Senate Ripe for GOP Takeover

From Susan Davis, at USA Today, "2014 Senate landscape tilts in GOP's favor":

WASHINGTON — Contests are set in nearly half the states for November's elections, and with few contested primary elections remaining on the calendar, Republicans are enjoying clear advantages in their quest for a Senate takeover.

"The environment is really good right now, and the quality of candidates is superior," said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist and senior political aide at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "These are the best candidates I've seen in 32 years. With a good environment and good candidates, it's a good combination. We like where we are."

Five months out from Election Day, Republicans have largely avoided the same mistakes of the two previous election cycles in which the party nominated lackluster candidates who cost the party winnable seats in Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada.

This year GOP nominees in Democratic-held seats in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana have consistently led in polls and are favored in November. Victory in the trio of states would provide half of the six seats Republicans need to net gain for a takeover.

The Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan election outfit, forecasts Republicans will gain between four and eight seats this November.

Rothenberg analyst Nathan Gonzales shared Reed's view that the GOP has largely tapped the candidates favored by the establishment but cautioned that many are still untested as the races shift to general election mode. "It seems like we've stepped through some of the minefields for Republicans so far, but when you think there's not a new way to lose a race, Republicans seem to find one," he said.

The party is also enjoying a three-to-one advantage: Republicans are defending only two Senate seats considered highly competitive — in Kentucky and Georgia — compared to six seats Democrats will be challenged to hold in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina.

Republicans have also sought to expand the map by getting strong candidates on the ballot in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Oregon, where Democrats continue to hold leads but where the party could be in trouble if 2014 proves to be a seismic election year against Democrats.

Still, hope is not lost for Democrats. "They have incumbents who are running good campaigns, they have strong profiles in their state, they are good fundraisers and they have good teams," said Gonzales. "Their incumbents are structurally in good shape." Historically, incumbents have also consistently proved tough to beat.

Incumbents are in "good shape." Heh, good luck with that: "Ahead of Midterms, Anti-Incumbent Sentiment Strong in U.S."

But more at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Joni Ernst Wins Iowa GOP Senate Race."

Obama Makes 'Absolutely No Apologies' for Disastrous #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

Well, no surprise there. Has he ever apologized for anything?

At the Hill, "Obama 'Absolutely No Apologies'":

President Obama said Thursday he would make “absolutely no apologies” for ordering the controversial prisoner swap to rescue Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last American prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

Obama said he was never surprised by “controversies that are whipped up in Washington,” but deflected criticism from members of Congress and the military over the trade of five Guantanamo prisoners for Bergdahl, who has been accused of abandoning his post in Afghanistan before his capture...

He's such an asshole.

More at the link.

Also at WSJ, "Press Conference Transcript: What Obama Said Thursday About Bergdahl Controversy."

Exclusive: The Story You Haven't Yet Heard About Bowe #Bergdahl's Desertion

An absolutely amazing report, from Michelle Malkin.

Read it and then tell John Cole to get f-ked.

Leftist Robert Garcia Becomes First Openly Homosexual and Latino Mayor of Long Beach

Hey, homosexual power!

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Robert Garcia, Long Beach mayor-elect, looks toward transition, future."

Maybe the city will repaint all the crosswalks with splashing rainbow colors, like West Hollywood.

Oh, it's the Los Angeles Times that uses the adverb "openly." Did Long Beach have a closet homosexual mayor previously? NTTAWWT!

The Tiananmen Papers

The Tiananmen Square massacre began 25 years ago today.

For some really compelling reading, check out Andrew Nathan's "The Tiananmen Papers," at Foreign Affairs.

It's also available in a free PDF version here.

It's the authoritative report on the Chinese politburo's deliberation and decision to crack down on the "capitalist roaders."

Obama's #Taliban Release Has Afghan Villagers Fearing for Their Lives

Blowback.

At WSJ, "Release of Taliban Detainees Alarms Afghan Villagers: Some Recall Scorched-Earth Offensive Led by One of the Freed Prisoners":

SHEYKHAN, Afghanistan—Taliban forces led by Mohammed Fazl swept through this village on the Shomali plain north of Kabul in 1999 in a scorched-earth offensive that prompted some 300,000 people to flee for their lives.

Fifteen years later, local residents here are responding with fear and dismay to the U.S. release of the notorious commander, along with four other Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American prisoner of war who was held by the Taliban. The group released a video on Wednesday showing the hurried handover a few days earlier of the American captive, looking gaunt and dazed.

The villages of Shomali were once the orchard of central Afghanistan, and the plain's carefully tended vineyards were famous for their grapes.

When the Taliban seized control of this area from their Northern Alliance rivals in 1999, they systematically demolished entire villages, blowing up houses, burning fields and seeding the land with mines, according to two comprehensive studies of war crimes and atrocities during wars in Afghanistan and human rights reports. Mr. Fazl played a major role in the destruction.

"There was not a single undamaged house or garden," said Masjidi Fatehzada, a shopkeeper in Mir Bacha Kot, the district center. "My entire shop was burned to the ground. There was nothing left."

Khwaja Mohammad, a farmer in the village of Sheykhan, remembered how Mr. Fazl's men took away his son, a civilian, and sent him to Kabul's Pul-e Charkhi prison.

"They jailed him for nearly three years," Mr. Mohammad said. "They took him when he was on his way from the bazaar to buy oil and flour."

The release of Mr. Fazl and the four other Guantanamo detainees has become a hot-button political issue in both Afghanistan and the U.S. Critics complain that the Obama administration has freed some of the most dangerous militants.  One day after Sgt. Bergdahl's release, the Afghan government protested the swap because it placed restrictions on the five, saying it sought "unconditional freedom of its citizens." Under the agreement, brokered by Qatar, the five Taliban leaders are supposed to live in the Persian Gulf emirate under supervision for the next 12 months to prevent them from returning to violence.

Kabul's protest underscored mistrust between Kabul and Washington at a delicate moment when the U.S. is preparing to drastically reduce its military presence in the country and a new Afghan president is about to be elected.

En route to Afghanistan on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged that the U.S. government had only informed the Afghan government about the swap after the fact.

The release has been a boon for the Taliban.  Shortly after the exchange, the group posted a video of them receiving a hero's welcome in Qatar.  Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the minister of foreign affairs in the Taliban regime that was ousted by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, described the exchange as "an achievement for the Taliban" which gave the militant group a form of recognition.

"In terms of military significance, Fazl was the most important" among the freed Guantanamo prisoners, Mr. Muttawakil added.

More.

Maxim's Hot 100 for 2014

Nice.

"Maxim Hot 100 2014":

You voted, we counted, and the rest is supersexy history. From mind-bogglingly seductive supermodels to Hollywood’s most awe-inspiring actresses (with a bevy of beauties in between), the women of 2014 make up a roster so undeniably breathtaking you may get light-headed just reading it. Pick up the June issue of Maxim on newsstands to see even more pics of these gorgeous list-makers.

Brad Thor on #KellyFile: 'Every American Should Be Terrified' by #Bergdahl Swap

A great discussion from a couple of nights ago.



And check out Thor on Twitter.

Obama's Foreign Policy is Mainly About Domestic Politics

At WSJ, "The Bergdahl Fiasco":

President Obama's decision to swap five Taliban killers for the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has morphed from a debatable policy decision into the Administration's latest political fiasco. There's a lesson here about the risks of spin and narrow political calculation, especially in foreign policy when American lives are stake.

Start with the fact that little the Administration has said about this swap has turned out to be true. "He served the United States with honor and distinction," declared National Security Adviser Susan Rice on ABC on Sunday. But as everyone has since learned, the soldiers who served with Sgt. Bergdahl almost to a man believe that he deserted his post in Afghanistan in June 2009 before falling into the hands of the Taliban.

We think Sgt. Bergdahl deserves the benefit of the doubt until the facts are all known, but our guess is that Ms. Rice oversold him as a hero because the White House was hoping to turn the swap into a big foreign-policy victory. Thus Mr. Obama hosted the sergeant's parents in the Rose Garden on Saturday in front of the TV cameras, while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took a victory lap in Afghanistan, and Ms. Rice called it "a great day for America."  You can argue the prisoner swap was necessary to retrieve our man, or a difficult moral choice, but it is not a reason for back-slapping and high fives.

Then there's the dubious claim that the Administration had to move fast to negotiate Sgt. Bergdahl's release because he was dangerously ill. This line was used to explain why the President had ignored a statute demanding that Congress be consulted 30 days in advance of any prisoner release from Guantanamo Bay. But Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the swap after the fact, says that she "heard no evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl was in immediate medical danger that made it necessary to act without consulting Congress."

We think the President has the power as Commander in Chief to undertake the swap without telling Congress, but instead of saying this forthrightly, Mr. Obama said from Warsaw on Tuesday that he had consulted Congress "for quite some time" on the possibility of a prisoner exchange. He also invoked the phony health excuse.

Yet both Ms. Feinstein, who runs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss said they hadn't been consulted on the swap for months. "There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call and say 'I know you all had concerns about this, we consulted in the past, we want you to know we have reviewed these negotiations,'" said Ms. Feinstein. George W. Bush was honest about his claims of executive war powers.

Also disconcerting is the President's insistence that releasing the Taliban commanders to Qatar for a year won't jeopardize U.S. security. Qatar is already making a mockery of U.S. claims that the five will be under close supervision, with one source in the Persian Gulf region telling Reuters that the men "can move around freely within the country" before they leave.

"This is what happens at the end of wars," Mr. Obama said in Warsaw. "At some point you try to make sure that you get your folks back." Yes, but the Afghan war isn't over, never mind the continuing and larger war on terror in which the Taliban and al Qaeda are allies. When the Taliban killers do leave Qatar, several thousand U.S. troops will still be in Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border will still be an al Qaeda sanctuary.

The larger problem is that Mr. Obama treats all of foreign policy as if it's merely part of his domestic political calculus...

Well, yeah.

More.

'The Stones' decision to ignore Roger Waters and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd underscored Israel's growing popularity as a stop for major musical acts, and it signaled a setback for a campaign known as boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)...'

Heh, I love this.

At the Washington Post, "Rolling Stones to perform in Israel despite pressure from Pink Floyd members to cancel":

Mick singing Angie on stage tonight #StonesTelAviv pic.twitter.com/GT94vFIz6o

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) June 4, 2014

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL #StonesTelAviv https://t.co/aSyx77tgxa

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) June 4, 2014

JERUSALEM — Recently, two surviving founders of Pink Floyd sent the rock band equivalent of a diplomatic cable — an open letter published in Salon — to the Rolling Stones. They asked Mick Jagger and his crew to cancel their first-ever concert in Israel to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle against occupation.

But Pink Floyd hit a wall.

The Stones not only went on with the show Wednesday night in Tel Aviv but delayed their opening by 45 minutes to allow devout Jews time to reach the concert after the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, during which Orthodox Jews cannot drive, handle money — or press “Play” on the Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album.

The Stones’ decision to ignore Roger Waters and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd underscored Israel’s growing popularity as a stop for major musical acts, and it signaled a setback for a campaign known as boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). The movement seeks to apply international pressure on Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank, guarantee the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes they fled or abandoned after 1948, and grant full rights and equality to Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The BDSers are employing tactics similar to those used against the apartheid regime in South Africa a generation ago. Since 2005, the movement has pushed individuals and institutions to sever academic partnerships, boycott items such as Golan wines and Dead Sea beauty products, and divest from Israeli companies. Israel says it is the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East, so it answers its critics by suggesting they boycott Syria or Iran.

But the threat of BDS has rattled Israel. The movement has gained visibility on American and European college campuses, and it has also managed to inflict some financial pain...

BDS or not, Israel is now a popular stop on the global pop market. Last month, Justin Timberlake played in Tel Aviv, although after he posted an Instagram photo of himself leaning against the Western Wall, he caught some flak for hashtagging it #Israel. The wall is in the Old City of Jerusalem, which is contested ground.

Timberlake tweeted, “The Holy­land . . . What an experience. I will never forget this day.”

Lots more examples of BDS fail, at the link.

Good on the Stones for saying FU to BDS.

Last night's set list here.

Guantánamo: Closing Up Shop?

From Arnold Ahlert, at FrontPage Magazine, "What the Bergdahl fiasco may be foreshadowing":

Lost in the furor surrounding President Obama’s decision to swap five high-level terrorists for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is a potential ulterior motivation for the deal lurking in the background: fulfilling the president’s 2014 State of the Union promise to completely shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

“This whole deal may have been a test to see how far the administration can actually push it, and if Congress doesn’t fight back they will feel more empowered to move forward with additional transfers,” a senior GOP Senate aide told the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin. “They’ve lined up all the dominoes to be able to move a lot more detainees out of Guantanamo and this could be just the beginning.”

The principal domino is the notion, getting play in the precincts of the left, that once a war ends, the prisoners of that war must be released. In an exchange with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) addressed the absurdity of that contention. “So they should have turned Hitler loose and that would have been the end of the war,” he said. “This isn’t right, and I just — it’s hard for me and people I talk to, a lot of people in Oklahoma, just this morning about this, they can’t figure out why in the world would we turn loose the five most dangerous people who hate America, who want to kill Americans, who have the equipment and the following to revive the Taliban and that’s what they are doing.”

Continue reading.

Obama Dissed Intel Community on #Bergdahl Swap, Blew Off Ransom and Rescue Contingencies

At Fox News, "Administration bypassed intel community to pursue Bergdahl trade, shelved ransom plan."

Yep. It's all about closing down Guantánamo.

More at London's Daily Mail, via Dan Riehl:

Pentagon sources, Obama ignored chances to rescue Bergdahl, he WANTED a terror trade to help close Gitmo, http://t.co/AppPzrDinq

— DanRiehl (@DanRiehl) June 5, 2014

MSNBC's Chris Matthews Blasts #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

For a few Democrats, supporting the Bergdahl cluster is a line they won't cross (although I stress "a few").

From Mary Katharine Ham, at Hot Air, "Video: In which you will almost entirely agree with…Chris Matthews?"

Poll: 84 Percent Say #Bergdahl Deal Will Encourage Terrorist Groups to Seize More Soldiers

A Fox News poll conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Co. Research, contacting 1,006 respondents, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

See, "Fox News Poll: 84 percent worry prisoner swap puts US soldiers at risk." (The raw survey questionnaire is here.)

The findings are devastating for the White House.

A majority of 57 percent are "very concerned" that the Berdahl exchange "will encourage these groups to take more American soldiers hostage." Another 27 percent are "somewhat concerned," bringing the total up to more than 8-of-10 who say this deal sucks Taliban goats' balls.

From the article:

Americans hold mixed views of the Obama administration’s deal to swap a captive U.S. soldier for five Taliban prisoners, yet almost all fear that negotiating with terrorist groups will put U.S. troops at risk.

That’s according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

A prisoner exchange Saturday that released U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top-level Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay has sparked debate over negotiating with terrorists. Fully 84 percent of voters are concerned that making deals with terrorists will encourage those groups to take more American soldiers hostage. That includes a 57-percent majority that is “very” concerned and another 27 percent that is “somewhat” concerned.

Only 15 percent aren’t worried deals like this will put more troops at risk.

Also:

Bergdahl was held captive for five years in Afghanistan. Voters are nearly evenly divided over the Taliban-exchange deal that got him released: 45 percent approve vs. 47 percent disapprove.

Well, so much for the White House expectation of public "euphoria" over the deal. At Hot Air, "Chuck Todd: The White House expected “euphoria” over Bergdahl’s release."

At this point you have to question the wisdom (if not the sanity) of President Obama and his inner circle. This prisoner exchange --- perhaps more than anything the Obama-Dems have done in this past six years --- confirms the worst, most vehement attacks on Obama's post-American ideological program. I mean, gawd, this has all the markers of the most hackneyed comic-page attacks on this administration over the last half-decade: the opportunistic weekend news dump (and "look over there" distraction squirrel, to deflect from the VA scandal); the president's own narcissistic belief that the public would collectively bend over in hosannas and Obama zombie-cult ululations; the White House press conference with Bowe Bergdahl's parents, in which father Bob Bergdahl comes out dressed like a Taliban chieftain, exhorting Bismillah al rahman al rahim in Arabic ("In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate") before mumbling a few more foreign homilies in Pashto; all complete with the president's national security advisor arguing that the deserter Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction."

Add on top of that the administration's meme that Bergdahl's fellow soldiers are lying  --- and "swiftboating" this treasonous ballet dancer-cum-Army private first class --- and you've got a concatenation of circumstances that makes the New Yorker's 2008 portrayal of the Muslim Obama with the Black Panther First Lady look positively prescient.

The Democrats are putting the world's most murderous terrorists back on the battlefield. They're war criminals for crying out loud! And the American people are not pleased. The outrage, as shown in the poll, goes far beyond partisan lines. A Washington Post poll out last week showed that a bare majority of 51 percent of Americans favored the formation of a new congressional panel to investigate the Benghazi terrorist attacks --- with 31 percent of Democrats supporting a new probe. The Bergdahl treason-terror exchange only throws fuel on the fire of public disgust over Obama administration incompetence and dishonesty. Politically, I'm thinking back to the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 (which nearly crippled President Reagan's administration), only now with the Bergdahl debacle the Democrats will be taking yet another political hit before the 2014 midterms.

Sadly, only the most diehard leftist partisans, apologists and terror-enablers will now be standing with administration. It's almost as if the president wanted to prove his most vociferous detractors correct. Obama's pulled off an own-goal of monumental proportions, a cluster perhaps not seen in American politics since the Carter administration, and even then our cardigan-wearing chief executive tried to turn things around before it was too late.

Alas, Barack "it's-all-about-me" Obama comes nowhere near Jimmy Carter's level of political humility, to say nothing of basic decency.

Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the #Bergdahl Backlash

From Ralph Peters, at National Review:

Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military.

I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.

Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.

But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)

Keep reading.

And from last night, "Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Furious as Obama Regime Dismisses Fellow Soldiers' Reports of #Bergdahl Desertion."

On Taliban Release Video, #Bergdahl Is Told 'Don't Come Back to Afghanistan...'

At the New York Times, "On Taliban Video, a Message as Soldier Is Released: ‘Don’t Come Back’ Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Was Exchanged for Detainees at Guantánamo":

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban released a video on Wednesday showing its fighters handing over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to American troops, providing a direct look at a moment in the Afghan war that has prompted relief in some quarters but has drawn sharp criticism in Afghanistan and Washington.

Sergeant Bergdahl is seen in the video wearing traditional Afghan robes, and his face and head appear to have been recently shaved. For much of the video, he is seen waiting in a silver and red pickup truck surrounded by Taliban fighters armed with assault rifles and at least one rocket-propelled grenade launcher, standard armaments for the insurgents. The faces of many of the Taliban fighters are covered by scarves.

As an American Blackhawk helicopter approaches, one of the insurgents is heard telling Sergeant Bergdahl: “Don’t come back to Afghanistan. If you do, you won’t make it out alive next time.” Other insurgents standing nearby laugh at the warning.

Then the helicopter lands and Sergeant Bergdahl is handed over to Americans wearing civilian clothes. The Americans quickly lead him away, patting him down and casually dropping a plastic shopping bag he was holding. They board the helicopter and fly off.

Continue reading.

The Left's Reaction to Bowe #Bergdahl Release Is Outrageous

From Sonny Bunch, at Washington Free Beacon.

Outrageous. And depraved.

Cited there is the Daily Beast's disgusting partisan hack Michael Tomasky, who has doubled down on his earlier smear of the troops as liars.

.@MTomasky So, I see you're not retracting. Doubling-down like an idiot. Figures.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 4, 2014

Lolz. RT @lamblock Yo @AmPowerBlog, any truth to rumor if one googles "butthurt" @MTomasky latest #Bergdahl blabber is top result?

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 4, 2014

'Wow!' And So It Begins: White House Smears Vets, Claims 'Swift Boating' of #BergdahlTraitor

At Twitchy.

Was getting ready for work this morning when I heard @chucktodd use the term "swift boat" in regards to White House reaction. #JawDropped
— Kimberly C (@conkc2) June 4, 2014

It would be one thing if fellow soldiers who served with Bergdahl had conflicting stories. They don't. So now they must be discredited.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) June 4, 2014

@CuffyMeh I didn't make it up

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) June 4, 2014

Freed Guantanamo Jihadists Return to the Battlefield — #BergdahlTraitor

Does anyone seriously think these guys are going tend their gardens at some retirement village in Rawalpindi?

At WSJ, "After Guantanamo, Freed Detainees Returned to Violence in Syria Battlefields:Release of Five Senior Taliban Figures from the U.S. Detention Center Renews Debate":

CASABLANCA—A decade ago, the U.S. released three hardened Moroccan militants from Guantanamo and turned them over to the Moroccan government on the assumption they wouldn't return to the battlefield.

They wound up leading one of the most violent Islamist groups fighting in Syria's civil war.

Their story serves as a cautionary tale days after President Barack Obama released five high-level Taliban figures from the same detention center in a swap for an American soldier held in Afghanistan for nearly five years.

By January 2014, about 29% of 614 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had returned to violence, according to the Director of National Intelligence.

Like the three Moroccans, the five Afghans went free with a friendly government's consent to monitor them. As part of the deal that released U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Qatari government agreed to keep the five ex-detainees in the Gulf emirate for at least a year to prevent them from returning to violence.

The Moroccans, who once trained at the same Afghan camp where the Sept. 11 hijackers trained, set up their radical militant group in Syria in August 2013. Like other al Qaeda sympathizers, they saw their battle as a jihad, or holy war, to replace the Syrian state with an Islamic emirate ruled by their strict interpretation of religious law.

Their group, Harakat Sham al Islam, was at the forefront of the first significant massacre of religious minorities in August 2013 in Latakia province, which Human Rights Watch deemed a "crime against humanity."

Along with other al Qaeda-linked groups, Harakat Sham helped turn what began in 2011 as a largely secular and peaceful uprising against autocratic President Bashar al-Assad into a sectarian war.

For Ibrahim bin Shakran, Ahmed Mizouz and Mohammed Alami, their years in U.S. detention were a badge of honor. Other Islamist extremists said they admired them as symbols of a time when al Qaeda was at its strongest in Afghanistan and the struggle to restore that power in Syria today.

Mr. Mizouz is still fighting with Harakat Sham. But the group said Mr. Alami died in August 2013 and on April 1, it announced that Mr. Shakran too had died, both killed fighting Syrian forces in Latakia. The province is a stronghold of Mr. Assad's minority Alawite sect, which dominates the regime. Groups such as Harakat Sham, made up of hard-line Sunni Muslim jihadists, consider Alawites heretics.

Continue reading.

The Barry Kerry 'Palestinian Unity' Clown Show

At the Washington Post, "Obama administration seeks to bridge rift with Israel over Palestinian unity government."

And from Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Obama’s Embrace of Hamas Betrays Peace":

When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas chose to scuttle peace talks with Israel this spring by deciding to conclude a pact with Hamas rather than the Jewish state, he was taking a calculated risk. In embracing his Islamist rivals, Abbas sought to unify the two leading Palestinian factions not to make peace more possible but to make it impossible. Since Palestinian public opinion–indeed the entire political culture of his people–regards any pact that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state as a betrayal of their national identity, bringing Hamas back into the PA fold illustrated that he would not take the sort of risks that peacemaking required.

But given the PA’s almost complete dependency on the United States and Europe for the aid that keeps its corrupt apparatus operating, there was a genuine risk that the unity pact would generate a cutoff of assistance that could topple his kleptocracy. U.S. law mandated such a rupture of relations, as did the officially stated policy of the Obama administration that rightly regards Hamas as a terrorist group, not a legitimate political player. But there was a chance that Washington would accept a Palestinian deception in which technocrats would be appointed to rule in the name of the Fatah-Hamas coalition in order to pretend that the terrorists were not in charge.

In the weeks since the unity pact was concluded it wasn’t clear which way the U.S. would jump on the question of keeping the money flowing to Abbas, though at times Secretary of State John Kerry made appropriate noises at the PA leader about the danger of going into business with Hamas. But today’s press briefing at the State Department removed any doubt about President Obama’s intentions. When asked to react to today’s announcement of a new Fatah-Hamas government in Ramallah, spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the U.S. would accept the Palestinian trick. As the Times of Israel reports...

Keep reading.

Image via Serr8d.

'Is Ambassador Rice a Moron...'

O'Reilly trying to get folks to put their thinking caps on. A great talking points memo:



Background reference at the Weekly Standard, "Susan Rice: Bergdahl Served With 'Honor and Distinction'."

Joni Ernst Wins Iowa GOP Senate Race

At the Des Moines Register.

You might remember this lady, "'I’m Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork...'"

Rihanna See-Through Gown at CDFA Awards in New York

It's all about the public nudity these days.

At CNN, "Rihanna's dress shows a total peek-a-boo."

And at London's Daily Mail, "The Golden Girls! Blake Lively, Solange Knowles, Rihanna and others step out in metallics at the glamorous CFDA awards."

Pink the Pelican Returns to the Wild

Well, here's a happy ending. Hopefully this bird will stay healthy.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Pelican whose mutilation sparked outrage is released into the wild."

And at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "This pelican named Pink was mutilated and left for dead in Long Beach. Today he flew to freedom."

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Furious as Obama Regime Dismisses Fellow Soldiers' Reports of #Bergdahl Desertion

Watch the whole thing at the Right Scoop, "Furious Ralph Peters TORCHES Obama admin over Bergdahl trade and for calling his fellow soldiers LIARS."

Senate #Democrats Walk Back Support for White House on #Bergdahl

At the Weekly Standard, "Senate Democrats Go AWOL" (via Memeorandum):

On Sunday, Senator Claire McCaskill gave a full-throated defense of the president's decision to release five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo prison in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. "We saved this man's life. The commander-in-chief acted within his constitutional authority, which he should have done," McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "I'm very proud that we have no POWs left in Afghanistan and the president should be proud of it also."

But following multiple reports that Bergdahl deserted his post and soldiers died searching for him, McCaskill will no longer say she still supports the deal she was "very proud" of just 48 hours ago. "I'm not going to comment until I look at the brief," an annoyed McCaskill told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "I'm not going to comment until I look at the brief," she repeated, referring to a classified briefing senators will receive tomorrow.

McCaskill was not alone in her reluctance to support the deal. More than a dozen Democratic senators questioned by TWS Tuesday afternoon declined to defend it. "I just don't know enough about it. I really don't," said Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

"It's very disturbing," said Joe Manchin of West Virginia. "Everything you hear. I'm going to reserve judgment until after we have a secured briefing tomorrow."

"You know, I think, um, let me hold off on that," said Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "All I've heard is what I've read in the press," said Vermont's senior senator Pat Leahy.

"I don't have enough information at this point in time," said Jon Tester of Montana. "I do think getting our boys back home, that's a good quality. I do have some issues about whether [Bergdahl] deserted or not."

More.

'Disillusioned' Bowe #Bergdahl Left Behind Note Denouncing U.S. Mission in Afghanistan

And saying he wanted to "start a new life."

At BCF, "NYT: Bowe Bergdahl’s vanishing before capture angered his unit: he left a note saying he had become disillusioned and wanted to start a new life":

WASHINGTON — Sometime after midnight on June 30, 2009, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl left behind a note in his tent saying he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan and was leaving to start a new life.

He slipped off the remote military outpost in Paktika Province on the border with Pakistan and took with him a soft backpack, water, knives, a notebook and writing materials, but left behind his body armor and weapons — startling, given the hostile environment around his outpost.

That account, provided by a former senior military officer briefed on the investigation into the private’s disappearance, is part of a more complicated picture emerging of the capture of a soldier whose five years as a Taliban prisoner influenced high-level diplomatic negotiations, brought in foreign governments, and ended with him whisked away on a helicopter by American commandos.

Click through for the full NYT report.

'Regardless of the circumstances, we still get an American soldier back if ... held in captivity. Period. Full stop...'

"Period. Full stop."

Meaningless blather. See Linkmaster Smith, "Victor Davis Hanson Nails It":

Obama uses a host of emphatics (e.g., Period!, Let me be clear!, Make no mistake about it!) precisely because he seeks to accomplish in speech what he cannot do in fact.

And just after 2:00 minutes at the clip, from the president's press conference today in Warsaw:

'Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim'

Bob Bergdahl's words at the White House, with President Obama, translated, "In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate".

From Richard Viguerie, "Useful Idiots and the Strange Release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl."

And at the Blaze:

Sgt. Bergdahl's dad said "bismillah al-Rahman” in the Rose Garden - here's what it means: http://t.co/le7UdmbKqU pic.twitter.com/rBl74bZv43

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) June 3, 2014

Michelle Lewin Bikini Pics

She's a super hot Florida fitness chick, at Egotastic, "Michelle Lewin Bikini Pictures Will Knock You Out With Red Booty Sextastic."

She's on Twitter as well:

Been supporting my @MiamiHEAT ALL day on the beach today.... #GoHeat!!! #KickAss!! pic.twitter.com/EiNp772suC

— Michelle Lewin (@Michelle_Lewin) May 27, 2014

Barack Obama's Unfortunate New Movie — #BergdahlTreason

At Mad Magazine, via Katie Pavlich:

Oh damn "@MADmagazine: Barack Obama’s Unfortunate New Movie http://t.co/4KwEdmjXao pic.twitter.com/uHVFJ7cY6I”

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 3, 2014

Criticism Mounts Over Bowe #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

The "I-word" is being bandied about with increasing frequency.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Criticism Mounts Over Sgt. Bergdahl's Exchange: Lawmakers From Both Parties Say Obama Should Have Consulted Congress Before POW Swap":

WASHINGTON—Congressional criticism escalated Tuesday against the Obama administration's exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner of war in Afghanistan, for five Taliban detainees, with leaders in both parties questioning why the administration didn't inform Congress of the plan.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) faulted President Barack Obama for not consulting with Congress about the exchange. Mr. Bergdahl was handed over to the U.S. on Saturday as part of a secret deal between the U.S. and Taliban leaders, brokered by Qatar.

"There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call and say, 'I know you all had concerns about this, we consulted in the past, we want you to know we have renewed these negotiations,'" Ms. Feinstein said. "I strongly believe we should've been consulted, that the law should've been followed and I very much regret that was not the case."

Ms. Feinstein, who was briefed along with other intelligence panel members Tuesday afternoon, said she hasn't heard evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl was in immediate medical danger to make it necessary to act without first consulting Congress.

Mr. Boehner, in a written statement said, "The administration has invited serious questions into how this exchange went down and the calculations the White House and relevant agencies made in moving forward without consulting Congress."

"While we all rejoice for Sgt. Bergdahl and his family, it is important that we get clarity in the days and weeks ahead about not only how this exchange came about, but what steps the president has taken to guarantee this exchange is not a signal that it is open season on our fellow citizens, both military and civilian personnel serving our country abroad so faithfully," Mr. Boehner said. "One of their greatest protections—knowing that the U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists—has been compromised."

More.

Oakland Eco-Fascists Slammed for Caring More About Baby Herons Than City's Homeless

You have to read to believe it, but then again, it's Oakland, right next door to Berkeley, a.k.a, Moscow by the Bay.

At the New York Times, "Birds Leave Nest Involuntarily, and Oakland Fumes":

OAKLAND, Calif. — It started as a well-intentioned attempt by the United States Postal Service here to rid its trucks of bird droppings: A tree trimmer was hired to prune the lush ficus trees that grow next to the post office’s parking lot, not far from City Hall. But in the course of the job, five baby black-crowned night herons fell from their nests and were injured.

At first there were reports that the birds had been fed into a wood chipper — not true — and from there the story took on a life of its own. Residents and city officials called for avian justice. Bird lovers from France, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine and even New Jersey signed an online petition with the headline “Oakland Chainsaw Massacre” that called on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to press charges against the perpetrators.

They have gotten their wish and more: The tree trimmer, Ernesto Pulido, 26, is staring at a possible federal charge of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

“I’m not a gangster,” said a contrite Mr. Pulido, who has visited the bird shelter where the victims are recuperating and voluntarily paid $2,500 for their medical care. “I’m just a guy who’s making a living day to day.”

Since the incident in early May, Mr. Pulido has moved his pregnant wife and young daughter to another house, he said, because he was receiving threats. He added that he loved animals and was raised in Mexico with more animals than people.

But in Oakland, a city that has been rapidly gentrifying, concern for the birds runs very high — higher, some people complain, than concern for the city’s large homeless population. Downtown Oakland has long been known for its high crime rate and gritty urban feel, despite the recent arrival of young people and food lovers, whose presence has prompted some people to call the city “the new Brooklyn.”

Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project, which provides housing for the homeless, said that when people help baby birds, “it feels pure to them.” Their attitude toward homeless adults is less charitable: “They think those adults should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” she said. “Often, that is not possible.”

More.

Shoot, they'd murder the homeless before they'd lift a finger against those birds.

Environmentalists are fascist totalitarians. This story is utterly disgusting.

The Soldiers in Bowe Bergdahl's Platoon Speak Up

From Stephen Hayes, at the Weekly Standard, "'We Swore to an Oath and We Upheld Ours. He Did Not'."

RELATED: "‘We bled to catch them’: Vet distressed by release of Taliban thugs."

S.E. Cupp Outraged at Scout Willis Topless Instagram Protest

Yeah, well, it was pretty stupid.

But going topless is sure to get you noticed these days



And here's Willis' piece at XO/Jane, "I AM SCOUT WILLIS AND THIS IS THE ONLY THING I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT WALKING TOPLESS DOWN THE STREETS OF NEW YORK LAST WEEK."

PREVIOUSLY: "Scout Willis Goes Topless in New York to Protest Instagram."

Leftists Push to Abolish Monarchy in Spain

I don't follow Spanish politics, but I know the British monarchy is the key to that country's historical continuity. Britain's also the birthplace of parliamentary democracy.

Not sure about Spain. But still, it's a bloodthirsty anti-monarchy push for the left.

At LAT, "King's abdication announcement sparks monarchy debate in Spain":

King Juan Carlos of Spain announced Monday that he would abdicate in favor of his son, sparking fierce public debate over whether the country should allow the crown's passing to another generation or abolish the monarchy.

Tens of thousands of Spaniards streamed into town squares in more than 60 cities across the country, just hours after the king's surprise announcement on national television. Demonstrators chanted, "No to monarchy! Yes to democracy!" and demanded an immediate referendum on whether Spain should remain a constitutional monarchy or become a republic after Juan Carlos, who has been king for 39 years, steps down.

"It is unthinkable that in the 21st century we are still talking about blood rights," said Cayo Lara, the leader of Spain's United Left coalition. "We are not subjects, we are citizens."

Though the king's role is largely ceremonial, many Spaniards credit Juan Carlos with shepherding the country from the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco to democracy in the 1970s.

But the 76-year-old monarch has been ailing in health as well as popularity. Juan Carlos drew public outrage two years ago when he went elephant hunting in Africa while his country was mired in recession. His daughter Infanta Cristina is being investigated on suspicion of tax fraud and corruption. The royal lifestyle has not sat well, especially with Spanish unemployment at 25%.

"The long, deep economic recession we are enduring has left serious scars in the social fabric," Juan Carlos acknowledged in a recorded five-minute video address Monday. "A younger generation with new energy has the determination to transform the country.... My son, Felipe, inheritor of the crown, is the embodiment of stability."

"I want the best for Spain, to which I have dedicated my whole life," the king said.

No Spanish monarch has handed power to his or her offspring since the 19th century. Courts would need to approve Crown Prince Felipe, 46, as his father's successor. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a pro-monarchy conservative, said he planned to hold an emergency Cabinet meeting Tuesday to begin enacting legal and constitutional mechanisms to allow for the change.

Juan Carlos, who was born in Italy in 1938 and raised in Portugal, was plucked from exile and personally groomed by Franco to be his fascist successor. But when Franco died in 1975, Juan Carlos ushered in democracy instead. Then, in 1981, he endeared himself to Spaniards by putting down an attempted coup by paramilitary police who opened fire inside parliament. He is credited with keeping the nation's then-fledgling democracy alive.

"Franco gave the king extraordinary powers, before there was even a constitution, but Juan Carlos used that power to create a democracy instead," said Bieito Rubido, editor of Spain's monarchist ABC newspaper. "And then he intervened to stop that coup, insisting again on democracy. So Spaniards credit him with the peace and progress we've seen since then."

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "King Juan Carlos to Abdicate Spanish Throne."

Releasing the Taliban — #BergdahlTraitor

From Marc Thiessen, at the Washington Post, "Here’s what happens when Taliban leaders are released":

If anyone doubts that the five senior Taliban leaders President Obama released this weekend will return to the fight and kill more Americans, they need only look at what happened when the George W. Bush administration released a Taliban leader named Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir (a.k.a. Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul) in 2007.

Unlike the terrorists Obama just set free, Zakir was assessed by our military as only “medium risk” of returning to the fight. At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zakir pretended to be a low-ranking conscript and told officials he simply wanted to “go back home and join my family” and promised “I [have] never been America’s enemy and I never intend to be.”

But when he returned to Afghanistan, he quickly became one of America’s fiercest enemies, directly responsible for the deaths of U.S., coalition and Afghan forces. In 2009, Zakir was appointed as the Taliban’s “surge commander” in charge of countering Obama’s new strategy to deny the Taliban safe haven in southern Afghanistan. According to the Times of London, Zakir instituted a campaign of “increasingly sophisticated [roadside] explosives attacks” that killed British and U.S. forces as well as many Afghan civilians. He waged relentless war on the United States and presided over unspeakable atrocities before stepping down from military command in April.

To this day, he remains a top member of the Taliban leadership council. The five Taliban leaders Obama released will now take up where Zakir left off. According to our own military, they are all “high risk” to return to the fight. How dangerous are these men? Here is what the U.S. military says about them, according to their leaked assessments from Guantanamo Bay...

Keep reading.

Pentagon Report in 2010 Concluded Bowe #Bergdahl 'Walked Away' From His Unit

From AP's Ken Dilanian and Deb Riechmann, published at ABC News, "Questions Loom Over Bergdahl-Taliban Swap":

The Pentagon concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military curbed any high-risk rescue plans. But the U.S. kept pursuing avenues to negotiate his release, recently seeking to fracture the Taliban network by making its leaders fear a faster deal with underlings could prevent the freedom they sought for five of their top officials, American officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. government kept tabs on Bergdahl's whereabouts with spies, drones and satellites, even as it pursued off-and-on negotiations to get him back over the five years of captivity that ended on Saturday.  Bergdahl was in stable condition Monday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, but questions mounted at home over the way his freedom was secured: Five high-level members of the Taliban were released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent to Qatar. The five, who will have to stay in Qatar for a year before going back to Afghanistan, include former ministers in the Taliban government, commanders and one man who had direct ties to the late al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

A U.S. defense official familiar with efforts to free Bergdahl said the U.S. government had been working in recent months to split the Taliban network. Different U.S. agencies had floated several offers to the militants, and the Taliban leadership feared that underlings might cut a quick deal while they were working to free the five detainees at Guantanamo, said the official and a congressional aide, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about efforts to release Bergdahl.  There was plenty of criticism about how the deal came about.

"Knowing that various lines of effort were presented and still under consideration, none of which involved a disproportionate prisoner exchange, I am concerned by the sudden urgency behind the prisoner swap, given other lines of effort," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has criticized the government effort to seek Bergdahl's release as disorganized.

One current and one former U.S. official said Obama had signed off on a possible prisoner swap. The president spoke to the Qatari emir last Tuesday, and they gave each other assurances about the proposed transfers, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss the deliberations in public.

One official briefed on the intelligence said the Taliban also may have been worried about Bergdahl's health, having been warned that the U.S. would react fiercely if he died in captivity. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, which is caring for Bergdahl, said he was suffering from nutritional issues.

Bergdahl's handoff to U.S. special forces in eastern Afghanistan was never going to lead to an uncomplicated yellow-ribbon celebration. The exchange stirred debate over a possibly heightened risk other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and whether the released detainees would find their way back to the battlefield.  

Republicans in Congress criticized the agreement and complained about not having been consulted, citing a law that requires Congress to be given 30 days notice before a prisoner is released from Guantanamo.

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee said the Pentagon notified the panel by phone on Saturday that the exchange was occurring in the next five hours.  "A phone call does not meet the legal standard of congressional notification," the Republican members said in a statement and added that official notice of the move came Monday, "more than 72 hours after the detainees were released."

Republicans also argued that the swap could set a dangerous precedent...

More.

The 6 U.S. Soldiers Who Died Searching for Bowe #Bergdahl

At Time.

And from Jake Tapper, at CNN, "Former Army Sgt. who served with Bergdahl: 'He is at best a deserter, at worst a traitor'. It's Sgt. Josh Korder, who says that he could face repercussions for speaking out now, but he wants the American people "to know the truth."



More here.

King Juan Carlos to Abdicate Spanish Throne

Wow. Not something you see everyday.

At Telegraph UK, "Juan Carlos abdication: Spanish king follows in footsteps of other ageing monarchs and heads of state."

And video, "Spanish King's abdication 'a very great shock'."

Also at CNN, "Spain's king steps down," and Euro News, "Spain's King Juan Carlos has abdicated, PM Rajoy says."

Continuing Developments in Story of Bowe #Bergdahl Treason-Terror Exchange

Check Louise Mensch on Twitter, and Twitchy.

@southsalem @AmPowerBlog thank you both for keeping it alive, and making the American heroes of this story into individuals
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 2, 2014

And of course I'll have more later.

We Lost Soldiers in the Hunt for #Bergdahl, a Guy Who Walked Off in the Dead of Night

A first-hand account, from Nathan Bradley Bethea, at the Daily Beast:

For five years, soldiers have been forced to stay silent about the disappearance and search for Bergdahl. Now we can talk about what really happened.

Well, Good to Know Charli Carpenter Still Has a Girly Crush on the Donalde

I'm tickled pink, I'll tell you!

Old Charli's back at LGM, "Happy Anniversary, LGM. I Miss You."

And she writes, and mentions moi, surreptitiously:

I have two sets of thoughts which I’ve been developing in the context of recent professional debates about academic blogging.

One is about how different strategies of academic blogging affect the way that scholars blend our academic hats with our other other identities / ways of thinking / emoting / deliberating. We vary in how we do this across venues and time. A common strategy for political scientists – I’ll call this Strategy A – is to blog on politics almost entirely as academics, which is to say we bring academic expertise to bear on political problems – in the way, for example, that SEK brings filmography expertise to bear on my understanding of Game of Thrones. By and large this is what the Monkey Cage does: its authors engage with policy problems and current events by articulating what empirical social science has to say about the causal logics underlying policy problems, proposals or debates rather than primarily expressing political opinions. Of course not all academic expertise is empirical and political theory and philosophy can also be usefully brought to bear on debate, but you get my point.

But academic bloggers do other things as well. We sometimes blog, as academics, on politics directly – that is, we sometimes blog to take partisan positions in political debates affecting national or foreign policy, using our credentials as academics to lend an air of authority to what are essentially personal opinions. This is what a certaine right-winge bloggere who shall not be namede does almost exclusively, for example. Many academic bloggers on the left as well do it at least some of the time; I certainly have. Academics also blog on the politics of academia. A lot of this goes on at the Duck: we generally think of it as a subset of academic blogging but I actually think it is a subset of political blogging because our positions on things tend to be more openly partisan and prescriptive when dealing with our profession than we often allow them to be when dealing as social scientists with the explanatory relationships underpinning national/foreign policy...

Lots more at the link, but for those out of the loop, see Charli's 2010 post, "There Goes My Dreame."

Oh, and I don't much care about lending "an air of authority" to my blogging. Frankly, I'd rather people not know I'm a professor, lest I get too many more attacks like this one here, and this one as well.

And ICYMI, "Dr. Charli Carpenter and the Laws of War."

China Touts Power in East Asia

Chinese GDP per capita is still a tiny fraction of America's, but hey, perhaps they've got the mojo.

At the Wall Street Journal, "China Military Official Blasts U.S. 'Hegemony' at Shangri-La Conference: Hagel Accuses Beijing of 'Destabilizing, Unilateral Actions'."

How Legal Education is Changing

From Glenn Reynolds, at the University of Tennessee College of Law, "Legal Education: It’s Not Like ‘The Paper Chase’ Anymore":

Now more than forty years old, the movie The Paper Chase—and the hit television series that it spun off—still embodies the way many people think of legal education. But for better or worse those days are long gone. Today’s law students have to deal with a world in which legal education is more expensive—and high-paying jobs are scarcer—than they were back then. That’s also putting a lot of pressure on law schools.

The movie opens with an enormous classroom, holding a large number of students anxiously awaiting the arrival of Professor Kingsfield, who proceeds to perform what he calls “brain surgery” using no more than Socratic dialogue and a chalkboard. The students are anxious to make good grades, because with good grades they can get jobs at big law firms on Wall Street and elsewhere, where the pay is high and making partner is a guarantee of lucrative lifetime employment.

Today, most of that has changed...

Keep reading.

Obama Announcement on New E.P.A. Regs to Cut Carbon Emissions by 30 Percent

I posted on this yesterday, "Obama's Last Gasp on Global Warming."

Just wanted to remind folks of the president's promise to bankrupt the coal industry:

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.  So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

More at Bloomberg, "Obama Said to Propose Deep Cuts to Power-Plant Emissions":

Plants that burn coal to generate electricity account for about 75 percent of all power-plant emissions. Coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, provides about 40 percent of the U.S. power. While that’s down from about half, coal is remains the single largest source of electricity generation in the U.S.

The proposed rules are among policies “designed to drive out low-cost electricity and replace it with higher-cost, more expensive and less reliable electricity,” Hal Quinn, chief executive officer of the National Mining Association, said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program.

The EPA is counting on coal plants being operated more efficiently and states shifting to natural gas from coal to get modest cuts in the next four or five years, people familiar with it said. Each state will have a target based on its emissions, and in the next decade the overall electric grid will need to become more efficient and use renewable generation to achieve the reductions, they said.

“President Obama is right to take decisive action to combat this clear and present danger,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said by e-mail. “The proposed standards will limit -- for the first time in U.S. history -- the unrestricted pollution of our atmosphere by carbon dioxide.”

The Obama Paradox

A dishy piece from Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein, at Politico.

And at Twitchy, "Politico report: Coordination between White House and Congress ‘has never been better’."

And that goes for the relaxation, too:

Obama golfed in FL during Ukraine crisis. Told friends: “I needed this. I needed the golf. I needed to laugh." http://t.co/OGc95oHRzo

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 2, 2014

'We’re up against evil like I've never seen in my life...'

It's Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference, via the Blaze, "‘We’re Up Against Evil’: ‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Phil Robertson Blasts White House, Tells GOP to ‘Get Godly’."

The Case Against Obama's #Bergdahl Deal

Actually, I think by now we've heard the case against this monstrous, politically-expedient terror swap, but here's Ilya Somin, at Volokh Conspiracy, in any case, "The case against the Obama administration’s deal exchanging five high-ranking Taliban leaders for one captured US soldier [Updated]."

And ICYMI, "Uncle Jimbo on #BergdahlTraitor."

Fellow Soldiers Call Bowe #Bergdahl a Deserter, Not a Hero

From Jake Tapper, at CNN, via Louise Mensch:

Very surprised, but very encouraged, to see CNN actually reporting on the deeply squirrelly #BergdahlTraitor case http://t.co/XHG9iZ2m1c

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 2, 2014

The sense of pride expressed by officials of the Obama administration at the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not shared by many of those who served with him -- veterans and soldiers who call him a deserter whose "selfish act" ended up costing the lives of better men.

"I was pissed off then and I am even more so now with everything going on," said former Sergeant Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl's platoon when he went missing on June 30, 2009. "Bowe Bergdahl deserted during a time of war and his fellow Americans lost their lives searching for him."

Vierkant said Bergdahl needs to not only acknowledge his actions publicly but face a military trial for desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

A reporter asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Sunday whether Bergdahl had left his post without permission or deserted -- and, if so, whether he would be punished. Hagel didn't answer directly. "Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family," he said. "Other circumstances that may develop and questions, those will be dealt with later."

Following his release from five years of captivity in Afghanistan on Saturday, Bergdahl was transferred to a military hospital in Germany....

According to first-hand accounts from soldiers in his platoon, Bergdahl, while on guard duty, shed his weapons and walked off the observation post with nothing more than a compass, a knife, water, a digital camera, and a diary.

At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for Bergdahl, and many soldiers in his platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika Provice in the days and weeks following his disappearance.

Many of Bergdahl's fellow troops -- from the seven or so who knew him best in his squad, to the larger group that comprised the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division -- told CNN that they signed nondisclosure agreements agreeing to never share any information about Bergdahl's disappearance and the efforts to recapture him. Some were willing to dismiss that document in hopes that the truth would come out about a soldier who they now fear is being hailed as a hero, while the men who lost their lives looking for him are ignored.

Many are flocking to social media, such as the Facebook page "Bowe Bergdahl is NOT a hero," where they share stories detailing their resentment. A number of comments on his battalion's Facebook page prompted the moderator to ask for more respect to be shown.

"I challenge any one of you who label him a traitor to spend 5 years in captivity with the Taliban or Haqqani, then come back and accuse him again. Whatever his intent when he walked away or was captured, he has more than paid for it."

Emails reported by the late Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone in 2012 reveal what Bergdahl's fellow infantrymen learned within days of his disappearance: he told people that he no longer supported the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.

"The future is too good to waste on lies," Bowe wrote to his parents. "And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting."

Bergdahl wrote to them, "I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."

CNN has not independently verified the authenticity of the emails.

More.

Rhian Sugden for Zoo Today

A lovely video, "Rhian Sugden's on-set teaser video!"

Added: "Rhian Sugden Archive - All of Her Strip Pictures and Videos Galleries!"

Photo Roundup #Rule5

At Theo's, "Pic Dump..."



BONUS: At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Blogs With Rule 5 Links."

John McCain Questions Swap of 'Highest High-Risk People' for #BergdahlTraitor

At CBS News.

Trading With the Taliban — #Bergdahl

From the editors, at the Wall Street Journal:

The return of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban is cause for relief for his family and all Americans. But there's no denying that the price of his recovery is high. The Obama Administration swapped five of the hardest cases at Guantanamo in a fashion that will encourage terrorists to kidnap more Americans to win the release of more prisoners.

This does not mean we agree with Republicans who say President Obama broke the law by failing to inform Congress 30 days in advance of the prisoner release from Gitmo. Presidential power is never stronger than in the role of Commander in Chief. Congress did not attempt to use its comparably strong power of the purse. Instead Congress's Gitmo language sought bluntly to constrain Mr. Obama's wartime decision-making.

This is unconstitutional, as the President averred in a statement at the time he signed the bill. That Mr. Obama—and his liberal friends—denounced George W. Bush for similar signing statements is one more antiterror irony of this Presidency. Readers should watch to see if the same politicians and newspapers that assailed Mr. Bush are more forgiving when their kind of President is using the same war powers.

The real problem with this prisoner swap is the message it conveys about American weakness, especially in the context of Mr. Obama's retreat from Afghanistan and elsewhere. The world's bad actors have long perceived that the U.S. doesn't negotiate over hostages, in contrast to, say, France or Italy. This has made American soldiers and civilians less promising targets.

The Taliban swap will change that perception and increase the likelihood that more Americans will be grabbed, not least in Kabul. Don't be surprised if 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows up on a list of future prisoner-swap demands...

Keep reading.

Uncle Jimbo on #BergdahlTraitor

I checked over there early this morning, and now here's this, at Black Five, "Big Problems With Bergdahl Deal":

The problems with the deal we made is not the worthiness of Bergdahl, but the price we paid and the timing of the deal. We are releasing five of the most heinous and senior Taliban leaders we ever captured. Men with the blood of hundreds of US troops on their hands who will spend the rest of their lives adding to that toll. They are unrepentant, barbarian killers and the Afghan people we are supposed to have been helping all these years will pay the price when these men rejoin the resurgent Taliban. We are packing our things and loading planes to come home and the Talibs have known this since Obama unveiled his faux surge at West Point in 2009. He announced more troops were coming and he announced that those same troops would be leaving prior to his next election campaign. The Taliban plays the long war and they knew they could wait us out and they did.

If you want to know just how bad these five are, go read this and then weep for the innocents who will pay the price for their discharge. All the prisoners we still hold at Gitmo are evil terrorists who will perpetrate more evil given the slightest opportunity. Well we just handed it to these five and they will use it to undo any semblance of good we did in Afghanistan. This is not just a possibility; it is the undeniable reality of the deal we made. There is also a good possibility that the Haqqani network, who were holding him, may have picked up a number of satchels full of cash in the exchange as well. They are essentially a crime syndicate and money talks with them. It is just not something we should be involved in doing, hence the Qataris involvement.

The next point is why now? This deal has been on the table for several years. The Taliban proposed it and we could have agreed to it at any point. Why let Bergdahl rot for years if this was an option? The simplest answer is that this is and was a horrible deal that never should have been made. As much as it pains me to say, the life of one American POW is not worth the certain deaths of the hundreds or thousands who will die at the hands of the scum we have just unleashed. Those are the tough decisions and calculations that the Commander in Chief should weigh. We cannot pay any cost to regain a prisoner, because some costs are just too high. This was one of those times.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Can't wait for Bergdahl's trial.

'Collective Amnesia' in China 25 Years After Tiananmen Square Massacre

A great piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "Collective amnesia prevails in China 25 years after Tiananmen Square."

The Chinese Communist Party maintains a brutal regime, but economic development and the loosening of social restraints have "bought off" mass unrest.

Plus, a video at Telegraph UK, "Tiananmen Square massacre: Communist Party still dares not publish the truth."

Obama White House Defends #Bergdahl Prisoner Exchange

At the New York Times, "Administration Defends Swap With Taliban to Free U.S. Soldier":

WASHINGTON — Top Obama administration officials pushed back on Sunday against Republican criticism that a deal freeing the last American held prisoner in Afghanistan could allow dangerous Taliban leaders to return to the fight, might encourage terrorist groups to seize American hostages and possibly violated a law requiring notification of Congress.

Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, spoke a day after years of fitful negotiations had finally yielded the release in Afghanistan of the prisoner, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The deal, brokered with Qatari help, also freed five high-level Taliban members from the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The release of the Taliban officials was sharply assailed by Republicans, including Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the intelligence committee, as a dangerous transgression of longstanding policy against negotiating with terror groups.

“If you negotiate here, you’ve sent a message to every Al Qaeda group in the world — by the way, some who are holding U.S. hostages today — that there is some value now in that hostage in a way that they didn’t have before,” Mr. Rogers said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” He added, “That is dangerous.”

More.

Susan Rice at ABC News is here, "Ambassador Susan Rice on Release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl."

And previously, "Rep. Mike Rogers on #Bergdahl: 'We Have Now Set a Price' on American Lives (VIDEO)."

Bras Are Optional

At Social Hype, "(40 Sensational Pictures)." (Via Linkiest.)

BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Pre-Vegas Review," and at Pirate's, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

Obama's Last Gasp on Global Warming

We had negative 1 percent economic growth in the first quarter, but damned if destroying the economy isn't the last thing he does.

At the Los Angeles Times, "New EPA rule seeks to cut carbon emissions 30% by 2030."

And at the New York Times, "Using Executive Powers, Obama Begins His Last Big Push on Climate Policy":

WASHINGTON — All but giving up on Congress, President Obama has spent the year foraging for issues he could tackle on his own, and largely coming up with minor executive orders. But on Monday, he will unveil a plan to take on climate change that may be his last, most sweeping effort to remake America in his remaining time in office...

Remembering D-Day: The Most Brilliantly Conducted Invasion in Military History

From VDH, at National Review, "D-Day at 70":

Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British, and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 b.c.

About 160,000 troops landed on five Normandy beaches and linked up with airborne troops in a masterly display of planning and courage. Within a month, almost a million Allied troops had landed in France and were heading eastward toward the German border. Within eleven months the war with Germany was over.

The western front required the diversion of hundreds of thousands of German troops. It weakened Nazi resistance to the Russians while robbing the Third Reich of its valuable occupied European territory.

The impatient and long-suffering Russians had demanded of their allies a second front commensurate with their own sacrifices. Their Herculean efforts by war’s end would account for two out of every three dead German soldiers — at a cost of 20 million Russian civilian and military casualties.

Yet for all the sacrifices of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was largely responsible for his war with Nazi Germany. In 1939, he signed a foolish non-aggression pact with Hitler that allowed the Nazis to gobble up Western democracies. Hitler’s Panzers were aided by Russians in Poland and overran Western Europe fueled by supplies from the Soviets.

The Western Allies had hardly been idle before D-Day. They had taken North Africa and Sicily from the Germans and Italians. They were bogged down in brutal fighting in Italy. The Western Allies and China fought the Japanese in the Pacific, Burma, and China.

The U.S. and the British Empire fought almost everywhere. They waged a multiform war on and under the seas. They eventually destroyed Japanese and German heavy industry with a costly and controversial strategic-bombing campaign.

The Allies sent friends such as the Russians and Chinese billions of dollars worth of food and war matériel.

In sum, while Russia bore the brunt of the German land war, the Western Allies fought all three Axis powers everywhere else and in every conceivable fashion.

Yet if D-Day was brilliantly planned and executed, the follow-up advance through France in June 1944 was not always so...

A whole 'nother era.

More at the link.

Rep. Mike Rogers on #Bergdahl: 'We Have Now Set a Price' on American Lives (VIDEO)

Via Free Beacon, "Mike Rogers on Negotiating for Soldier's Release: 'We Have Now Set a Price'."

Special Forces Arranged #Bergdahl Release Directly with Taliban

At the Washington Post, "Hagel discusses details of U.S. operation to exchange Taliban detainees for captive soldier."

Hats off to U.S. forces performing their duty admirably.

Taliban 'IEDs Started Being Placed More Effectively' After Bowe #Bergdahl Desertion

Be sure to click through at this tweet from Louise Mensch:

Some bad stuff going on with #Bergdahl, his father and Obama. Will come out sooner rather than later, I expect. http://t.co/XnrglKlsuD
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 1, 2014

Take a look especially at CodyFNfootball's timeline:

IEDs started being placed more effectively in the coming weeks. Ambushes were more calculated, cover and concealment was used
— _ (@CodyFNfootball) June 1, 2014

PREVIOUSLY: "U.S. Special Forces Back Channel Account on Bowe Bergdahl Desertion."