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Steve Hayes is getting lots of well deserved attention for his report at the Weekly Standard today about how the Obama/Holder Justice Department has quietly instructed the FBI to start giving Miranda warnings to captured alien combatant terrorists — the next logical move in the ongoing effort to move us away from a war approach and return us to the law-enforcement paradigm for dealing with international terrorism.

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. Attorney General of the United States United States Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20530-0001 Dear Attorney General Holder: This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading. The invitation email (of April 14) indicates...

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. Attorney General of the United States United States Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20530-0001 Dear Attorney General Holder: This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading. The invitation email (of April 14) indicates...

Greg Pollowitz points me to this report from the Anchorage Daily News, that the judge in the failed corruption prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens is still fuming at the Justice Department. The paper reports that Judge Emmet Sullivan, "on his own, without a request by either party" issued a pair of orders over the weekend, "indicating he may not be ready to give up jurisdiction of the case even as the government is asking for all charges to be dismissed." The report elaborates that the judge directed federal prosecutors to provide him copies of everything they had gathered in...

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Posted By:MAF Blogger DannyPermalinkAndrew McCarthy Writes A Special Analysis for MAF This blog post is really special. We were doing the presser for our Gitmo ad and we really wanted and expert opinion so we asked Andrew McCarthy of National Review and he wrote us this amazing piece which gives us another perspective - this one coming from a policy expert - on Guantanamo Bay. If the Guantanamo Detainees Are Transferred Into the U.S.By Andrew C. McCarthyAt the moment, alien enemy combatants are being held by the military outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. courts. ...

"Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical?" You're right, David. Why would anyone think this guy is a left-wing radical? Just because sought (and got) an endorsement from the Chicago branch of the Socialist International, got his training from ACORN and a Saul Alinski outfit, wanted to surrender to terrorists, thinks the Constitution vests alien combatants with rights against the American people, fought a law prohibiting infanticide, praises Bill Ayers' views on education and the criminal justice system, approved millions in subsidies for hard Left education "reform" projects, wants to nationalize the healthcare industry...

You Guys Are Nuts [Andy McCarthy] We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture. Here's what Obama needed to do tonight: Convince the country that he was an utterly safe, conventional, centrist politician who may have leftward leanings but will do the right thing when the crunch comes. Now, as the night went along, did you get the impression that Obama comes from the radical...

I'm posting because it is indicative of the anger in lots of reader email I'm seeing: The Ifill issue is front and center. Last night on Brit Hume's program, the consensus was that they all knew Gwen and she is a swell person, and of course she wouldn't do anything partisan. Just where the hell are these people coming from? Day in and day out, out here in the real world we see obvious bias, obvious double standards and yet the Republicans and a lot of the "conservative" media either don't see it, or if they do, they let it...

I'm posting because it is indicative of the anger in lots of reader email I'm seeing: The Ifill issue is front and center. Last night on Brit Hume's program, the consensus was that they all knew Gwen and she is a swell person, and of course she wouldn't do anything partisan. Just where the hell are these people coming from? Day in and day out, out here in the real world we see obvious bias, obvious double standards and yet the Republicans and a lot of the "conservative" media either don't see it, or if they do, they let it...

Much of the counter-argument on (a) seems to be that Obama is such a savvy politician it is hard to believe he would intentionally say something so stupid. I just don't think that's an accurate read of the away-from-the-teleprompter Obama we are finally coming to know. He's not that savvy. He's lucky — which, as they say, ain't nothin'. But he's like a guy who got called up for the World Series after winning the high school championship: now, suddenly, the fields are bigger, the crowds are enormous and more discerning, and the other team is accomplished, professional and comes...

US VISIT needs fixing — an opportunity for McCain. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential hopeful, says he has learned his lesson on immigration. His vision of a “comprehensive reform” in which at least some illegal aliens would be rewarded with legal status must, he now knows, await major deposits in the credibility bank by a government Americans do not trust to enforce the law. He says it’s time to get serious, and that the way to do that is “Border Enforcement First.” Unfortunately, that’s not very serious. Long before September 11, 2001, the government well knew that smuggling across...

[snip] ....The sales job is a myth. In reality, a McCain presidency would promise an entirely conventional, center-left, multilateralism. If you liked the second Bush term, if you liked Clintonian foreign policy, you will find much to admire in a Commander-in-Chief McCain. There would be the same agonizing over European and Islamic perceptions of America; the same doctrinaire commitment to the alchemy of democracy promotion; and the same fondness for heaping more unaccountable bureaucratic sprawl atop the already counter-productive agencies and multinational institutions that frustrate the United States at every turn. Don’t take my word for it. Read McCain’s own...

McCain MirageThe senator is not ready-for-prime-time commander-in-chief.By Andrew C. McCarthySenator John McCain’s ascendancy in the Republican presidential race has been truly remarkable. Yet, it’s no groundswell. To this point, about two out of every three primary and caucus participants have voted against him. If the Democrats and independents some states permit to crash the Grand Old Party were factored out, his standing in the Republican base would be even less impressive. Still, you have to hand it to his admirers: They have parlayed his thin support into an aura of inevitability. The glow could intensify this week, when McCain is...

Lopez: “Militant Islam may actually pose an existential threat to the United States…” you write. What must be done? McCarthy: The first step is to recognize the threat and its source. If, as I contend, the doctrine is the source, then security policy has to direct itself to the doctrine. We can’t change the doctrine ourselves. But we can protect ourselves, and increase the pressure for reform, by refusing to tolerate terrorist safe-havens; punishing regimes that facilitate jihadist organizations, particularly by giving them safe-haven; imposing restrictions on business with and immigration from Islamic countries unless they reform; punishing regimes that...

Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies? Maybe it’s because they’re so comfortable around him. He presents as the transcendent agent of “change.” Sounds platitudinous, but it’s really quite strategically vaporous. Sen. Obama is loath to get into the details of how we should change, and, as the media’s Chosen One, he hasn’t had to. But he’s not, as some hopefully dismiss him, a charismatic lightweight with a gift for sparkling the same old vapid cant. Judging from the company he chooses to keep, Obama’s change would radically alter this country. He...

On the morning of February 26, 1993, Islamic militants steered a nondescript Ryder van through the winding darkness of the parking garage under the World Trade Center. They had spent years planning this moment in secret meetings at mosques and jailhouses, in rural outposts that served as paramilitary camps, and in safehouses where explosive compounds were mixed in makeshift labs. Loaded into the van’s rear compartment was a 1,400-pound chemical bomb. The explosive detonated at a few minutes after noon. The hyper-intensive shockwave bored a six-story canyon into the bowels of the complex. Seven people were killed (one of the...

Are John McCain’s supporters trying to drive conservatives away from their candidate? Senator McCain is the inevitable Republican presidential nominee. He is headed, though, for a defeat of McGovernite dimensions if he can’t sway conservatives to get behind his candidacy. For their part, conservatives don’t want McCain, but even less do they want to spend the next four-to-eight years saying “President Obama,” let alone reliving history with another President Clinton. In short, there are the makings here for a modus vivendi, however grudging. Yet, McCain’s admirers appear to think belittling the senator’s good-faith opponents is the way to go. Theirs...

Jonathan Turley has penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times claiming that Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee to become the next attorney general, should be disqualified for failing to condemn waterboarding as torture. According to Turley, Judge Mukasey’s confirmation-hearing testimony was evasive, and the nominee flatly lied to the committee when he said he did not to know what was involved in the technique called “waterboarding.” The accusation about lying is noxious and what passes for legal reasoning in Turley’s piece is especially shameful for a George Washington University law professor. To begin with, interrogation tactics used in top-secret...

The spin about the inspector general’s report is belied by what is in the inspector general’s report. A report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general is the occasion for the latest offensive by champions of Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, the former Border Patrol agents currently serving lengthy sentences for assault and obstruction of justice in connection with their 2005 shooting of an unarmed, fleeing drug dealer. I say the report is the occasion rather than the grist for the offensive because, quite obviously, the agents’ apologists would prefer that people not actually read the report. DHS has made...

Rudy & the Social Right [Andy McCarthy] FWIW, I have to agree with Ramesh, Rich and Kathryn on this one. I don't think the Right neatly divides into social and national-security conservatives. There's too much mutual cross-over to fix a hard line. I find myself in that blur, solid on the national-security side and in sync most of the time, but not all, on the social side. Having watched the dynamic for a while, my sense is that it's the socials that drive the movement. We national-security types tend to be so confident we are right about what needs to...