New Super Cops?

Obama signed an executive order Dec 17 that went completely unnoticed in the main stream media:

For Immediate Release December 17, 2009
Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425

EXECUTIVE ORDER
- – - – - – -
AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL
AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO
ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2©, Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

BARACK OBAMA THE WHITE HOUSE,
December 16, 2009.

Seems innocuous enough … so why would the MSM bother, right? Well, this little stroke of the pen has given INTREPOL, the international criminal police organization, the same immunity from searches,  seizures and diplomatic immunity as foreign embassies have. Why would Obama do such a thing? His order effectively gives Interpol more freedom to operate within our borders than any US agency has.

Steve Schippert and Clyde Middleton over at ThreatsWatch reported on this over a week ago. Their investigation uncovers some very troubling facts.

After initial review and discussions between the writers of this analysis, the context was spelled out plainly.

Through EO 12425, President Reagan extended to INTERPOL recognition as an “International Organization.” In short, the privileges and immunities afforded foreign diplomats was extended to INTERPOL. Two sets of important privileges and immunities were withheld: Section 2© and the remaining sections cited (all of which deal with differing taxes).

And then comes December 17, 2009, and President Obama. The exemptions in EO 12425 were removed.

Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.

Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. (Emphasis added.)

Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery (“unless such immunity be expressly waived.”)

Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.

President GW Bush refused to join the United Nations treaty that would give the International Criminal Court (ICC) authority to prosecute US citizens without due process, in violation of the US Constitution. Since then, several US citizens have been threatened with prosecution for “war crimes,” including former VP Dick Cheney.

Would amending Executive Order 12425 allow INTERPOL the ability to grab a US citizen and take them to France or the Hague? This is very scary stuff!

Follow this link to read Schippert and Middleton’s conclusions.

UPDATE: Bush didn’t refuse to join … in 2002 he “unsigned” the Rome Statute, the UN treaty establishing the ICC, that President Bill Clinton signed in 2000 and Congress subsequently refused to ratify. An aside … Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated last August the she thought it was “a great regret” that the US was not a part of the ICC.

Palin’s Critics … Debunked

Sarah Palin, the Republican’s 2008 VP nominee, underwent a trial by fire after being chosen by John McCain as his Vice Presidential running mate in August (I’ve written before about my support of her nomination.) The Democrats, lead by their publicity arm (the MSM). pummeled her unceasingly throughout the remainder of the race.

There is nothing new in such behavior; political races have engendered animosity and attacks since … probably the first humans organized the ownership of their caves.  Partisan efforts to demean their opponents is as old as dirt. The main thing that changed in this race is the main stream media’s blatant bias for Obama’s candidacy.

Really there is nothing new in their actions. They have been developing their skills since their self-proclaimed crowing achievement … the end of the Vietnam war and America’s first defeat in a foreign war.They honed their skills, following the likes of Castro, Mao, even Joseph  Gobbels (in a speech  on 9 January ,1928 to an audience of party members at the so-called “Hochschule für Politik”, a series of training talks for Nazi party members in Berlin):

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.

The traditional maxim is “if you repeat a lie often enough, people accept as fact” …

“Palin is a joke candidate only on the ticket as a sop to pro-lifers. End of story.” Frank Schaeffer, the Huffington Post

“Sorry if you’re republican, but I get embarrassed [sic] when I watch Sarah Palin.” The John Stewart Show

I could go on, but do your own damn search

What transpired before the election was expected, though I started getting miffed by Republicans clamoring for attacks on Palin to stop. MSM attacks on her were actually rallying cries for those of us supporting her … the more vile the attack … the greater our support for her.

I could also understand the negative picture of her by several “staunch Republicans.” Some never were (at least in my mind) Republicans (i.e. Christopher Hitchens). Some were just plain snippy, such as Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker (I read both columnists regularly and almost always enjoy their viewpoint, so I was very disappointed by their vitriol against Palin … was it just jealousy’s ugly head showing itself?). Other conservatives were not supportive of her nomination from early on, as written about here and here.

What really surprised me was the vile attacks on her by so-called ‘Republicans’ after the election! Anonymous ‘leaks’ from McCain staffers have painted a picture of a woman that didn’t know, for instance, there were individual states on the African continent! Outlandish pronouncement became even more outlandish … and petty:

Newsweek also reported that Palin may have spent “tens of thousands” of dollars more on wardrobe expenses than the $150,000 that was reported in the days before Election Day. The money allegedly went toward clothes for her and her family from high-end stores, even though she was originally told to buy just three suits and hire a stylist for the Republican National Convention.

One aide called the spree “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” according to the magazine. Palin also reportedly asked to speak at McCain’s concession speech Tuesday, and was denied.

First … why would the McCain staff lash out at someone in their charge for the last two-pulse months of the campaign, and second, why is every single statement by those staff members front page news?

To the first:

“McCain and Palin lost the election! Finished second! Bad news! Somebody’s to blame! Where can the blame for the loss be placed? How about that dumb, hick outsider? After all, we Washington campaign  insiders have to protect our positions for the next election cycle in two years!”

It’s called CYA. The only difference is that we get to see it on the front page of our newspaper (actually I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in years … how about on our browser when we pull up Fox News) or in glorious color on our 1080p as we tune in to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, ABC, CBS. This is nothing more than small people trying to shift the blame of their failure to someone they never respected from the get-go! This is also an issue that is core to the problems haunting the Republican party, and I’ll post more on this soon.

On the second point:

The MSM has been perfecting the art of targeted personal destruction for years. As mentioned earlier, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a fact. “Bush lied.” … “America is a racist society.” …”Bush is the stupidest President in history.” I was sucked in by this tactic years ago when the MSM pilloried Dan Quail, George H. W. Bush’s VP.  Dan Quail was no more or less of an intellect than any other national politician on either side of the aisle (with the possible exception of Newt Gingrich, the brightest thinker to have passed through Washington for the past three decades). However, if every gaff is the lead story on the six o’clock news and repeated in every major newspaper across the country, you eventually begin to look pretty stupid. Especially when there is never a similar story on the gaffs made by a Democrat politician.

Sarah Palin, along with the likes of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, are people we conservatives will be looking to for leadership over the next several years. What is important is our need to learn how to better counter the personal attacks perpetrated by the MSM and denounce those in our own party when they adopt the slimeball tactics of the Liberia Left and the MSM … but then I repeat myself.

Gotcha didn’t Get’er

Sarah Palin’s first trial by fire interview with Charlie Gibson ended with her demonstrating she is intelligent, quick, and shouldn’t fall for the ‘gotcha’ tactics the MSM is attempting to use to destroy her. Gibson fell down:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

Allahpundit points out what Palin actually said was:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Bright, bright woman … and she doesn’t come across as some intelect that loves to make sure onlookers see her brilliance. She is strengthening her’s and McCain’s lead every time she takes the opposition down a peg. I love it!!!!!!

UPDATE: Peggy Noonan wrote a great peice on how Palin is impacting the race.

After the past 10 days, it is not remarkable that Mr. McCain has caught up with Mr. Obama. It is amazing that Mr. Obama is still roughly even with Mr. McCain.

There is no denying that Mr. Obama is in a bad place, that he must now be considered the underdog, that he’s wearing Loser-Glo. The slide started with the Rick Warren interviews in August, just as America was starting to pay attention. Verdict? McCain: normal. Obama: odd.

Then Mrs. Palin, and the catastrophe of the Democratic and media response to her. Books will be written about this, but because it’s so recent, and so known, we’re almost not absorbing how huge it was, and is. Here was the central liberal mistake: They used the atom bomb just a few days in. They used it so brutally, and yet so ineptly, in a way so oblivious to the true contours of the field, that the radiation blew back over their own lines. They used it without preliminary diplomatic talks, multilateral meetings or Security Council debate. They just went boom. And it boomeranged.

The atom bomb was personal and sexual perfidy, backwoods knuckle-draggin’ ma and pa saying, Tell the neighbors the baby’s ours. Then the ritual abuse of the 17-year-old girl. Then the rest of it—bad mother, religious weirdo. (On this latter it must be noted that Mrs. Palin never told a church that the Iraq war was God’s will; she asked them to pray that it was God’s will. It wasn’t the sound of Republican hubris, it was the sound of Christian humility: We can’t know the mind of God, we can only pray we are in accord with it.)

I highly recommend you read the whole peice.

Waitin’ for the ‘Gotcha’

I ran across a post by Jim Teacher this evening that provides some great advice for Sarah Palin when … not if … the drive-by media tries to trap her during an interview with a question for which she doesn’t know the answer.

… her answer to hostile interviewers who want to play Pop Quiz — which is pretty much all of them — should be along these lines: “You do realize that presidents and vice presidents have support staffs, don’t you? When a vice president needs an answer to something like that, she gets it almost before she finishes the question. I can send you a box set of The West Wing if you need a refresher. What a great show. It also portrayed the importance of speechwriters in presidential politics, which apparently our distinguished opponents thought everyone had forgotten the other night. Maybe because real-life speechwriters don’t tend to look like Rob Lowe? Or maybe only Democrats are allowed to have them.

I’ll love seeing her in action these next few weeks and months!