Re: The Left

"I agree with the Obama administration's decision to kill the American-born al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. What I can't fathom is why the administration agrees with me. ... The Constitution empowers the president to put down insurrection, and what was Awlaki if not an insurrectionist?

... But here's where I am confused. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the administration is committed to treating captured terrorists as criminals, entitled to all of the rights and privileges of a civilian criminal trial. It seems the Defense Department disagrees, given that some lesser-known prisoners are allegedly kept on ships -- call them floating Gitmos -- without trials. Meanwhile, President Obama keeps ordering that the more famous terrorists be killed on sight. That's fine with me. But as far as I can tell, he's never disagreed with Holder's view about the need for civilian trials for terrorists we don't kill, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... If captured alive, terrorists pose political problems for Obama. Where do we put them? How do we interrogate them? And, most pressingly, how do we try them? I don't think those are tough questions. But Obama does. So he prefers to kill these people outright, avoiding the questions altogether." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Eric Holder's Department of Injustice

"Somewhere, Scooter Libby must be scratching his head. He was indicted and convicted simply because his recall of when a meeting occurred differed from others.

He didn't lie about a gun-running operation that led to the deaths of two American agents and at least 200 Mexicans. But Attorney General Eric Holder did, according to memos obtained by CBS News and Fox News. They show Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Fast and Furious gun-running operation. He told House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa he was 'not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks.' Holder learned of the operation as early as July 2010 in a memo from the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center informing him of an operation run by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force out of the Phoenix ATF office, under which 'straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels.' ... Holder, quite simply, has lied to Congress, although the defense now being offered is he didn't understand Issa's question, doesn't read all the memos sent to him or was otherwise out of the loop. It is perhaps the first time incompetence has been offered as a defense to possible charges of criminality. ... As Issa told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham last month: 'We have a paper trail of so many people knowing that the only way the attorney general didn't know is he made sure he didn't want to know. ... But if you don't want to know something of this sort, then you shouldn't have the job he has.' We'd go a step further. Baseball star Roger Clemens was equally vehement when he told a House committee in 2008: 'Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH.' Clemens was indicted for lying to Congress. The same should go for Eric Holder."

Faith & Family

"Why is it so hard to become a better person? I have -- unfortunately -- come up with 13 reasons. 1. Most people don't particularly want to be good. ... 2. Confusion exists about what goodness is. ... 3. Goodness is not about intentions. ... 4. We don't learn how to be good. ... 5. We think too highly of ourselves. ... 6. We think we will be taken advantage of. ... 7. There are few personal models. ... 8. We don't believe that there are rewards for being good. ... 9. We have to battle our nature. ... 10. 'I'm a victim.' ... 11. Few people were raised to be good people. ... 12. In our formative years, the least impressive are rewarded. ... 13. We have psychological blocks. ... The sad irony is that while goodness is the thing that everyone wants most from everyone else, few people want it most for themselves." --radio talk-show host Dennis Prager