Posted on 04/28/2010 9:15:12 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
President Obama's push for health care raised more than a few hackles, including the ire of 19 state attorneys general. "On behalf of the residents in Florida, and the states joining our efforts," declared Bill McCollum, who is spearheading one of the lawsuits, "we are committed to aggressively pursuing this lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to prevent this unprecedented expansion of federal powers, impact upon state sovereignty and encroachment on our freedom."
Questioning the constitutionality of Obamacare raises another question: Is flouting the law a pattern for how the president plans to govern? By law, the Pentagon is required every four years to produce a Quadrennial Defense Review. It released its report late last year, but a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing raised questions over whether the QDR actually meets what is in the law.
The law requires that the report be based on the national security strategy. The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 requires that the strategy be submitted to Congress annually. Obama failed to do that. According to the Congressional Research Service, the strategy was due in 2009, "150 days after the Inauguration."
No strategy is a real problem. By letting the QDR cart roll in front of the strategy horse, Obama is depriving both the Congress and the American people of a full and clear picture of what he is up to.
The contents of the QDR are of even greater concern. By law, the report must address 15 requirements. The report falls short on most of them.
For example, the QDR is supposed to lay out the "force structure best suited to implement that strategy at a low to moderate level of risk." Among other decisions, the QDR cut the number of troops specifically outfitted and assigned to respond to weapons of mass destruction attacks on the homeland by 3,000 -- almost 20 percent.
This is not a decision designed to keep risk "moderate or low." In fact, in most cases the QDR hides rising risks from the American people.
The QDR was also supposed to assess "the effect on force structure of the use by the armed forces of technologies anticipated to be available for the ensuing 20 years." Yet rather than look out two decades, the QDR largely rubber-stamps short-term budget decisions made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to gut the procurement budget, including cutting back on systems like the F-22 and missile defense.
There is more on climate change than on how the Pentagon is going to ensure the military does not hollow out under the anemic procurement budgets coming from the Obama administration.
It's not just the QDR that falls short. The Pentagon also recently released another congressionally mandated report -- the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Section 1251 of last year's Defense Authorization Act required the administration to report to Congress on its "plan to enhance the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile"; "modernize the nuclear weapons complex"; and "maintain delivery platforms for nuclear weapons," including a 10-year budget outline, before it submitted the "new" Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to the Senate.
The NPR failed to adequately address any of these issues. Unless the White House plans to submit another report before it sends the treaty over, it will be ignoring that legislative mandate as well.
It is difficult to have a reasoned debate over whether our commander in chief is doing the right things to keep the nation safe, free and prosperous when he skirts the laws designed to fully inform the American people of how our government plans to "provide for the common defense."
Examiner Columnist James Jay Carafano is a senior research fellow for national security at the Heritage Foundation
National Security Strategy (or lack thereof) ping.
The defendant has a past history of obstruction your honor.
Ping.
But then it should not be surprising, his very candidacy shows he thinks he is above the Highest Law of the land.
It's racist to point that out too.
BTTT
Thanks Jet.
"It is difficult to have a reasoned debate over whether our commander in chief is doing the right things to keep the nation safe, free and prosperous when he skirts the laws designed to fully inform the American people of how our government plans to "provide for the common defense.""
Thank you for the ping Jet Jaguar.
A) He doesn't know, and being the narcissist that he is can't let his (and his teams') ignorance show.
B) He has a strategy, but it would be wildly unpopular with the Military, industry, and public in general. So he is not making it public.
C) All of the above.
C.
HE has a strategy and it is NOT for public consumption. One need only look at his defense appointments to know exactly what his strategy is. There is a muslim between everything that goes in and out of the DoD, Homeland Security, and the state department that has free access to each and every classified document under heaven.
islam permeates every body of government.
While we are engrossed in focussing on his union buddies and their leftist agenda, islam stays in shadow to tear down the very Constitutional structure of this country using our own Constitution to do it.
He is unilaterally weakening our national defense and our military which borders on treason.
He has been conducting secret negotitations with terrorist countries and representatives behind the backs of his generals. Some have leaked. Many more have not.
He is trying to box Israel into a corner in favor of the islamic caliphate.
Anyone who doubts abu’s agenda and his overt collusion with the pakistani and saudi sphere of influence is stupid.
And the generals who aquiesce to it, and even knowingly participate in it, are guilty of malfeasance beyond any words I can conjure up to express it.
If true this may prompt Patreus to run for the presidency.
Someone should be pointing this out to him and begging him to run.
If that is true... OMG.
Islamic Advisor Given Carte Blanch at Pentagon [on Stephen Coughlin; incl. Muqtedar Khan, Asaf Romirowsky]
Insight Magazine
January 22—28, 2008
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4719
The Pentagon has been thrown into turmoil by an Egyptian native appointed as a senior adviser on dealings with the Muslim world.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has given his special assistant, Hesham Islam, a free hand in shaping the Pentagon’s dialogue with the Muslim world and the American Muslim community. The result has been what critics term the conversion of the Defense Department into a Muslim propaganda center.
“He’s my interlocutor,” said England. “He represents me to the international community. Hesham helps me understand people’s different perspectives and how they see things. I take his advice, and I listen to him all the time.”
Under Islam, a key counter-terrorism strategist, Stephen Coughlin, was fired, after he was deemed a “Christian zealot with a pen.” Islam has also invited Saudi-financed groups to lecture on Islam to Pentagon strategists.
“How is it that he [Islam] is allowed to call anyone a Christian zealot?” U.S. Central Command analyst Neal Harper said in an e-mail to friends. “This alone exposes his bias, his poor perception of Christians, and a complete lack of professionalism, at best. Should we instead be asking who is this guy and how did he get inside? Is he representative of those who are leading this Muslim outreach? Does Muslim outreach mean that we are not allowed to question or confront those we are trying to communicate with and the doctrine upon which they stand? When speaking the truth gets one fired, we all should be concerned and at the very least need to ask why.”
Officials said Coughlin, whose contract expires in March 2008, was the only Islamic scholar on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They said Coughlin was the only senior adviser to argue that the United States, determined not to anger Saudi Arabia, has failed to evaluate Islamic doctrine.
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