Byron York

GOP responds: White House 'trying to pass the buck'

I've just been in touch with Sen. Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner. I asked all to comment on the new White House accusation that critics who question the Obama administration's decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are "serv[ing] the goals of al Qaeda." "The only one making this political is the White House," says Bond in a statement. "The administration must do better, because trying to pass the buck for their dangerous decisions and divulging sensitive information to al...

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White House: People who criticize us are helping al Qaeda

In a brief op-ed in USA Today, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan charges that critics who question the Obama administration's decision to grant Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are "serv[ing] the goals of al Qaeda." "Too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points," Brennan writes. "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda." Now, however, those critics are questioning whether Brennan is trying to score a few political points of his own. First, Brennan supports the administration's position, which most critics find absurd, that the initial 50-minute...

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GOP winning war over Miranda rights for terrorists

Even as the administration defends its decision to grant accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, the president himself is hinting that things might be done differently in the future.

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GOP fires back: White House did not tell us about reading Abdulmutallab his rights

Republican lawmakers are denying a charge made by top White House counterterrorism official John Brennan that they were briefed about -- and did not object to -- the decision to offer full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. On "Meet the Press," Brennan said that on Christmas night, just hours after Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253, Brennan called GOP Senators Mitch McConnell and Christopher Bond, as well as Republican Representatives John Boehner and Peter Hoekstra, and told them that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody. "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point," Brennan said. "They...

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White House: Top GOP leaders didn't object to reading Abdulmutallab his rights

UPDATE: All GOP officials lawmakers deny Brennan's charge; see details here. Top Obama counterterrorism official John Brennan is blasting Republican lawmakers, accusing them of hypocrisy and of making a "political football" of the administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Appearing on "Meet the Press," Brennan said that on Christmas night, just hours after Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253, Brennan called top Republican lawmakers, telling them that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody. "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point," Brennan said. "They didn't...

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Poll: People don't want Obama's new regulations

A new Gallup poll, taken after Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to advocate a series of new government regulations, finds that most Americans are worried about giving the federal government new regulatory powers, and a large majority do not want to see the government become more involved in regulating and controlling business. Gallup asked, "Which worries you more? Too much regulation of business by the government or not enough regulation of business by the government?" Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed say they're more worried about too much government regulation, while 37 percent say they're more worried by not enough regulation. (Six percent say they have no...

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Obama's super-bipartisan Super Bowl party

Earlier today, CNN posted a story headlined, "President Obama to throw bipartisan Super Bowl party." Well, it turns out the party will indeed be bipartisan, because Obama, who is under no obligation to invite any Republicans to his party, will invite one: Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao. Cao, you remember, is the only GOP lawmaker in the whole Congress to vote for the Democratic health care proposal (although he has said he would not vote for it again if he had to accept the version passed by the Senate). That will make the White House Super Bowl party precisely as bipartisan as the health care bills, at least so far. The White House just sent out a list of invitees to the White House Super...

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Obama: 'She insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt'

Yes, those are the words of the president, last night at the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. After listing his administration's accomplishments and vowing that "our most urgent task is job creation," Obama pledged to keep fighting for a national health care system. "We knew this was hard," Obama said. And then he described a letter he received from a campaign worker who suffered from breast cancer and has since died: I got a letter -- I got a note today from one of my staff -- they forwarded it to me -- from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn't have...

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Purple Haze

Attorney General Eric Holder has been slow to provide information to Republican lawmakers -- and sometimes Democrats, too -- about some of his most controversial decisions: the plan to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York, the decision to grant full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the effort to shut down the Guantanamo terrorist detention facility. Holder has been so slow to respond to some congressional inquiries that all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent a letter to chairman Patrick Leahy asking that Holder appear before the committee "without delay." No word from...

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Who are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons?

"The Bush administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges," writes Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter to Republican critics in Congress. The letter is part of the Obama administration's aggressive defense of its decision to grant full American constitutional rights to al Qaeda soldier Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day bomber. That defense boils down to one sentence: Bush did it, too. Republicans on Capitol Hill object. They argue that one of the reasons some terrorists were handled in the criminal justice system is that it took George W. Bush and Congress years to establish a military...

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Administration changes story on Christmas Day bomber

A number of news organizations are reporting that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the al Qaeda soldier accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet, is now cooperating with authorities and has provided useful intelligence to terrorist investigators. The Washington Post, citing "Obama administration sources," reports Abdulmutallab "has been providing FBI interrogators with useful intelligence about his training and contacts since last week." The Politico quotes a "law enforcement source" saying Abdulmutallab has provided "useful, current intelligence." And ABC News, citing a "senior administration official," reports that the intelligence "has been disseminated throughout the...

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Obama on health care: 'We're in the red zone -- we've got to punch it through'

Speaking at a town hall in Nashua, New Hampshire today, President Obama said he believes the Democrats' health care proposal is on "the five yard line" and just needs one final push to become law. "We're in the red zone," Obama said. "We've got to punch it through." Obama said 90 percent of the bills passed by the House and the Senate are fine, with just 10 percent presenting problems that need to be fixed. "We were just about to clean those up," Obama said, "and then the Massachusetts election happened and everybody said, 'Oh, oh, oh, it's over. Well no, it's not...

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In sex scandal, Edwards braced for media onslaught that never came

Two weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the National Enquirer published a detailed story reporting that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had had an affair, and that the woman involved, campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, was pregnant, and that Edwards had arranged for an aide to falsely claim to be the father, and that Hunter and the aide and the aide's family were being taken care of financially by a wealthy Edwards backer. At the time, Edwards was a real contender in the Democratic presidential race, so when the Enquirer story was published, the Edwards camp prepared for what some believed would be an onslaught of media scrutiny. But it didn't come. At the time, Edwards...

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GOP presses Holder on Justice's terrorism policies

To Charles Grassley, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the questions seem pretty simple. How many of the political appointees now in charge of terrorist detainee issues at the Obama Justice Department were, not too long ago, lawyers and activists working on behalf of those very detainees? Who are they? Have they removed themselves from cases involving their former clients? The questions are particularly critical now, as Attorney General Eric Holder struggles to find a place to hold the trial of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If Holder goes ahead with a KSM trial somewhere in the United States, we’ll likely see other Guantanamo inmates being...

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NYT: John McCain is the 'unpatriotic opposition'

From columnist Frank Rich: If Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition. The rest of Rich's column is here. In the past, Rich has bristled at Republicans who, in his eyes, sought to cast Democrats as unpatriotic. In June 2008, Rich blasted McCain for trying "to create a smoke screen by smearing Barack Obama as unpatriotic." In August 2007, he hit "the right's vigilantes" who Rich said "branded [as] unpatriotic" a program on ABC listing the names of American servicemembers who died in Iraq. In June 2006, Rich slammed President George W. Bush for "implying that his critics are unpatriotic, if not...

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After 'Question Time,' GOP lawmaker blasts Obama

One of President Obama's more striking criticisms of Republicans during his visit to the GOP retreat Friday was the accusation of hypocrisy about stimulus spending. "Let's face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities," Obama said. Later, he emphasized the point, adding, "As I said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon-cuttings for the same projects that you voted against." Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King attended the session. Later, via e-mail, I asked him about the president's remark. "On its face, it's offensive to me," King answered. "I have been attacked for getting the least of the Iowa Delegation out of...

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A setback for drive to punish Bush-era 'war criminals'

One cherished goal of legal activists on the left is to punish the "war criminals" who helped shape terrorist interrogation policies during the Bush administration. Some of those activists now work in the Obama Justice Department and have been hoping the Department would find two Bush-era lawyers in particular, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of professional misconduct -- a move that would likely result in both men facing disbarment proceedings. The activists are sure to be disappointed in a new report by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, who say a still-unreleased report from the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility "clears the Bush administration lawyers who...

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Has Obama become bored with being president?

This is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job. He's in his second year as president, and he's discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can't do everything he wants to do, like remake America. Doing stuff is hard. In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it's prompted him to think about moving on. Begin with his first serious job, as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama got a little done, but quickly became frustrated with small achievements. "He didn't see organizing making any significant changes in things," Jerry Kellman, the organizer who hired him, told me in 2008. What Obama wanted was political power, and that is what...

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Obama: You liked my speech? Please send money.

About an hour after the end of his State of the Union address, in which he called for an end to the partisan conflict that has plagued his first year in office, President Obama sent out a political fundraising appeal through his permanent campaign organization, Organizing for America. "I just finished delivering my first State of the Union address," Obama wrote in the letter, which was headlined "I cannot do it alone." "I set out an urgent plan for restoring economic security for struggling middle class families. This is my top priority, but I cannot do it alone -- and that's why I'm writing to you now." Obama discussed his economic proposals and also vowed not to walk away from the...

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Disaster poll: Nearly 70 percent say dump Dems' health care bill

Just when it appeared that the numbers for the Democratic health care proposals passed by the House and Senate couldn't get any worse -- they have. A new poll by CNN and Opinion Research, taken from January 22 to January 24, shows that 69 percent of respondents say Congress should dump the current Democratic health care proposals and either write an entirely new health bill or stop working on the subject altogether. "What do you think Congress should do on health care?" CNN asked. "Pass a health care bill similar to the legislation that Congress has been working on for the past year, start work on an entirely new bill, or stop working on any bills that would change the country's health...

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In speech, Obama will push immigration reform -- but how hard?

Of all the issues that could add to the self-inflicted wounds of Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House, comprehensive immigration reform is perhaps at the top of the list. After the health care fiasco, the unpassable-in-the-Senate cap-and-trade legislation, and lingering public unhappiness with the stimulus, would Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid really turn their attention to comprehensive immigration reform in this election year? The answer is yes. The latest indication that Obama plans to move ahead on his commitment to comprehensive reform is in a set of videos released by the White House to mark the president's first year in office. The videos, in which...

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Senators rebel over treating Detroit airline terrorist as a civilian

A bipartisan revolt is brewing in the Senate over the Obama administration's handling of accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. A small but growing number of lawmakers is asking the president to undo what many regard as the disastrously wrong-headed decision to grant Abdulmutallab full American constitutional rights....

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Key senators: Revoke Abdulmutallab's civilian status, resume terrorist interrogation

A number of key senators, including Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Susan Collins, ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, are calling on the Obama administration to revoke the civilian status -- and full American constitutional rights -- given to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Reacting to news reports that Abdulmutallab was questioned for just 50 minutes before being read his Miranda rights and given a court-appointed lawyer, the senators say President Obama has the authority to rescind Abdulmutallab's civilian status...

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Abdulmutallab interrogated for less than an hour; White House defends handling of terrorist case

The White House is not disputing a report that FBI agents questioned accused Northwest Airlines bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for just 50 minutes before deciding to grant him the right to remain silent and provide him with a court-appointed lawyer -- a decision that led Abdulmutallab to stop talking and provide no more information. The news came in an Associated Press reconstruction of Abdulmutallab's first hours in custody. The AP reported that Abdulmutallab "repeatedly made incriminating statements" to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who originally took him into custody. Then Abdulmutallab made more statements to doctors who were treating him for burns...

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Holder hasn't revealed Justice Dept lawyers who defended Gitmo detainees

You may remember that more than two months ago, amid the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to, and hold a civilian trial for, accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder about Justice Department lawyers who before joining the Obama/Holder team had represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups representing them. Grassley pointed to one high-ranking Obama Justice official who formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver and another who works on detainee issues despite previous advocacy for detainees. "This prior representation, I think, creates a...

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Obama lashes out: Health care hit 'buzz saw,' 'ugly process,' opponents 'scaring the bejesus out of everybody'

In his remarks at a town hall in Elyria, Ohio today, President Obama vowed to keep pushing for a national care bill, although he conceded that his efforts hit "a little bit of a buzz saw this week" -- a reference to the election of Massachusetts senator-elect Scott Brown and the subsequent collapse of Democratic support for immediate passage of the health care measure passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. Obama did not go into detail about what went wrong, choosing instead to lash out at opponents of the Democratic plan. "It's just an ugly process," Obama told the crowd. "You're running headlong into special interests, and armies of lobbyists, and partisan politics that's aimed at...

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On bombing suspect, tough questions for Eric Holder

It seems like a pretty simple question. Who made the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused terrorist arrested for trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, as an everyday criminal, as opposed to an enemy combatant? After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term "war on terror," the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with...

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Lawmakers to Holder: Who decided to give Miranda rights to accused Detroit bomber?

All seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking to learn who made the decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day terrorist bomber, as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant. On the same day he tried to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines plane in Detroit, Abdulmutallab, who was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen, was informed of his Miranda right to remain silent and given a government-paid lawyer. He then refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities. The letter is signed by GOP Sens. Jeff Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and Tom...

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FBI Director: I wasn't consulted on how to charge Abdulmutallab

FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee today and revealed that he was not consulted on the question of whether to handle accused Detroit airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a defendant in the civilian justice system or as an enemy combatant. Abdulmutallab, who was trained by al Qaeda -- with whom President Obama says the United States is at war -- was charged as a civilian and given Miranda rights and a taxpayer-supplied lawyer. At a Judiciary Committee hearing today, ranking Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked Mueller, "Who made the decision that Abdulmutallab was going to be treated as a criminal rather than an enemy belligerent?" The...

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With new GOP strength in Senate, will Obamacare die in House?

But now that Brown actually is the 41st GOP senator, the most important number in politics is 218 -- as in, can House Speaker Nancy Pelosi amass a majority of 218 votes for House Democrats to pass the health care bill already approved by the Senate, thus sending it to Obama's desk to be signed into law.

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