickson goes on to consider the case for secession – or is he suggesting a dissolution of the union?

To quote the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is one of those causes. When the men and women who run this nation, which is supposedly a nation of laws not men, choose to ignore the laws and bribe the men, the people cannot be blamed for wanting to dissolve political bands connecting them to that government.

From the constitution of Texas, Article 1 Section 4:

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

This means that no atheist may be elected or appointed to any office or fill any post of public trust.

Texas has a fine spirit of independence. Its governor, Rick Perry, even dared mention the possibility of secession at a Tea Party rally last April. But we condemn this constitutionally entrenched discrimination, arising from sheer bigotry.

Visit this site:

www.atheists.org/Texas_State_Page

There’s talk in the ether that Obama has decided to allow Iran yet another year to ‘unclench its fist’ and stop enriching uranium for nuclear bombs. If so, this will be – what? the sixth or seventh extension of time that Obama has given the grim mullahs and the poisonous Ahmadinejad. The answer is always the same ‘No!’  Before Obama came along, Europe had persisted for about eight years with hinting to the Iranians that they should really try to play nice. ‘If you don’t stop’, they warned, ‘we’ll have to ask you again!’ Ignoring that withering threat, and scorning Obama’s ‘deadlines’ which they were confident would always be extended, the Iranians advanced steadily and vigorously towards becoming a nuclear-armed power.

It is also being said (less believably, we think) that Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to wait yet again, but only for another six months before he will use force to stop Iran getting the bomb.

Meanwhile certain Arab states which quietly hoped that either the US or Israel, or preferably both together, would act against Iran, may be running out of hope and patience. Now something dramatic seems to be developing.

Here is a mixture of fact and surmise from DEBKAfile:

The powerful Iranian speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, arrived [last Sunday, December 20] in Cairo and was received at once by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for a conversation lasting two hours.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that the Iranian visitor carried with him a wide-ranging proposal to ease the strained relations between Tehran and the moderate Arab governments.

Without wasting a moment, the next day, the Egyptian president flew to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Arab emirates to discuss the momentous turn of events.

The octogenarian Mubarak travels very infrequently these days because of his failing health except in extraordinary circumstances. He was galvanized this time by the message Larijani brought from Tehran containing the offer of “a new Iranian approach to resolving outstanding issues.” Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already offered to open an embassy in Cairo for the first time since ties were broken off after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Aware that any breakthrough with the Arab governments was contingent on allaying their fears of its nuclear drive, Iran’s offer of a new beginning is reported by our sources as including a form of Iranian-Arab nuclear cooperation. Its immediate objective is to close ranks with the Arab nations in order to outmaneuver the US-Israeli campaign against its nuclear drive, thereby derailing the US president Barack Obama’s plans for … sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The expeditiousness of Mubarak response to Tehran’s overture and the promptness of his Gulf consultations indicated that the bloc of Arab nations, which he and Saudi king Abdullah lead, has given up on effective action by America or Israel, including force, for throwing Iran off its current nuclear course.

Within the region today, coexistence with Iran looks like a safer bet.

If this burgeoning realignment of Middle East partnerships goes forward, the region’s strategic balance will be pulled out of shape, Washington’s influence heavily downgraded and Israel isolated.

And Obama’s pacifist policy towards Iran will have increased the probability of war.