From Toby Harnden’s column in The Daily Telegraph:

There is no more solemn duty for an American commander-in-chief than the marshalling of  “every element of our national power” – the phrase Obama himself used on Monday – to protect the people of the United States. In that key respect, Obama failed on Christmas Day, just as President George W. Bush failed on September 11th (though he succeeded in the seven years after that).

Yes, the buck stops in the Oval Office. Obama may have rather smugly given himself a “B+” for his 2009 performance but he gets an F for the events that led to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarding a Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam with a PETN bomb sewn into his underpants.  He said today that a “systemic failure has occurred”. Well, he’s in charge of that system.

Make sure you read the whole thing.  This Brit gets the problem even more clearly than our fetid press, who are either still trying to cover for The Pretender, or hiding in shame for their own inability to do their jobs.

As I said in the late fall of 2008, there are two kinds of people in the United States:  those that remember the Jimmy Carter presidency, and those that are about to experience it.

It’s been a pretty ugly run for O’Guvnah these last three years, and the fourth doesn’t look any prettier.  After squandering a one-billion dollar surplus left by his predecessor, then suffering from a congenital condition that prevents him taxing less, spending less, and regulating less, the State of Maryland is in a pretty deep hole, well on its way to hell in an oyster shell.  Looking at another $1 billion deficit for the next fiscal year – in a year that includes an election for his very office – O’Guvnah is pondering who might run against him, and what their strengths are.  And his pick is:  Bobby Ehrlich.

O’Guvnah had laid all his hopes on a Clinton presidency, but those were dashed when her campaign nose-dived like the O’s in August.  Now, to keep any political future alive, he has to win re-election.  But he seems pretty convinced that Bobby Ehrlich stands in his way, sending out a fundraising dispatch that employs the “Ehrlich Factor”.  O’Guvnah, like all Maryland lawmakers and state-level elected officials, cannot raise money during the 90-day legislative session that commences on January 13th.  He claims that this is a GOP “advantage”. 

Of course, that leaves all of the other Democrat advantages in this state, like corrupt elections board officials, gerrymandered districts, ownership of the unions, and so on.

And this time around, you can pretty much count on the fact that Eddie Hale won’t be able to turn his branch properties into giant advertising whorehouses for the O’Malley/Brown campaign.  Not to mention the fact that there aren’t enough people working at the bank that care what Ed thinks about the 1st Mariner PAC anymore.  Ed Hale was a major bankroll and advertising advantage for O’Malley last time around, but now that Ed has pretty much blown his nuts off in the subprime collapse and 1st Mariner is teetering on the edge of both a NASDAQ delisting and a federal takeover, that well is dry.

So yeah, I’d say O’Guvnah is worried. He is his own Peter Principle:  he has risen to his own level of incompetence, and there are few to bail him out.

There has been a lot of banter lately about airline security in light of the recent attempt to bring down a Delta/Northwest flight outside of Detroit using a gonad bomb, and the myriad of incredible failures in the system.  Some are even going so far as to say that you can never fully secure an airline flight.

And they are right.

But we surely can do a hell of a lot better, and we can do it without dramatically impinging on civil liberties (especially those of our own citizens) and turning airline travel in another circle of hell.  How, you ask?

Stop focusing on weapons, and start focusing on people.  This is what El Al does, and when was the last incident you heard about on an El Al flight?

The simple fact is almost anything in an airline cabin can be turned into a weapon or device to bring down a plane.  Any moron who has ever watched MacGyver or paid just a little attention in high school physics knows this.  To secure an airplane in this matter – limiting the threatening devices instead of the threatening people  -- is ludicrous.

I’ve detailed some ideas here.  Read it over.  My basic premise is this:  US citizens are less likely to bring down an airliner, so when flying back to the US, they get less scrutiny than a foreigner trying to fly here.  And you move up from there, building an increasing number of filters to sort through the passenger list.  Starting with biometrics (fingerprints, DNA) and moving toward are stringent search policy for non-US-passport holders is a good start.

My basic premise also comes from this fact:  foreigners do not possess any Constitutional rights by virtue of their citizenship, and therefore, are not protected against more grueling background checks and invasive search procedures.  Flying to the United States is not a right, it is a purchased privilege.

I want to point out that this is no xenophobia.  Not every non-citizen is a Muslim terrorist looking to bring down an airplane, and I think we should welcome foreigners to come to the United States for the purposes of travel and commerce.  But welcoming them does not mean we have to lay down and roll over to be screwed with our pants on.

Focus on the dangerous people.  Keep them off the plane, and no matter what else comes on the plane will not matter.

Can someone tell me why, when US citizens stand up to terrorists “mid-flight” to take down terrorists and and stop an attack, they are hailed as heroes, but if a US citizen wants to own a firearm (and carry it) for their own protection and the protection of others, they are considered a gun nut?

Why is an act of defensive violence hailed in one instance and not the other?  Especially when the violence and terrorism of domestic crime is such a more direct threat to us all?

“My jihadist can beat up your honor roll President”.

What’s a camel sticker?  Well, they don’t have cars, but they do have camels. You figure it out.

He should come to Maryland, since we don't seem to be able to do anything about these dirtbags.

Read the full story here.

President Barack Obama is a traitor.  Period.  He has, with the flourish of a pen, signed an executive order granting INTERPOL – an organization once flush with Nazis and headed by Reinhard Heydrich (author of the Wansee Protocol, the actual document declaring the “Final Solution”) – rights on American soil that that place it beyond the reach of our own law enforcement agencies and outside the Constituional regulations that protect American citizens.

As Andy McCarthy at NRO has noted:

This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

That means a US serviceman could be charged with a war crime, arrested by INTERPOL on US soil, and denied each and every Constitutional protection they fought and bled to defend.  The right to an attorney, protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a speedy trial, a jury by a trial of their peers, etc.  Forget about his Article 32 rights under the UCMJ, too.  All of these are gone.

There are and would be no restraints against what INTERPOL could do.  No judicial intervention or review.  Nothing. Nada. Zip.  Short of a governor or local LEO (law enforcement officer) willing to order his own police into an armed confrontation with INTERPOL agents, there is nothing that would stop INTERPOL from arresting a US citizen and transporting them to places unknown for whatever trial might be in the offing.

Such an act as signing this executive order surrenders US sovereignty is a blatant and horrendous – abominable – violation of his oath of office.

This is why  you shouldn’t elect second-rate political hacks with mob ties and daddy issues. 

The inestimable Jonah Goldberg has an excellent post over at The Corner on National Review Online about the different attitudes of and about John Ashcroft and Janet “The System Worked… Wait, It Didn’t So Much” Napolitano.

Fire her, now.  She is a hack. 

If it were up to me, here are the security procedures I would put in place for any airline traveler attempting to enter the United States not travelling on a US-issued passport:

1.  You must provide fingerprints, a DNA sample and two headshot photographs to the local US embassy at least four weeks prior to your flight and before receiving a visa for travel to the United States.

2.  You will undergo a full strip search at the airport before being allowed to enter any airplane (of any airline) travelling to the United States of America.

3.  Upon arrival at the customs checkpoint in the United States of America, you must provide a typewritten itinerary of where you will be staying, including phone numbers, addresses, and names of those you might be staying with. You will provide a second set of fingerprints and a second DNA sample to be compared to the first.

Information will be provided under penalty of perjury, which for those travelling to the United States on non-US-issued passports, will mean immediate expulsion. 

Violation of provision (or refusal to comply) will result in you being flown view C-130 on canvas jump seat to the US Air Force installation closest to your home country.

4.  You will not be afforded ANY constitutional rights in the event you commit – or attempt to commit – an act of terrorism.  You will be held as an enemy prisoner of war, subject to the appropriate articles of the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War.

5.  Anyone attempting to fly to the United States, purchasing a one-way ticket with cash, must purchase said ticket through their local US Department of State facility a minimum of eight weeks prior to travel and undergo a full criminal background check.

6.  No person on any “watch list” of any type shall be allowed transit to the United States of America who does not hold a US-issued passport.

It’s been 48 hours since the famed “underwear bomber”, who in all his sophistication of building a gonad bomb was able to evade airline security searches, board a plane sans passport, all while on a watch list and purchasing a one-way ticket with cash, committed an act of terrorism in the skies over Michigan.  Yet we have not heard from the President of the United States yet?

Yes, the same man who could not help but interject himself into a local issue in Boston and turn it into a racial bon mot complete with beer with in the Rose Garden.

The same man who could never resist holding a press conference to discuss the great national concern over everything including the bezel color on his new teleprompter.

Yet the nation has been attacked, on a US-flag airline, over US soil, by a member of one Nigeria’s elite families, and the President is nowhere to be found. So where is he?

Playing golf.

Those of you who actually watched all of Farenheit 911 might recall that fat slobosaurus and whiny little prag Michael Moore mocked President Bush for responding to a reporter’s question about a terrorist attack in another country while on a golf course.  So where is the Poster Child for Banning Super Sized Meals on President Hopeychange?

Hey, Mr. President, maybe they didn’t teach this to you at your fancy Ivy League schools, or your ACORN community organizer training class, but it’s called leadership.  It’s called being out front.

Right now, you are more like the French elitist who says “I must find out where my people are going, so I can lead them.”