So what do we learn?

He’s not a real conservative.   But then we never thought he was.  The nice thing is that we now have a resurgence of conservatism not seen since the days of Reagan.

He thinks Hillary has a fat ass, but then that opinion is shared by most the free world.   Come on does anyone seriously think it’s a skinny ass?

He thought that Sarah Palin was out of her league being picked for VP.   Again not a isolated opinion.  He thought the same of Obama, we’re unfortunately finding how true that is now.

On Joe Biden: “If bull was currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire.”    Who could possibly disagree with that?

“WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

Most former officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations about the case involved classified information. They agreed to talk about the internal discussions only after the memorandum was released earlier this year.

New information has recently emerged about the deliberations and divisions in the administration over some of the most controversial policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, like the decision to use brutal interrogation methods on Qaeda detainees.

Former officials in the administration said this debate was not as bitter as others during Mr. Bush’s first term. The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.

Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.

Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

“Frankly, it was a bit of a turf war,” said one former senior administration official. “For a number of people, crossing the line of having intelligence or military activities inside the United States was not worth the risk.”

Mr. Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties. The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain, pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.”

Once again this shows quite the opposite of what you might have heard from leftwingers over the years that Bush woke up every morning thinking about how to lock up the populace and strip them of their constitutional rights. Instead as we’ve seen before – and in spite of the fact that the Lackawanna Six were terrorists, Bush aired on the side of the constitution.

A far cry than when Clinton/Reno used the military equipment and other support to raid the Waco compound.

“In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.

Many of the actions discussed in the Oct. 23, 2001, memo to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s chief lawyer, William Haynes, were never actually taken.

But the memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—along with others made public for the first time Monday—illustrates with new details the extraordinary post-9/11 powers asserted by Bush administration lawyers. Those assertions ultimately led to such controversial policies as allowing the waterboarding of terror suspects and permitting warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens—steps that remain the subject of ongoing investigations by Congress and the Justice Department. The memo was co-written by John Yoo, at the time a deputy attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo, now a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has emerged as one of the central figures in those ongoing investigations.

In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”

Of course as usual Isikoff and the rest of the lunes on the left forget history and how FDR did those very same things, even going as far as creating an Office of Censorship, which not only shuttered the press but controlled and even told them what and what not to write. More recently during the Clinton administration which was famous for warrantless searches of public housing units, warrantless drug testing in public schools, a weakening of the right to trial by jury, and expanded property forfeiture.

Technorati Tags: Bush, 9/11 Memos

Far more beloved than oversampled polls could ever admit, and I guarantee you after a year of Obama floundering and fumbling with the economy will be greatly missed.

See if I’m not right.

Technorati Tags: George W. Bush, Bush

A couple of days ago the Washington Post – who ran it’s share of weighted polls – had this surprising tidbit in a story at The Fix:

“Bush’s 33 percent job approval rating was slightly higher than the 29 percent he averaged during the final year of his term in the Post/ABC but far below the 51 percent approval rating he averaged during his entire presidency — a number that soared in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 but remained mired in lows 30s for much of the final years of his Administration.

This compares unfavorably to Post polling for past presidents on their way out the door. Bill Clinton had a 65 percent approval rating at the end of his term and averaged 57 percent for his eight years. George H.W. Bush left office (involuntarily) with a 56 percent approval rating and a career average of 63 percent. Ronald Reagan stood at 64 percent in the final Post poll and averaged 57 percent for his eight years in office.”

Of course – with the exception of his father – none of the prior presidents term included a war which historically counts for at least a 10 point negative differential in ratings

Nevertheless, as Obama’s first poll number is at 68 percent – before he did anything except to flub the oath – time will tell whether or not that number will sustain. As he is already stumbling out of the gate and with ill conceived plan to shut gitmo, attack the economic crisis with deficit spending, I imagine he’s looking at the 30s before the year is out.

It’s moving, it’s true and it’s appropriate.

Unlike the despicable display we witnessed yesterday during the inauguration, this is how you treat an ex-President, with respect.

Technorati Tags: George Bush, Time Magazine

“On his last full day in office, President Bush commuted the controversial sentences of two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug runner in 2005.

The imprisonment of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean had sparked outcry from critics who said the men were just doing their jobs and were punished too harshly. They had been sentenced to 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively.

Their sentences will now expire on March 20 of this year.

Ramos and Compean were sentenced in connection with the shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was shot in the buttocks while trying to flee along the Texas border. He admitted smuggling several hundred pounds of marijuana on the day he was shot and pleaded guilty last year to drug charges related to two other smuggling attempts.

Nearly the entire congressional delegation from Texas and other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle pleaded with Bush to grant them clemency. Conservatives hailed Bush’s decision Monday.

“The whole thing was ridiculous from beginning to end, and two years was way too long for them to serve,” said radio talk show host Laura Ingraham. “Conservatives are very happy across the country.”

Bush has always prided himself on one who keeps the law and might have felt this was really the only way he could right the wrong done these two officers. Yet had Bush upheld existing immigration laws these officers might not have found themselves in this situation in the first place.

Via Robert Stacy McCain responding to this statement of a Senior Administration Official:

“Bush didn’t pardon the men for their crimes, but decided instead to commute their sentences because he believed they were excessive and that they had already suffered the loss of their jobs, freedom and reputations, a senior administration official said.

The action by the president, who believes the border agents received fair trials and that the verdicts were just, does not diminish the seriousness of their crimes, the official said.”

F-U, senior administration official! Their “crimes” were what most Americans would call “doing their jobs,” to protect our nation against invasion by foreign drug smugglers. And if your boss had been true to his oath to uphold our nation’s laws, maybe vile scum like Osvaldo Aldrete Davila wouldn’t have had the idea they had a green light at the border.

Technorati Tags: Ramos, Compean, Bush, Commute

“

As the clock ticks down on his presidency, George W. Bush has shown few signs he plans to indulge in the frenzy of last-minute pardons that marked Bill Clinton’s final hours in the Oval Office.

But Bush could quickly leap back into the spotlight in the next two days if he issues a blanket pardon immunizing CIA and military interrogators, as well as their bosses, from criminal prosecution over harsh treatment of prisoners from the war on terror.

“I’m sure he’s under pressure from some people to issue blanket pardons,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told Politico. “I don’t think it’s fevered imagination. I think it’s reasonable speculation.”

Bush is also facing pressure from conservative allies, who see pardons of former Bush administration officials and some others as a more realistic possibility. At the top of their lists: Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, still under investigation for his role in a series of U.S. attorney firings.

Hey, it’s not like Clinton pardoning fugitives and terrorist fer gawds sake. In any case I say that Bush issues a blanket pardon for Obama and Biden. Chances are – considering their gaffes and associations so far – four years down the road they’ll need it.

Technorati Tags: Bush Pardons, Bush

“All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

“The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My Administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing Federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence, and funding crisis pregnancy programs. In 2002, I was honored to sign into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which extends legal protection to children who survive an abortion attempt. I signed legislation in 2003 to ban the cruel practice of partial-birth abortion, and that law represents our commitment to building a culture of life in America. Also, I was proud to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, which allows authorities to charge a person who causes death or injury to a child in the womb with a separate offense in addition to any charges relating to the mother.

“America is a caring Nation, and our values should guide us as we harness the gifts of science. In our zeal for new treatments and cures, we must never abandon our fundamental morals. We can achieve the great breakthroughs we all seek with reverence for the gift of life.

“The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2009, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

“IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

“GEORGE W. BUSH”

Technorati Tags: Sanctity of Life Day, George Bush

“(CBS) President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush’s final approval rating at 22 percent.

Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.

Mr. Bush’s final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago.

The rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to CBS News polling.

Recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than Mr. Bush. His father George H.W. Bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while Jimmy Carter’s rating was 44 percent.

Harry Truman had previously had the lowest end-of-term approval at 32 percent, as measured by Gallup.”

Of course as you know CBS has consistently run 2-1 Democrat weighted polls since 2004 – without exception. Ridiculous from a polling standpoint, but nevertheless not surprising. One of the reasons C-BS and the Ny Times are laying off people and looking at the books is that they have no idea how the American people feel.

In fact Mr. Bush has a greater following that C-BS and the Ny Times combined.

“Views of Mr. Bush’s popularity are highly partisan. Only 6 percent of Democrats approve of the job he has done as president, while 57 percent of Republicans approve. Eighteen percent of independents approve.”

So again, those who never voted for him still don’t like him.

Technorati Tags: Polls, Politics, Bush