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Insane: “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman to be sent to Egypt?? UPDATED

Yes, the mastermind of the first attack (in 1993) on the World Trade Center; that Blind Sheik.


I sincerely hope this is not true:
Mastermind of World Trade Center bombing to be “transferred” to Egypt?

Roger Kimball posts:

I thought a line had been crossed when sheriffs showed up at midnight to bundle away a man who had made an anti-Islamic  movie that embarrassed the President. Then there was the murder of our Ambassador and three other Americans in Libya: the administration’ response: blame Romney, apologize for the “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”

Will there ever be a last straw for the MSM that is acting as Obama’s press corps? Is there anything Obama could do that would make them say “Enough!” and stand up for America? What would it take?  How about this: the announcement that the Obama administration is considering transferring the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, to Egypt “for humanitarian and health reasons.” Incredulous?  Then you underestimate the Islamophilc nature of the Obama administration.

The Blaze has the breaking story: “The U.S. State Department is currently in negotiations with the Egyptian government for the transfer of custody of Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as “the Blind Sheikh,” for humanitarian and health reasons, a source close to the the Obama administration toldThe Blaze.”

This isn’t a “release, the Department of Justice told The Blaze,Oh, no: merely a transfer the the Muslim Brotherhood controlled country where the Sheikh is regarded as a hero.

Here’s more:

 The Blind Sheikh is currently serving a life sentence in American prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but the newly-elected Islamist government in Egypt has been actively petitioning his release.  Many have pinpointed a cause of last week‘s unrest in in the country to be protests over the Blind Sheikh’s release – not an anti-Islam YouTube video.

Andrew McCarthy was the Blind Sheik’s prosecutor. It took years and millions of dollars to put the Blind Sheik behind bars. Read about it in Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

If the Obama administration releases the Blind Sheik, they must be counting on the electorate’s ignorance, and, as Roger Kimball’s commenter Jeff P put it,

If this is true, then it means that Obama is so confident of victory in November that nothing, not even brazen appeasement, will change the result.

Related:
Today’s the 225th anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution. Obama’s DOJ Can’t Say Criticizing Religion Will Remain Legal. Watch:

UPDATE:
Dan Riehlhas more,

In neighboring Egypt, birthplace of the ‘Blind Sheikh’ of aforementioned “Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman” fame, similar recent calls for violence on his behalf were the calling card to the storming of the American embassy in Cairo as well. The ‘dots,’ again courtesy of the Washington Times.

  • “There had been a sit-in in support of the “Blind Sheikh” outside the embassy for 18 months.”
  • “On July 27, the sheikh’s son Abdallah Abdel Rahman threatened to organize a blockade of the embassy and to detain the Americans inside unless his father was released.”
  • “Two days later, then-president-elect Mohammed Morsi vowed publicly to work to free the sheikh, and it will be at the top of his agenda in future meetings with President Obama.” (WSJ)
  • “On Aug. 30, Jamaa Islamiya, the terrorist group formerly led by the Blind Sheikh, announced that the embassy sit-in was being turned into an active protest.” (USA Today via Gateway Pundit)
  • “On Sept. 4, the Egyptian General Intelligence Service warned all Egyptian securityagencies of planned attacks against the embassy by a group called Global Jihad, which has been active in the Sinai.” (Jerusalem Post)
  • “On Sept. 7, an Islamist named Nasser Al-Qaeda posted a statement on the Jihadi chat group Shumoukh Al-Islam that the U.S. embassy in Cairo should be burned down and everyone inside killed or taken hostage in order to bring pressure to bear to release the Blind Sheikh.” (MEMRI)
  • “On the day before the embassy assault, several other jihadist groups with ties to al Qaeda – including Islamic Jihad, the Sunni Group and Jamaa Islamiya – echoed this threat and called for the release of the Blind Sheikh and all detainees in all U.S. detention facilities including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” (PJ Media)

Linked by Phinneas. Thanks!

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The wasted 1-day summit

In case you missed it, yesterday a summit took place between the three largest economies of North America: Canada, Mexico, and the USA. You would think this would be news as of itself, since it involves membership on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade zone.

Instead, Obama diverted the press conference into the issue of Obamacare and the SCOTUS, by cautioning the justices, to whom he referred to as “an unelected group of people,”

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,”

Video:

This was an attack on the court’s standing and even its integrity in a backhanded way

It is outrageous enough that the president’s protest was inaccurate. What in the world is he talking about when he asserts the law was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”? The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act barely squeaked through the Congress. In the Senate it escaped a filibuster by but a hair. The vote was so tight in the house — 219 to 212 — that the leadership went through byzantine maneuvers to get the measure to the president’s desk. No Republicans voted for it when it came up in the House, and the drive to repeal the measure began the day after Mr. Obama signed the measure.

It is the aspersions the President cast on the Supreme Court, though, that take the cake. We speak of the libel about the court being an “unelected group of people” who might “somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” This libel was dealt with more than two centuries ago in the newspaper column known as 78 Federalist and written by Alexander Hamilton. It is the essay in which Hamilton, a big proponent of federal power, famously described the Court as “the weakest of the three departments of power.” It argued that the people could never be endangered by the court — so long as the judiciary “remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive.”

It was precisely the separation of the courts from the other two branches, Hamilton argued, that gives the court its legitimacy.

With his statement, President Obama Goes on Record Opposing Marbury v. Madison.

Q&O:

it isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to do the job of Congress. Instead, its job is to determine whether or not what Congress has done is compliant with the limits the Constitution places on it. That’s it. There is nothing which requires the Supreme Court to “fix” laws that Congress has passed.

Ruth Marcus:

Obama’s assault on “an unelected group of people” stopped me cold. Because, as the former constitutional law professor certainly understands, it is the essence of our governmental system to vest in the court the ultimate power to decide the meaning of the constitution. Even if, as the president said, it means overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”

So the joint press conference with Felipe Calderón and Stephen Harper accomplished…what?
1. Obama’s going after the Supreme Court as his bête noire, knowing they cannot respond.

2. It showed that the President needs a remedial course in judicial review.

and,
3. It demonstrated to Mexico and Canada that they are mere side ornaments when it comes to Obama’s priorities: Critical issues that involve the three countries count for nothing.

Why is the TPP critical now?

Canadian officials have said that they have been willing to put everything up for negotiation—including, some officials say, dairy products and other issues such as a U.S. push for Canada to increase intellectual-property protections.

TPP joins a list of recent points of tension in the world’s largest trade relationship. Canadians were angered by “Buy America” provisions in last year’s U.S. stimulus plan, new surcharges imposed on Canadians traveling to the U.S. and regulatory delays in approval for the Keystone pipeline, a massive project to move crude from the oil sands of Alberta to U.S. refineries.

But hey, after his next election Obama will have more flexibility.

As a side note,
When you read the full transcript, note the condescending tone towards Calderón (“Felipe, Stephen and I are proud to welcome you here today”).

UPDATE,
Don’t miss Judidical activism for me, but not for thee


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Recess appointments while Congress is not in recess

Yesterday John Hinderaker noted,

President Obama took his war against Congress to a new level, announcing four “recess appointments” when the Senate was not, in fact, in recess. The appointees included Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members of the National Labor Relations Board.
…
The Senate was in pro forma session yesterday, so there is no recess and Obama’s appointments are invalid by any historical or legal–according to his own Department of Justice–standard.

Roger Pilon explains (h/t Instapundit, emphasis added),

All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution. And, in addition, as too little noted by the media, his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is legally futile. Under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, Cordray will have no authority whatsoever.

Yesterday, Professors John Yoo and Richard Epstein, writing separately, made it crystal clear that the president, under Article II, section 2, may make temporary recess appointments, but only when the Senate is in recess. Add in Article I, section 5, and it’s plain that the Senate is presently not in recess, just as it wasn’t under Senate Democrats when George W. Bush wanted to make recess appointments. The difference here is that Bush respected those constitutional provisions while Obama — never a constitutional law professor but only a part-time instructor – ignores them as politically inconvenient. Attempts by Obama’s apologists to say the Senate is not in session are pure sophistry and, in the case of Harry Reid, rank hypocrisy, as this morning’s Wall Street Journal brings out.

But clear beyond the slightest doubt is the language of the statute (itself unconstitutional on any number of grounds not relevant here). As my colleague Mark Calabria wrote yesterday, “authorities under the Act remain with the Treasury Secretary until the Director is ‘confirmed by the Senate.’”  A recess appointment, even if it were constitutional, is not a Senate confirmation. There is simply no wiggle room in that language that gives Cordray any authority, as litigation will soon make plain.

So what is this? It’s politics — Chicago politics, plain and simple.

Jonathan Chait thinks The Grand Strategy Behind Obama’s Recess Appointment is to trap Mitt Romney. Richard Fernandez has something to say about that,

If Obama is risking a constitutional crisis and going through all this trouble to trap Mitt Romney because he fears a “return to the Bush era” then his thought processes are truly irrelevant to events taking place all around him. It is events themselves which are destroying the ideology and goals of Hope and Change. It is shredding the last vestiges of his Middle Eastern policy. It is making a mockery of his Green Energy platform. It is repudiating his perfection of the New Deal. It is doing all of these in the strongest possible way and Mitt Romney has nothing to do with it.

I go for the simpler explanation: The reason Obama does this is because he thinks he can get away with it.

UPDATE,
Smitty has an Open Letter To Senators Warner & Webb, and points out that the Cordray appointment opens the door to large scale mortgage re-financing.

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TIME: Don’t know much about history

When it comes to the Constitution of the United States, TIME Mag’s cover article by Richard Stengel flunked, big time:
Aaron Worthing took Stengel’s article and beat it with a big stick by finding Thirteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengel’s Essay on the Constitution (And I Am Looking for Your Help) (Update: My Letter to the Editor)

So this time, we are going to focus solely on the factual errors.  There are thirteen of them and like the lawyer that I am, I will start off with his most egregious error and end with the least egregious.  Here are the thirteen errors, in short:

  1. The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.
  2. The Constitution is not law.
  3. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.
  4. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans.
  5. The original Constitution declared that black people were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
  6. That the original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.
  7. Inter arma enim silent leges translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”
  8. The War Powers Act allows the president to unilaterally wage war for sixty days.
  9. We have only declared war five times.
  10. Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.
  11. Social Security is a debt within the meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  12. Naturalization depends on your birth.
  13. The Obamacare mandate is a tax.

Read it all, it’s worth it.

Update,
Link corrected, with my apologies.

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ObamaCare goes down

… and will end up with the Supremes

For now,
Roger Pilon at CATO: ObamaCare Goes Down

POLITICO Arena asks a second question today:

How badly does today’s ruling hurt the Obama administration’s health reform efforts?

My response:

In finding Obamacare unconstitutional, Judge Roger Vinson hit a home run today for the Constitution. From the start, he made it clear that this case, brought by 26 states, two private citizens, and the National Federation of Independent Business, “is not really about our health care system at all. It is principally about our federalist system, and it raises very important issues regarding the Constitutional role of the federal government.”

The core of the opinion, as many of us have long argued, is whether Congress, under its power to regulate interstate commerce, can regulate “inactivity” by requiring individuals to buy health insurance or be fined. It cannot, Vinson ruled, citing a long line of opinions, legal and political, starting with James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution.

Moreover, because Obamacare contains no severability clause, the entire act must fall. Finally, because this is a declaratory judgment, further implementation of the act is enjoined, so a separate injunction is not needed. It’s a new day.

The WSJ editorial looks at the decision as The Constitutional Moment
Judge Vinson introduces ObamaCare to Madison and Marshall.

Judge Vinson also went beyond the Virginia case in striking down the entire ObamaCare statute—paradoxically, an act of judicial modesty. Democrats intentionally left out a “severability” clause if one part of the bill was struck down, and the Administration repeatedly argued that the individual mandate was “essential” to the bill’s goals and mechanisms and compared it to “a finely crafted watch.” Judge Vinson writes that picking and choosing among thousands of sections would be “tantamount to rewriting a statute in an attempt to salvage it.”

Orrin Kerr looks at The Weak Link in Judge Vinson’s Opinion Striking Down the Mandate, namely the issue of binding precedent.

This puppy’s headed to the Supremes, for sure.

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