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It has been a busy few weeks in Washington lately, from the president's executive order on immigration to the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. (SNIP) Ayotte said she also believes the president's executive order on immigration last week was a mistake. "Right now, as someone who wants to solve this problem, I think it makes it more difficult to address the underlying immigration problem, and he should not have acted unilaterally," she said.

Defense Secretary Favorite Ash Carter Wanted To Bomb North Korea In 2006 Armin Rosen Dec 2, 2014, 11.25 PM Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, is largely known as a behind-the-scenes player, a thinker and manager rather than a public agitator. This low profile is arguably one of Carter's top selling points. After Hagel's troubled reign at the Pentagon, which ended in a highly public falling out with the White House over policy in the Middle East and accusations of laziness and dysfunction, it's prudent for the president to want a respected...

What if Barak Obama fired the wrong guy? What if he meant to dump John Kerry, but because of a teleprompter breakdown fired Chuck Hagel instead? Stuff happens, you know. And to a lot of people around Obama, the two men resembled one another -- friends of Obama, decorated Vietnam war veterans, former U.S. senators, well-educated white guys, and so on. So the confusion is understandable. I mean it was Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna who deserved

Among Democrats, fighting is breaking out all over. The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is hurling criticisms toward the White House over Barack Obama’s handling of the recession and his myopic and politically ruinous obsession with reforming the nation’s health care system amid that economic downturn.In response, the White House took what Reuters called the “unusual step” of publicly pledging to veto an overdue plan to reform the nation’s tax code which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in the process of negotiating with House Republicans. When Obama announced his intention to extend legal status to...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Nearly two years ago, these writers urged President Obama to “Chuck Hagel.” Today, it seems, the hapless Secretary of Defense is on his way out. We wish him no ill. And we certainly don’t rejoice in his forced resignation. The timing of his dismissal could hardly be worse. It comes on the eve of another “deadline” in our dealings with an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Secretary Hagel never overcame his stumbling debut. A recent poll of national security personnel gave him an abysmal 26% approval rating. And while we...

Last August, I flew halfway around the world with Chuck Hagel to try to see what made him tick, and why he’d been chosen as Secretary of Defense at such an unsettled, seemingly crucial period for our national security. I watched Hagel in bilateral meetings with Southeast Asian ministers of defense, and I watched him take questions from American marines in Hawaii. I saw him in a bathing suit (he’s an avid morning lap-swimmer), and I saw him in a business suit, and I saw him in leisurewear on the interminable flights across the Pacific. I interviewed him twice, generating...

Chuck Hagel’s unceremonious dismissal as secretary of defense has refocused attention, once again, on the insularity of President Obama’s inner circle, its suspicion of outside voices, and its distaste for dissent. But it has changed in one way: this time, the concerns about secrecy, enforced groupthink, and high school clique behavior don’t center on Valerie Jarrett. Instead, the name that keeps surfacing is that of National Security Advisor Susan Rice. It’s true that this isn’t the first time we’re hearing of the toxic atmosphere and mismanagement at Rice’s National Security Council. But it’s striking how clearly the battle lines appear...

It’s no secret that Barack Obama wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, although his zeal for the project has often been questioned. Obama’s first action as President consisted of a directive to close the prison, but almost six years later, it’s still in operation — and relatively popular, at least in contrast with the alternatives. Obama has embarked on a strategy to close Gitmo through default by emptying it of its detainees, but there has been one impediment to that strategy. Congress requires the Secretary of Defense to attest that any released detainees pose no threat...

Michèle Flournoy, widely seen as the front-runner to replace Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense, abruptly took herself out of the running for the job Tuesday, complicating what will be one of the most important personnel decisions of President Barack Obama's second term. Flournoy, the co-founder and CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that has served as a farm league for future Obama administration officials, would have been the first female secretary of defense had she risen to the position. The news of her decision to withdraw was first reported by...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran and the lone Republican on Obama's national security team, has been fired. And John McCain's assessment is dead on. Hagel, he said, "was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions which has put us into the incredible debacle that we're in today throughout the world." Undeniably, U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles. But what were the "decisions" that produced the "incredible debacle"? Who made them? Who supported them? The first would be George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, a war...

Forget shutting down the government. Lock down the White House instead. This morning a news story alerted me to the fact that an Army base in Texas was on lockdown after a suspicious vehicle was found.“A lockdown was ordered at a U.S. Army base in San Antonio on Sunday night in what a military spokesman described as a ‘high-security incident,’” reported Reuters, “while adding there was no threat.”But since a vehicle was involved one can assume a bomb was suspected. Since an arrest was made, perhaps more than suspected. Similarly tensions are high in Ferguson Missouri, after a combination of...

The Pentagon brass placed in charge of implementing Obama’s war against ISIS are getting fed up with the short leash the White House put them on. Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army. As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained...

The White House’s defenders will attempt to knock down claims that Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel’s resignation is loaded with implications for the future of this administration. Cabinet officials come and go, they’ll note, but this White House has made a point of standing by its embattled figures. Former Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius resigned in Aril of this year, well after the controversy surrounding the botched debut of Healthcare.gov. Some speculated that the delay was an intentional effort to disassociate her resignation from the controversy that likely hastened it. Similarly, the political press was shocked when Obama...

The New York Times reports that President Barack Obama is about to dismiss Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. The reason given? That the White House recognized that "the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ." In other words: Hagel was brought on to downgrade the military radically, but now the military turns out to be necessary, after all. Yet that cannot be the only reason, absent any sign that Obama is committing to a sudden, steep increase in the defense budget, and reversing the non-sequester...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down under pressure, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and a beleaguered national security team that has struggled to stay ahead of an onslaught of global crises. The president, who is expected to announce Mr. Hagel’s resignation in a Rose Garden appearance on Monday, made the decision to ask his defense secretary — the sole Republican on his national security team — to step down last Friday after a series of meetings over the past two weeks, senior administration officials said.

The Pentagon is under fire for making a ransom payment to an Afghan earlier this year as part of a failed bid to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, according to U.S. officials. Sgt. Bergdahl was released in May after nearly five years in captivity as part of a controversial exchange for five terrorists held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ransom payment was first disclosed by Rep. Duncan Hunter in a Nov. 5 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Mr. Hunter stated in the letter that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made...

Article Posted: 06/10/2004 7:49:53 AM Ronald Reagan: The American Spirit by U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel June 10, 2004 On January 20th, 1981, Ronald Reagan, after being sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, looked out over the Mall and addressed the nation. He told us that the challenges of our day required: "Our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God’s help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. And, after all, why shouldn’t we believe...

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said his support for a filibuster against Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel never meant that he would vote against Hagel's confirmation. "I voted no because I wanted more information and I think that part of what the Senate does is try to get information about the nominees," Paul told reporters in the basement of the Capitol after Hagel's confirmation Tuesday. "I've said all along that I give the president some prerogative in choosing his political appointees." "There are many things I disagree with Chuck Hagel on, there are many things I disagree with John Kerry...

Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator on President Obama’s short list for defense secretary, came under fire again on Thursday, this time for his record on gay rights and remarks he made 14 years ago about an openly gay nominee for a diplomatic post. Since Mr. Hagel’s name emerged as a candidate for the Pentagon last week, he has been sharply criticized for his record on Iran, Israel and militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as comments he made about pro-Israel lobbying groups in Washington. The new round of criticism is focused on comments Mr. Hagel made in...

Sen. Hagel chides Bush, Kerry BY JAKE THOMPSON WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER NEW YORK - Sen. Chuck Hagel admonished both of the 2004 candidates for president in a speech Monday to Iowa's delegates to the Republican National Convention. Sen. Chuck Hagel Hagel said the candidates, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have hurt the political process by focusing on division rather than unity in the flap over Kerry's service 30 years ago in Vietnam. "We've got to unite America. We've got to bring this country together in common purpose," the Nebraska Republican told about 70 Iowa delegates, alternates and party...