Lee Smith writing online for The Weekly Standard, June 17:

As if there isn't already enough on the agenda for the G-8 Summit, now Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is threatening Europe . . . explaining [to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] that European Muslims traveling to Syria to fight the regime "will return, battle-hardened and with an extremist ideology." The reality, however, is that Europe has much to fear from the regime, which waged a campaign of terror in Europe, particularly Paris, in the 80s. Then under the direction of Bashar's father Hafez, the regime's most notorious operation on the continent was the 1986 Hindawi Affair. An agent of the Damascus regime, Nezar Hindawi, put a bomb in the bag of his girlfriend, an Irish woman unaware of what she was carrying on board a Tel Aviv-bound EL AL flight out of London's Heathrow airport. After the airline's security detected the explosives, Hindawi took refuge in the Syrian embassy in London, leading to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Syria.

When the Assad regime issues threats, it's worth taking them seriously.

i continue my explorations on this subject , , ,

To My Congressional Colleagues: Stop the NSA Grandstanding
Members have had ample opportunity to learn about these valuable programs.
By DAN COATS

Last week, Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor, attempted to make a political point by leaking several documents that have seriously harmed America's ability to identify and respond to terrorist threats. As damaging as Mr. Snowden's disclosures are to public safety, I am also troubled by the decision of several members of Congress to mischaracterize this leak to advance their personal and political agendas.

I don't blame citizens for their concern about these secretive NSA programs. Personal privacy and civil liberties are important to all Americans and are protected by the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Obama administration—especially of late—has fueled people's distrust of government, which has made the reaction to Mr. Snowden's leak far worse.

The recent IRS scandal, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's contradictory statements regarding his role in the Justice Department's investigations into journalists, and the administration's inadequate and inconsistent responses to the attacks on our diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, are just a few examples of how the Obama administration has widened the trust deficit plaguing the country.

Though it is more difficult to quantify than the fiscal deficit, the trust deficit is just as profound, providing plenty of reason for many Americans to believe reports about the NSA's intrusiveness in their private lives. Fortunately, the reports are almost uniformly distorted or false.

Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American people demanded that the intelligence community be able to "connect the dots" to prevent terrorist attacks. Had the recently revealed programs been available to the NSA before 9/11, we likely could have identified some or all of the hijackers before they murdered thousands.

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Edward Snowden

Twelve years later, the intelligence community is doing exactly what the American people asked for. The counterterrorism programs revealed last week have helped to thwart dozens of terrorist attacks. In one case, these programs identified a connection between al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and Najibullah Zazi, an al Qaeda operative in Colorado. This enabled the FBI to stop Zazi and his associates from detonating explosives in the New York City subway system.

These programs represent some of the most effective means available to protect the country from terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. Leaking this information only degrades our ability to prevent attacks. It compromises our sources and gives terrorists critical information on how we monitor their activities.

When I asked NSA Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander about the consequences of Mr. Snowden's leaks during a recent Senate hearing, he replied: "If we tell terrorists every way we track them, they will get through, and people will die." Mr. Snowden apparently did not share that concern or did not care.

Mr. Snowden was wrong about key details of these programs, and the press, blogs and members of Congress from both parties have echoed his distortions. For the record: The government is not and cannot indiscriminately listen in on Americans' phone calls or target their emails. It is not collecting the content of conversations or even their location under these programs. For instance, the only telephone data collected is the time of the call, the phone numbers involved and the length of the call. That is how we connect the dots and identify links between international terrorists and their collaborators within the United States. All of this is done under the supervision of the nation's top federal judges, senior officials across several different federal agencies and Congress.

These programs are legal, constitutional and used only under the strict oversight of all three branches of the government, including a highly scrutinized judicial process. Furthermore, members of both political parties review, audit and authorize all activities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can attest that few issues garner more of our attention than the oversight of these programs.

Elected officials have a duty to the American people to engage in an informed and honest debate. So it troubles me that some of my colleagues in Congress are engaging in disingenuous outrage when they were given ample opportunity to learn more, ask questions and even vote against these programs. Mischaracterizing national-security programs for political gain is irresponsible and has the potential to weaken the country's defenses. Members of Congress must remain vigilant in the face of misleading information about the substance and utility of our counterterrorism activities.

As a result of these leaks and subsequent spread of misinformation, the federal government faces a Catch-22. The administration must disclose more information about the use of these programs to regain the people's trust and ensure the protection of civil liberties, but doing so also compromises the programs. As the NSA chief said in his recent testimony, "Everything depends on trust. . . . We do not see a trade-off between security and liberty. It is not a choice, and we can and must do both simultaneously."

The government's interest in carrying out these programs is the most compelling imaginable: an enduring defense against terrorist attacks that could take thousands of innocent lives. I have no doubt that returning to a pre-9/11 security posture will make this country less safe. A majority of Americans agree, and their support is likely to grow as sensationalism and fear are replaced with facts.

Sen. Coats is a Republican from Indiana and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"The Constitution "authorizes states to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied," Thomas said in his dissent."

This seems rather definitive to me, what was Scalia thinking?

Umm yes, there is that isn't there? 

That said, I thought the piece added points of merit to our search for Truth.

It isn't whether Keynesians are right or wrong that matters determining economic policy. We know they are wrong. The question in Washington is how does it poll.

That was an excellent Wesbury.  Still he predicts good results from bad policies.

Democrats in Sacramento are taking a victory lap for balancing this year's budget without raising taxes (not counting the $6 billion retroactive hike voters approved at political gunpoint in November). The dirty little secret is they're instead tapping California's new cap-and-trade program.

California expects to generate $500 million this year from auctioning off permits to emit carbon, and between $2 billion and $14 billion annually by 2015. This rich new vein of revenues was supposed to flow to green programs (e.g., solar subsidies), but Governor Jerry Brown cut a deal with Democrats in the legislature to seize this year's proceeds to finance more generous welfare and Medicaid benefits. Environmentalists are suddenly stunned to discover that they're not exempt from Sacramento's generally accepted accounting principle of raiding internal accounts to backfill the budget.

Mr. Brown has vowed to repay the $500 million cap-and-trade "loan" in short order. But as a matter of law, he has until the California Air Resources Board (CARB) says it needs the cash to administer the cap-and-trade program. That may be never since CARB's expenditures are discretionary, and the quarterly auctions will produce gushers of revenues that guarantee the cap-and-trade fund never runs dry.

The board's chairwoman Mary Nichols, who's endorsing the raid, has tried to quell enraged environmentalists by reminding them that "the part about the cap-and-trade program that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it's the cap," and "not the revenue that we get from the allowances."

Good point, and one which businesses are making in a lawsuit that contends the state is levying an unconstitutional tax under the guise of a "regulatory fee." California's Prop. 13 (1978) requires a supermajority vote of the legislature to raise taxes. CARB circumvented this requirement in 2011 by setting up a state-run auction to sell permits and calling the profits "regulatory fees" that would be used to mitigate emissions.

But as the state Supreme Court underscored in its 1997 Sinclair Paint Co. opinion, regulatory fees cannot "exceed in amount the reasonable cost of providing the protective services for which the fees are charged" or be imposed for "unrelated revenue purposes."

California has never quantified the "reasonable cost" to protect the public from carbon emissions, and it's hard to argue that spending cap-and-trade dollars on welfare checks advances environmental objectives. The state doesn't need to auction off permits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It could achieve its emissions targets by giving away permits for free and ratcheting the cap down over time.

In short, California Democrats are proving that the real point of cap and trade is to give politicians another revenue stream for income redistribution while dodging accountability for raising taxes. That's worth keeping in mind when liberals resurrect the scheme for the entire U.S.

'There's a sucker born every minute" is one of those great American phrases, fondly and frequently repeated by Americans, who tend to forget that it was said mainly about Americans. In the election of Hassan Rohani as Iran's president, we are watching the point being demonstrated again by someone who has demonstrated it before.



Who is Mr. Rohani? If all you did over the weekend was read headlines, you would have gleaned that he is a "moderate" (Financial Times), a "pragmatic victor" (New York Times) and a "reformist" (Bloomberg). Reading a little further, you would also learn that his election is being welcomed by the White House as a "potentially hopeful sign" that Iran is ready to strike a nuclear bargain.

All this for a man who, as my colleague Sohrab Ahmari noted in these pages Monday, called on the regime's basij militia to suppress the student protests of July 1999 "mercilessly and monumentally." More than a dozen students were killed in those protests, more than 1,000 were arrested, hundreds were tortured, and 70 simply "disappeared." In 2004 Mr. Rohani defended Iran's human-rights record, insisting there was "not one person in prison in Iran except when there is a judgment by a judge following a trial."

WSJ assistant books editor Sohrab Ahmari on the results of Iran's recent presidential election. Photos: Associated Press

Mr. Rohani is also the man who chaired Iran's National Security Council between 1989 and 2005, meaning he was at the top table when Iran masterminded the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people, and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. airmen. He would also have been intimately familiar with the secret construction of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities in Arak, Natanz and Isfahan, which weren't publicly exposed until 2002.

In 2003 Mr. Rohani took charge as Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, a period now warmly remembered in the West for Tehran's short-lived agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its nuclear-enrichment work. That was also the year in which Iran supposedly halted its illicit nuclear-weapons' work, although the suspension proved fleeting, according to subsequent U.N. reports.

Then again, what looked to the credulous as evidence of Iranian moderation was, to Iranian insiders, an exercise in diplomatic cunning. "Negotiations provided time for Isfahan's uranium conversion project to be finished and commissioned, the number of centrifuges at Natanz increased from 150 to 1,000 and software and hardware for Iran's nuclear infrastructure to be further developed," Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Mr. Rohani's spokesman at the time, argues in a recent memoir. "The heavy water reactor project in Arak came into operation and was not suspended at all."

Nor was that the only advantage of Mr. Rohani's strategy of making nice and playing for time, according to Mr. Mousavian.

"Tehran showed that it was possible to exploit the gap between Europe and the United States to achieve Iranian objectives." "The world's understanding of 'suspension' was changed from a legally binding obligation . . . to a voluntary and short-term undertaking aimed at confidence building." "The world gradually came close to believing that Iran's nuclear activities posed no security or military threat. . . . Public opinion in the West, which was totally against Tehran's nuclear program in September 2003, softened a good deal." "Efforts were made to attract global attention to the need for WMD disarmament by Israel."

And best of all: "Iran would be able to attain agreements for the transfer of advanced nuclear technology to Iran for medical, agricultural, power plant, and other applications, in a departure from the nuclear sanctions of the preceding 27 years."

Mr. Mousavian laments that much of this good work was undone by the nuclear hard line Iran took when the incendiary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.

But that's true only up to a point. Iran made most of its key nuclear strides under Mr. Ahmadinejad, who also showed just how far Iran could test the West's patience without incurring regime-threatening penalties. Supply IEDs to Iraqi insurgents to kill American GIs? Check. Enrich uranium to near-bomb grade levels? Check. Steal an election and imprison the opposition? Check. Take Royal Marines and American backpackers hostage? Check. Fight to save Bashar Assad's regime in Syria? That, too. Even now, the diplomatic option remains a viable one as far as the Obama administration is concerned.

Now the West is supposed to be grateful that Mr. Ahmadinejad's scowling face will be replaced by Mr. Rohani's smiling one—a bad-cop, good-cop routine that Iran has played before. Western concessions will no doubt follow if Mr. Rohani can convince his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to play along. It shouldn't be a hard sell: Iran is now just a head-fake away from becoming a nuclear state and Mr. Khamenei has shown he's not averse to pragmatism when it suits him.

The capacity for self-deception is a coping mechanism in both life and diplomacy, but it comes at a price. As the West cheers the moderate and pragmatic and centrist Mr. Rohani, it will come to discover just how high a price it will pay.

It's treason, and it ought to be against the law.

But first, let's poll the 16-35 demographic.

[Silver lining aside, addressing the point lost], yes, this seems terrible!  Analysis is saying that Scalia and the others are throwing it back on congress to correct the standard. Arizona should sue the Feds to fix the problem?  

"Justice Thomas’s dissent was mainly devoted to arguing that the Constitution gives Congress no role in judging who may register to vote, and that this is a power given exclusively to the states."

If true, does this tend to support my contention that we are down to about one conservative/originalist on the Court.  Okay, add Justice Alito to the very short list in this case.  Alito's dissent is separate.  Who has time to do the Court's work for them, and finding the right answer in the dissent doesn't solve anything.

The Constitution "authorizes states to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied," Thomas said in his dissent.

Is it not part of equal protection that my right to one vote cannot be diluted by liberals facilitating the vote of undocumented Dems?  Where is our protection?

Arizona law goes further than a 1993 federal law to address a serious problem.  But how does Arizona law violate the constitution?  Unequal protection?

I don't know if the Scalia-Ginsburg coalition gets out much, but a driver's license is not proof of citizenship in a state that issues licenses to non-citizens.  It is also not proof of citizenship in the state does not require proof of citizenship to check the citizen box on the driver's license application.

The remedy for a wrongly decided Supreme Court question is to elect a new President, new Senate and wait for current Justices to die.  How does that work when the issue is election fraud?  A different remedy, overlooked by Scalia, for the total malfeasance of the federal government to do its job is secession.

Right now we have government of the Washington DC, by the Washington DC, and for the Washington DC, IMHO.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/opinion-recap-one-hand-giveth/
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AZ-reaction.pdf
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/17/supreme-court-arizona-citizenship-proof-law-illegal/
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-71_7l48.pdf