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I've read both speeches. Obama's is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor--platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. This sentence was revealing: "On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004." "Opposed the release"? Doesn't he mean "decided not to permit the release"? He's president. He's not just a guy participating in a debate. But he's more comfortable as a debater, not as someone who takes responsibility for decisions. Cheney's is the speech...

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated liberals are asking why a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House can't manage to close the Guantanamo prison or keep new gun-rights laws from passing. After all, President Barack Obama pledged to shut down the military detention center on Cuba for suspected terrorists. And Democratic control of the government would suggest that any gun legislation leads to tighter controls on weapons, not expanded use. Even as they grouse, however, liberal lawmakers acknowledge that no one factor explains last week's disappointing back-to-back votes in Congress. The Obama administration is focused on other priorities, they say. Party leaders don't want...

Plus: Obama tells the big lie in Annapolis speech. Promises America will be safe if only we follow his lead!The big news story of last week was the contest of dueling speeches between President Obama and Vice President Cheney. Video and text highlights of Cheney's speech are found here.I've already pointed out how Obama hastily announced his speech at the National Archives standing in front of a copy of the U.S. Constitution at the same time as Cheney's long planned address at the American Enterprise Institute. In the wake of Democrats in Congress refusing to grant Obama a blank check...

Debate over the Guantanamo prison dominated the Sunday morning talk shows, as Democrats insisted they are committed to closing the controversial facility. Democrats said prisoners could be safely held at high security U.S. prisons, a proposal attacked by Republicans as compromising national security. The debate continued to highlight divisions in both parties on what to do with the 240 detainees left in Cuba. The issue, left over from the Bush administration, has emerged as one of the toughest challenges for President Obama. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) both said 347 convicted terrorists are already...

was a tale of two speeches. One was clear, direct and powerful. Barack Obama gave the other speech. It would have been heresy to write those words any other time, so commanding has President Obama been with the spoken word. But the real Mission Impossible was to imagine that wheezy old Dick Cheney would be the speaker to best Obama. Yet that happened last week, and I predict it won't be a fluke. From here on out, results will increasingly trump the sensation of Obama's high-toned lectures every time.

It was a tale of two speeches. One was clear, direct and powerful. Barack Obama gave the other speech. It would have been heresy to write those words any other time, so commanding has President Obama been with the spoken word. But the real Mission Impossible was to imagine that wheezy old Dick Cheney would be the speaker to best Obama. Yet that happened last week, and I predict it won't be a fluke. From here on out, results will increasingly trump the sensation of Obama's high-toned lectures every time. Especially if they are as dreary as last Thursday's, which...

As President Obama defends his national security strategy, he faces a daunting challenge. He must convince the country that it is in safe hands despite warnings to the contrary from the right, and at the same time persuade the skeptical left that it is enough to amend his predecessor’s approach rather than abandon it.Arguably on the defensive over policy for the first time since taking office, Mr. Obama is gambling that his oratorical powers can reassure the public that bringing terrorism suspects to prisons on American soil will not put the public in danger. At the same time, he must...

PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low. Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick.

If there was one thing both presidential candidates agreed on last fall, it was the need to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But almost as soon as President Obama took office and ordered the camp shuttered within a year, Congressional Republicans — including his former opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona — saw a singular political opportunity. “Where are we going to send them?” Mr. McCain said in an interview on Fox News, just days after the inauguration. “That decision I would have made before I’d announced the closure.” Referring to the not-in-my-back-yard uproar over the proposed...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes... According to New York state corrections records, alleged ringleader James Cromitie and David Williams gave...

PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low. Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick. But when it comes to federal judges, we can't be so sure. The reason we sent the terrorists to Guantanamo in the first place, rather than bring them onto US soil, was never really connected to worries that they might escape. The Bush administration feared, quite correctly,...

Two speeches, two very different men. Former Vice President Cheney seeks no political future. He speaks from the vantage of one who witnessed the killing of our fellow citizens, who deliberated and defined the strategy that would successfully prevent further murders of our fellow Americans. His address today was direct, well-reasoned, and convincing. President Obama, on the other hand, continues to speak as a politician. Contrary to the advice I and others gave him, he has placed two of his top political consultants in the West Wing, looking to them to opine on matters of national security. Barack Obama is...

Fending off criticism from human-rights and civil-rights groups at a private White House meeting Wednesday, a frustrated President Obama complained about the "mess" he'd been left by his predecessor. The exchange came during an hour-and-15-minute "off the record" session in the White House cabinet room that highlighted growing tensions between the president and his liberal base. While the White House session was billed as an effort by the president to listen to his critics on the left, some of them left disappointed. According to three sources who attended the meeting, Obama reiterated his intention to retain a version of the...

Put Barack Obama in front of a teleprompter and one thing is certain — he’ll make himself appear the most reasonable person in the room. Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can’t get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace. This is how Obama, whose position on abortion is indistinguishable from NARAL’s, can speechify on abortion at Notre Dame and come away sounding like a pitch-perfect centrist. It’s natural, then, that his speech at the National Archives on national security should superficially sound soothing,...

To follow up on yesterday’s dueling speeches on national security, we asked Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, who he thought was winning the public debate–President Obama or Dick Cheney?Cheney is winning. The old question was whether torture and secret prisons and Abu Ghraib photo fests were a good idea. Cheney’s team was losing that argument, big time. The new question is having put a bunch of guys in an overseas prison and poked and irritated them for six years, should we release them into your congressional district. These now somewhat grumpy detainees Obama promises will be kept...

The debate over what to do with the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center got more complicated this week when the FBI foiled an alleged terror plot in New York. The arrest of four men Wednesday on charges that they plotted to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down military airplanes served as a reminder that there are terror cells operating in the United States. It also provided evidence to some lawmakers that closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay or releasing any of its 240 detainees into the U.S. federal prison system would further endanger national...

What if you gave it a name like "Shining Sands" or "Ocean Breeze" instead of ... Gitmo? The prison center at Guantanamo Bay is destined to be closed down in January because "the name itself is a condemnation" of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday. But while it has become a "taint" on America's reputation, according to Gates, the prison facility in Cuba is at the same time "probably one of the finest prisons in the world today," he said Friday on NBC's "Today" show. So could Gitmo be saved with a drastic rebranding effort? If you...

Man receives 2½-year sentence for Toronto bomb plot involvement Credit for time served allows man to be freed A man belonging to the so-called Toronto 18 terror group was sentenced to 2½ years in prison Friday, becoming the first person convicted in a domestic terrorism trial in Canada. The judge in Brampton, Ont., who sentenced the 21-year-old man declared that, with credit for his time already spent in custody, the man had served his time and could be freed. The man was found guilty in September 2008 of participation in a terrorist group that was plotting to blow up buildings...

By: Scott Ott Examiner Columnist | 5/22/09 4:57 AM News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher In an effort to shut down the U.S. Naval Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thereby restoring America's moral standing in the world, President Barack Obama today declared some 240 enemy combatants held at Gitmo to be 'human fetuses'. In an executive order, the president said, "Since I ordered Gitmo shut down, and people don't want us to bring the inmates here, the only way to extract them from the facility is to change their legal status to one that offers us more choices."...

The top White House spokesman says President Barack Obama doesn't have any particular problem with former Vice President Dick Cheney speaking out on counterterrorism policy or any other issues. Press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked Friday if Obama resented Cheney making a speech almost at the same time as his wide-ranging defense of the decision to close down the prison at Guantanamo. Gibbs said he didn't know what the protocol was for former vice presidents speaking often and loudly in public shortly after leaving office, although he noted that former President George W. Bush has decided to mostly remain out...