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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Andrew Cline</title>
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		<title>The Democrats’ Deficit Blame Game</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-democrats%e2%80%99-deficit-blame-game/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-democrats%25e2%2580%2599-deficit-blame-game</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-democrats%e2%80%99-deficit-blame-game/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:35:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=72256</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are Republicans and the Tea Partiers really proposing to raise the deficit? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hodes.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-72632" title="hodes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hodes.jpg" alt="" width="266" height="190" /></a></p>
<p>The people who have spent us into our greatest national debt in history are claiming, with practiced expressions of concern and dismay, that Republicans plan to double the deficit by letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire. It’s a deliberate misstatement of the facts.</p>
<p>The basis of the fable is a Congressional Budget Office report released last week. It concluded that letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year would increase the federal deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade – if federal spending continues at its current pace. That’s a huge if, which Democrats and liberal activists and journalists are ignoring on purpose.</p>
<p>Writing about the CBO report, Ezra Klein, the liberal Washington Post blogger, concluded, “Republicans and tea party candidates are both running campaigns based around concern for the deficit. But both, to my knowledge, support the single-largest increase in the deficit that anyone of either party has proposed in memory.”</p>
<p>Democrats have used that same spin on the campaign trail. In New Hampshire, where I live, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hodes, who as a representative voted for the Obama budget increases, the auto bailouts, the stimulus and Obamacare, is trying to paint his Republican opponent as a deficit-hiker because she supports extending all of the Bush tax cuts. He claims she would vote to double the federal deficit.</p>
<p>None of that is true. Indeed, anyone who reads Klein’s own Washington Post carefully would know that. The very lead of the Post’s Sept. 15<sup>th</sup> story on the CBO report read, “Even as they hammer Democrats for running up record budget deficits, Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan to permanently extend an array of expiring tax breaks that would deprive the Treasury of more than $4 trillion over the next decade, nearly doubling projected deficits over that period unless dramatic spending cuts are made.”</p>
<p>The Post reporter portrays the GOP in a negative light, but at least he gets the facts correct. The important phrase is “unless dramatic spending cuts are made.”</p>
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		<title>The GOP&#8217;s Pledge to America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-gops-pledge-to-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-gops-pledge-to-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-gops-pledge-to-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:30:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=72402</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Too far to the Right? Or just far enough?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/alg_resize_pledge-to-america.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-72405" title="alg_resize_pledge-to-america" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/alg_resize_pledge-to-america.gif" alt="" width="375" height="373" /></a></p>
<p>A Tea Party manifest it isn&#8217;t. That&#8217;s the immediate reaction (if you lean toward the Tea Party end of the political spectrum) that comes from reading the Republicans&#8217; new Pledge to America.</p>
<p>This is not a call to arms for revolutionaries. The pledge does not advocate the elimination of the Department of Energy or Department of Education (as some Republican congressional do), call for private Social Security accounts or suggest the transformation of federal entitlement programs. (Perhaps that&#8217;s why the GOP&#8217;s most famous incumbent reformer, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was nowhere to be seen when Minority Leader John Boehner and other House Republicans unveiled the pledge yesterday.)</p>
<p>No, this is a document designed to put forth a strong alternative to the Obama/Pelosi excesses without alienating independent voters who went with Obama in 2008 but now find themselves disillusioned. It was written not for Tea Partiers, but for Americans who, though disenchanted with Obama, still remember why they voted for him two years ago. Namely, because it was hard to have faith in the Republican Party that year. It is a document about regaining trust, and that in itself is very encouraging.</p>
<p>Republicans in Washington seem to be learning. Unlike the party in power at the moment, they seem to be listening, which is the first prerequisite of learning. Being Republicans, they get that they need to oppose the Democrats. Being politicians, they get that they need to oppose unpopular legislation. This pledge does those things, but it goes a little bit &#8211; not much, just a little &#8211; further. It recognizes that Americans are not just upset with the Democrats for pulling the country so far Left so quickly, but that they are just as upset with the political class in general for lying to them, misleading them, and manipulating them to stay in power.</p>
<p>That is not to say that John Boehner, the man who once handed out tobacco company checks on the House floor, is a born-again reformer. It is to say that Boehner and the rest of the House leadership have listened closely enough to understand that the people don&#8217;t want them to simply return to their old ways. That is no guarantee that they won&#8217;t, of course. But it&#8217;s somewhat encouraging.</p>
<p>&#8220;We will launch a sustained effort to stem the relentless growth in government that has occurred over the past decade,&#8221; the pledge states. That&#8217;s an important phrase, &#8220;over the last decade.&#8221; It acknowledges fault, as the GOP was in control of the federal government within the last decade.</p>
<p>The details, though, are what throw some conservative critics. Sure, the aspirational statements are fine. But what are they really going to do? Here are some highlights:</p>
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		<title>Tea Party Fail in New Hampshire?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/tea-party-fail-in-new-hampshire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=tea-party-fail-in-new-hampshire</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/tea-party-fail-in-new-hampshire/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:06:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=71723</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the anti-establishment movement became a victim of its own success. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/916-New_Hampshire_Primary.sff_.standalone.prod_affiliate.81.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-71727" title="916-New_Hampshire_Primary.sff.standalone.prod_affiliate.81" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/916-New_Hampshire_Primary.sff_.standalone.prod_affiliate.81-300x254.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="254" /></a></p>
<p>The Tea Party movement has scalped establishment candidates from Alaska to Delaware. In New Hampshire on Tuesday, it faltered. After an extended vote count, establishment Republican Kelly Ayotte was declared the winner over her allegedly Tea Party-backed challenger, conservative lawyer Ovide LaMontagne, in the state’s Senate primary. What happened?</p>
<p>According to some pundits, nothing. Author Doug Schoen told <em>National Review Online</em> yesterday, &#8220;The election results demonstrate fundamentally and clearly that the tea-party movement is as powerful as the Republican Party &#8211; the Grand Old Party &#8211; and the now-weakened Democratic party. The results in Delaware, New  Hampshire, and New York prove it as clearly as anything could.&#8221;</p>
<p>No, they don&#8217;t. The Tea Party movement is a powerful and positive force that is reshaping, at least for now, the Republican Party. But despite its victories in Delaware and New York, it failed in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.</p>
<p>In contrast with Delaware, where an establishment Republican faced a bona fide Tea Party insurgent, New Hampshire&#8217;s Republican U.S. Senate primary featured an anointed successor to retiring Sen. Judd Gregg (Ayotte), a conservative insurgent (LaMontagne) and two pro-choice, millionaire businessmen running to fix the economy (Jim Bender and Bill Binnie). Test question: Who was the Tea Party candidate?</p>
<p>Neither Bender nor Binnie became a Tea Party-backed candidate, even though both were political newcomers espousing fiscally conservative, pro-growth messages. LaMontagne, the 1996 gubernatorial nominee, was your standard Reaganite challenger who attracted the support of social conservatives and others seeking a proven conservative they could trust. But he was no Tea Party rabble rouser.</p>
<p>Which candidate got the Tea Party&#8217;s backing? Well, Sarah Palin endorsed Ayotte, the establishment candidate. Does that count? Only if Palin speaks for the entire Tea Party movement (which she does not) and endorsing the establishment&#8217;s hand-picked candidate amounts to leading a Tea Party insurgency (which it does not). Sen. Jim DeMint endorsed LaMontagne, but one endorsement does not a Tea Party insurgency make. The truth is, this was not a race shaped by the Tea Party, except in one possible way.</p>
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		<title>Clinton&#8217;s Cap-and-Trade Con</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/clintons-cap-and-trade-con/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=clintons-cap-and-trade-con</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/clintons-cap-and-trade-con/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:07:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Exploiting Pakistani flood victims for the global warming war at home.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/aaaaahillary-clinton-pointing.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-69594" title="aaaaahillary-clinton-pointing" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/aaaaahillary-clinton-pointing.gif" alt="" width="344" height="344" /></a></p>
<p>U.S., Pakistani and United Nations officials are not letting Pakistan’s flood crisis go to waste. They are exploiting it for an advantage in the high-stakes climate change debate.</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pronounced on Pakistani television that she knew the cause of the flooding: global warming.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a linkage&#8221; between warming and this summer’s natural disasters, including the floods, she said.</p>
<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t point to any particular disaster and say, &#8216;it was caused by,&#8217; but we are changing the climate of the world,&#8221; she said.</p>
<p>At least she got the first part right. As news organizations have been pointing out, responsible climate scientists, even those who believe that humans are warming the planet with carbon emissions, say it is impossible to link a specific event to climate change.</p>
<p>&#8220;While climate scientists say single flooding events can&#8217;t be directly blamed on global warming, more intense droughts and floods could be in the forecast for the future,&#8221; as Reuters put it earlier this month.</p>
<p>Moreover, the flooding seems to have been caused by other more direct factors. <em>The New York Times</em> reported on Friday, &#8220;Debate is heating up over what caused the catastrophe, with experts pointing to deforestation, intensive land-use practices or mismanagement of the Indus  River as possible causes.&#8221;</p>
<p>That’s<em> The New York Times</em>, citing those famous unnamed &#8220;experts,&#8221; which the <em>Times</em> uses to imply a widespread scientific agreement. It then juxtaposes the explanations of scientists with those of politicians. &#8220;But top U.N. and Pakistani government officials are now clearly pointing to climate change as the principal culprit,&#8221; it reported.</p>
<p>Why would the political class be disagreeing with the &#8220;experts&#8221; on what caused the flooding? The <em>Times</em> had the answer:</p>
<blockquote><p>[Pakistan's foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood] Qureshi and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hinted that they would use the Pakistan crisis to spur the now-stalled international climate talks. At the very least, the disaster shows that massive funding is needed to make the developing world more resilient to extreme weather events, Ban said.</p></blockquote>
<p>If the floods can be blamed on climate change, the U.N. and Pakistan can use the disaster to demand &#8220;massive funding.&#8221; As with so much of the global warming campaign, it’s all about money.</p>
<p>Then what is Hillary Clinton’s excuse for peddling the link to climate change? That’s easy enough to see. The Obama administration desperately wants to pass a cap-and-trade bill that doesn’t have enough votes in Congress. Successfully linking the floods to global warming would create the impression that Washington has to take drastic &#8212; and immediate &#8212; measures to reduce America’s carbon output to prevent a future catastrophe here at home, like, say, pass a cap-and-trade bill. If people believe we’re already seeing natural disasters caused by global warming, they will be more supportive of the administration’s effort to give Washington more control over the energy sector.</p>
<p>As usual, the administration is exploiting a crisis for political advantage.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader. His Twitter ID is Drewhampshire.</em></p>
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		<title>Victory Betrayed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/victory-betrayed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=victory-betrayed</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/victory-betrayed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:36:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Is America committed to winning in Afghanistan?
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/us_troops_afghanistan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-65227" title="us_troops_afghanistan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/us_troops_afghanistan.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="369" /></a></p>
<p>When he took command of NATO forces in Afghanistan on Sunday, Gen. David Petraeus framed the war in a way President Obama dislikes. “We are in this to win,” he said. “Win” is not a term the president likes to use when discussing the war he has said all along is a necessary and just one for America to wage.</p>
<p>“I&#8217;m always worried about using the word &#8216;victory,&#8217; because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,” Obama told FOX News in an interview last summer. He hasn’t changed his tune since.</p>
<p>The president doesn’t use the word “victory” when talking about Afghanistan. Maybe he still thinks, however illogical that may be, that one cannot define “victory” without having a war-ending ceremony such as a treaty signing. But Michael Hastings, in the <em>Rolling Stone</em> article that got Gen. Stanley McChrystal fired, wrote, “There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word ‘victory’ when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.”</p>
<p>If that is the president’s real reason for avoiding the term, then the United   States should cut its losses and leave now. We should never fight a war the commander in chief is not committed to winning.</p>
<p>If that is the president’s real reason, it would mean that every service member lost in Afghanistan under President Obama’s command died not to secure his country’s interests, but to secure his president’s prospects for reelection. The only reason Obama would stay in Afghanistan if he thought we could not win would be to avoid the criticism from the right that would come from withdrawing.</p>
<p>Only Obama, and perhaps Obama’s closest advisors, know why the president uses the word “success” instead of “victory.” Maybe he really believes that if he can’t pinpoint an exact End-of-War date, then he shouldn’t speak of winning. Who knows? But one clear effect of his refusal to speak of victory has been to encourage the Taliban and discourage regular Afghans who might otherwise be motivated to help us.</p>
<p>If you knew the Taliban were committed to fighting to the death, but you thought the Americans were going to withdraw by next summer no matter what, would you sign your own death warrant by helping the side you are convinced will leave before the fighting’s done?</p>
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		<title>Disasters and Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/disasters-and-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=disasters-and-double-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:26:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Where’s the media outrage over Obama's mismanagement of the Gulf Coast crisis?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/gallery-obamabpspill1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61790" title="gallery-obamabpspill1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/gallery-obamabpspill1-300x216.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="216" /></a></p>
<p>Remember the big stories in the national media when George W. Bush waited four days to tour New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit? Here’s a pop quiz: How long did it take President Obama to visit the Gulf coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil leak began?</p>
<p>The answer is 13 days. Here is how The <em>Washington Post</em> described that visit:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;He flew in and out of New Orleans on May 2, drove two hours to a Coast Guard station and got a briefing before taking a quick helicopter tour. He did not even see the oil slick.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Mark Knoller of CBS News reported last week that in the first 39 days after each respective catastrophe, Obama visited the Gulf coast twice; Bush visited New Orleans seven times. But remember, this is not Obama’s Katrina!</p>
<p>Now imagine if President Bush, five weeks into one of the largest oil leaks in U.S. history, and without ever having seen the slick, jetted across the country to headline a $17,600 per-person fund-raiser at the home of an oil-fortune heir. How do you think the national press would have treated that? Bush didn’t do that, which is why you didn’t hear about it. President Obama did — which is why you didn’t hear about it.</p>
<p>The media covered Obama’s trip to San   Francisco to raise money for Barbara Boxer. Some news outlets even reported that Obama spoke at a private reception at the home of Democratic Party donor Gordon Getty. But few reported that Getty is the heir to the Getty Oil fortune. For instance, the <em>New York Times</em> reports on Obama’s trip never identified Getty as an oil heir. Do you think that would have been omitted had Bush been Getty’s guest?</p>
<p>What if, hours after the head of the U.S. Minerals Management Service left her job over Washington’s mishandling of that giant oil spill, President Bush held a press conference (his first in months) and, when asked about that agency head, could not say whether she had resigned or been fired? What if, hours later, the White House stated that the President knew all along that she had been dismissed, but that story was contradicted by the Cabinet secretary — the one who supposedly did the dismissing — having said that morning during a congressional hearing that she’d resigned voluntarily?</p>
<p>That happened in the Obama administration last week. Where are the outraged cries of incompetence and dishonesty?</p>
<p>Can you imagine the charges of buffoonery that would pour forth from New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, if the George W. Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a state law that had been signed into law by one of Bush’s own cabinet secretaries?</p>
<p>Well, last week the Obama administration did exactly that. The Department of Justice asked the court to overturn a 2007 Arizona immigration law that punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed the bill into law when she was Arizona governor.</p>
<p>All of these events were reported in the mainstream media. But they were not reported in the same way they would have been had a Republican been president. The point of this criticism is not to say that Bush was great and Obama stinks. Bush was not a great president. The point is to illustrate the double standard most of the media have.</p>
<p>Media bias exhibits itself in the subtle favoring of liberal politicians and ideas. The same rules don’t apply to the left and the right. The left is presumed to have good intentions, the right bad. So when Bush took four days to get to New Orleans after Katrina hit, it was evidence of racism, elitism, a general lack of concern for the little people. But when it took Obama three times as long to visit the Gulf Coast, there was silence.</p>
<p>When a left-wing administration makes mistakes or contradicts itself, that is simply human nature. When a right-of-center administration does, it is incompetence or duplicity. Or both.</p>
<p>At least some on the left are calling out Obama for his inattentiveness to the Gulf oil spill. That’s no substitute for the press setting the national narrative by holding him to the same standards to which it held Bush. But it’s a start.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader. Follow him on twitter @Drewhampshire.</em></p>
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		<title>Do Call it a Bailout</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/do-call-it-a-bailout/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=do-call-it-a-bailout</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:01:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=59188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Chris Dodd and the Democrats' new financial reform bill authorizes bailouts in perpetuity.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/chris_dodd_bailout.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-59207" title="83818442CS008_Senate_Holds_" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/chris_dodd_bailout-300x184.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="184" /></a></p>
<p>President Obama and his financial reform sidekick, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, want you to believe that the financial reform bill they hope to pass in the Senate soon not only contains no bailout mechanism for large financial firms, but forbids bailouts from ever happening again. Alas, it isn’t so.</p>
<p>Virtually everyone agrees that bailouts are driven by the notion that some firms are “too big to fail.” As long as some institutions are so big that their failure would drag down the entire economy, Washington politicians will always feel compelled to act in some way to halt their collapse. Simply letting them go bankrupt, as the Bush administration did with Lehmann Brothers, is both economically and politically risky, and politicians famously want to avoid risk.</p>
<p>The trouble with the Dodd bill is that it does not decree that the government must stay back and watch firms fail, but instead creates a new legal framework with which Washington heavily regulates financial institutions in such a way as to encourage them to grow, not shrink.</p>
<p>In addition to a new regulatory regime, the bill creates rules that allow the Federal Reserve to takeover and liquidate huge firms on the verge of collapse. But in liquidating them, the Fed will have the authority to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to pay off the failing firm’s bad debts. The whole idea is to protect the system from collapse. The question is: why is that not a bailout?</p>
<p>Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, adamantly denying that the bill allows bailouts, characterizes its liquidation authority like this: “If a major institution manages itself to the edge of their abyss, we’re able to put them out of their misery … dismember them safely without taxpayers being exposed to a penny of risk of loss.”</p>
<p>Geithner, Obama and Dodd are claiming that because the Fed will dismantle the firm, the process cannot be called a bailout. They are trying to change the definition of a bailout to exclude any taxpayer-funded intervention that does not keep a firm intact.</p>
<p>But when Washington bailed out AIG in September of 2008, the Bush administration didn’t keep AIG intact. The top managers were fired, and huge chunks of the company were sold off. The bailout was not to save AIG, but to pay people whose money AIG had lost. That is exactly what the Dodd bill allows. Under its provisions, the Fed will take over a firm, fire its top executives, use taxpayer money to pay its bad debts, and fold the company.</p>
<p>Because that authority would be used only on firms so large that their bankruptcy would cause huge losses throughout the economy, possibly triggering another crisis, the Dodd bill provides investors with powerful incentives to avoid small banks and put their money in large ones. A small bank won’t be rescued. If it dies, your money is gone. But under the Dodd bill, the larger the bank, the safer your money.</p>
<p>Instead of ending “too big to fail,” the Dodd bill could make it much worse. Instead of ending bailouts, it creates a legal framework that authorizes them in perpetuity.</p>
<p>Financial reform is definitely needed. But this bill does not provide the kind of reform most Americans want – regulations that make large financial transactions more transparent and that discourage large firms from getting larger and taking dangerous risks. It actually encourages the flow of money to larger and larger institutions and puts taxpayers on the hook should they fail, which is exactly the opposite of what it should do.</p>
<p><strong><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the </em><a href="http://www.unionleader.com/">New Hampshire Union Leader</a><em>.</em></strong></p>
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		<title>The Great Healthcare Robbery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/the-great-healthcare-robbery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-great-healthcare-robbery</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:03:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=53212</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama and the Democratic Congress have lied every step of the way to pass socialized medicine. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama-reid-pelosi.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53215" title="obama-reid-pelosi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama-reid-pelosi.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="301" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;No one has talked about reconciliation,&#8221; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared during last week’s health care summit. It was a lie shocking in its boldness.</p>
<p>Live on national television, the Democrats’ leader in the U.S. Senate told the nation that not a single person had discussed even the possibility of using the Senate’s budget reconciliation rules, which require a simple majority vote instead of 60, as needed under regular Senate rules, to pass President Obama’s health care reform plan. Yet, a week before, Reid himself had said publicly that reconciliation was an option for passing the plan, <em>Politico.com</em> reported. Of the Senate’s 59 Democrats, 23 had already signed a letter urging the president to pass the plan via reconciliation by the time Reid said &#8220;no one&#8221; was even talking about it. And of course, a week later, President Obama, as expected, urged Democrats to pass the bill through the reconciliation process if necessary.</p>
<p>In other words, the Democratic Party leadership in Washington hadn’t just talked about reconciliation. It was central to their strategy.</p>
<p>Reid’s blatant revisionism perfectly encapsulates the Democratic leadership’s plan for passing legislation to completely remake health care in the United   States. Simply put, the plan is this: Lie. Thus, President Obama and the leadership in Congress have lied about nearly everything, from start to finish. Obama said that if you have health insurance you like, you’ll absolutely get to keep it under his plan. That was a lie. As he eventually acknowledged, millions of Americans will lose their existing coverage if the changes he wants become law.</p>
<p>Similarly, Obama spent all last summer saying health care reform wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone but the rich. But on August 2 the Associated Press reported that the administration admitted that taxes might have to be raised on the middle class to pay for the health care bill.</p>
<p>Obama has said repeatedly that insured families pay about $1,000 a year to cover the costs of the uninsured. Factcheck.org puts the figure at $200.</p>
<p>Obama said our current health care system causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds. That’s not remotely true. If every bankruptcy in the United States in which health care costs played any factor at all were counted as a bankruptcy caused by health care, the figure would be one per minute, not double that.</p>
<p>In the summer, Obama was claiming that health care reform was paid for. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the House bill added $239 billion to the federal deficit over a decade and the Senate bill $597 billion. The president’s claims still aren’t true because of tricks such as removing the &#8220;doc fix&#8221; provisions and putting them into a separate bill.</p>
<p>Obama claimed health care reform would save the average American family $2,500 a year. Factcheck.org could find no evidence for that at all. Obama apparently just made it up.</p>
<p>Obama promised at least eight times that the health care negotiations would be televised live on C-SPAN. They weren’t. They were done, as everything in Washington is done, behind closed doors.</p>
<p>There us no shortage of additional examples. When it comes to health care, on point after point after point, the American people have been lied to – systematically, methodically and deliberately.</p>
<p>It should go without saying that opponents of the Democrats’ plans haven&#8217;t always been truthful, either. Some attacks have contained intentional falsehoods, others inadvertent ones. I don’t defend any of those. But they don’t make any less outrageous the fact that our own government has systematically misled us in an attempt to generate support for a plan the president and leaders in Congress knew we would never accept if we knew the whole truth about it.</p>
<p>Sure, politicians have always lied. But this administration, with its campaign theme of hopeful “change,” was supposed to be the most open and transparent administration in history. Even Congress was supposed to be different. Nancy Pelosi promised the most ethical Congress in history. Instead, the White House and its Congressional allies have joined forces to launch an almost daily barrage of falsehoods designed to trick us into supporting a dramatic transformation of one sixth of the American economy. And here’s the worst part about the politics of the healthcare debacle: We have at least three more years of this to look forward to.<em> </em></p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the </em><a href="http://www.unionleader.com/">New Hampshire Union Leader</a><em>.<br />
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		<title>Sarah Palin’s Detractors and Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/sarah-palin%e2%80%99s-detractors-and-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sarah-palin%25e2%2580%2599s-detractors-and-double-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:15:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For the media and the Left, a female Republican can do no right. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gov6.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-49948" title="gov6" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gov6.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gov6.jpg"></a></p>
<p>Two events in the past week highlighted yet again the outrageous double standard that the mainstream media and the political Left apply to Sarah Palin.</p>
<p>When it was reported that Sen. John Edwards relied on his wife Elizabeth for advice on everything from public policy to haircuts, it was universally hailed as both sweet and savvy. She’s the smarter one anyway, some would even whisper. Similarly, when President Obama said he consulted his wife Michelle on important matters, it was treated as the sage decision of an intellectually curious man who loved his wife. Bill Clinton was praised for consulting with his wife and putting her in charge of health care reform – the latter especially viewed by the mainstream media as the greatest executive decision since Lyndon Johnson launched the Great Society.</p>
<p>And then there’s Sarah Palin. When recently released e-mails revealed that Palin <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700007426/Palin-e-mails-suggest-husbands-role-in-governing.html">sought her husband Todd’s advice</a> on numerous issues while she was governor of Alaska, the media gasped in horror. <em>Why, he’s just a snowmobile racer!</em></p>
<p>Darker musings soon surfaced. The <em>Washington Post</em> “reported” that the e-mails “sent and received by Todd Palin further illuminate the personal quirks, machinations and frustrations of the Palins&#8230;.” Machinations? Apparently, when male Democratic politicians consult their wives, it’s a sign of wisdom and humility. When a female Republican governor consults her husband, there must be a sinister plot afoot.</p>
<p>For the politically correct Left, gender makes all the difference. Thus, it was appropriate for powerful men such as Obama and Clinton to consult their wives because it fit the leftist notion that these men were sharing power with their wives. This transfer of power from males to females, no matter how slight, was progress. By contrast, Palin was transferring power to her husband. That’s bad because, you know, he’s a guy. Power has to run the other way.</p>
<p>One also detects an element of liberal elitism. Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama are all lawyers, while Todd Palin is a high-school graduate who worked as a production supervisor for an oil company. In the view of the media and liberal elites, what could he possibly know?</p>
<p>The other Palin-related controversial non-controversy this past week happened when she was shown to have <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/02/sarah_palin_uses_cheats_her_wa.html?f=most-commented-24h-5">written a few notes on her hand</a> for her Tea Party Convention speech last Saturday. The Left went bonkers: <em>Oh, she’s so dumb she has to crib her speech!</em></p>
<p>But if that’s so, what conclusions should we draw from President Obama’s teleprompter habit? Four words on her palm show Palin is dumb, but President Obama can’t deliver a <a href="http://www.nowpublic.com/world/addressing-elementary-school-children-obama-uses-teleprompter">short speech to elementary school kids</a> without reading the whole thing off a Teleprompter – and he’s a genius?</p>
<p>I don’t know if Palin had a full copy of her speech or more complete notes to read from during her Tea Party Convention speech. But I’d wager that most of the people criticizing her for writing on her hand don’t, either. They have no idea if she jotted bullet points on her hand to remind herself how to order her notes later or if those were her only notes. Either way, as silly as it does seem for a major political figure to use a middle-school note-taking method, it is proof of nothing. Yet, the Left pronounced it a sign of Palin’s imbecility without stopping to consider that she can’t be that dumb if she can deliver an entire speech with no prompts other than four words scribbled on her palm.</p>
<p>I’m not a Sarah Palin groupie. I don’t consider her a savior for the GOP or a top presidential prospect. I just hate the double standards used by the media and the Left to discredit conservatives and Republicans. And these double standards are never more evident than when Sarah Palin makes news.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.</em></p>
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		<title>Failure Writ Small</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/failure-writ-small-3/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=failure-writ-small-3</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/andrew-cline/failure-writ-small-3/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:02:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48721</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s speech in New Hampshire this week sums everything that’s wrong with the administration. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obamac.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48724" title="obamac" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obamac-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Before his <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2010/02/03/obama_takes_jobs_pitch_to_nh/">speech in New Hampshire </a>on Tuesday, President Obama visited a small technology company in Nashua called ARC Energy. During his talk, he promoted ARC Energy as an example of the kind of innovation he wants taxpayers to subsidize with what he called &#8220;seed money&#8221; in the form of federal &#8220;green jobs&#8221; funding. We need to do it, he said, so we can get ahead of the Chinese.</p>
<p>Probably few in the audience knew what the people who founded ARC Energy only two years ago know: ARC received no federal startup money. Dr. Kedar Gupta and his wife founded the company with their own money, the same way Dr. Gupta co-founded GT Solar, the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic cells, in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Obama presented a narrative that was fundamentally false – namely that, without federal &#8220;seed money,&#8221; our technology sector won’t advance quickly enough to beat the Chinese. But guess where ARC Energy sells many of its products? China.</p>
<p>That sleight of hand was typical of Obama’s speech. The main point of his presentation was to tout his plan to pump $30 billion into small banks for the stated purpose of providing them with enough money to lend to small businesses. But that cannot possibly be the real goal of the program, for several reasons.</p>
<p>First, community banks are not short of cash for lending. According to Stephen Wilson, the chairman-elect of the American Bankers Association, they aren’t lending because federal bank regulators have forced them to tighten their standards. &#8220;Obama is calling us &#8216;fat cats&#8217; and telling us to be lending more, and then he sends his bank examiners and regulators to stifle our lending,&#8221; Wilson told the <em>Cincinnati Enquirer</em> last month. If Obama wanted to free up cash for small businesses, he could have his regulators back off and let small banks lend.</p>
<p>Second, if Obama were really interested in freeing up more money for lending, why is he proposing to tax large banks? Wells Fargo, one of the large banks Obama wants to punish with a new tax, is the largest small-business lender in America. It expects to loan $16 billion to small businesses this year. Bank of America projects a similar figure.</p>
<p>Those two banks alone would lend about as much (more, if the economy improves) to small businesses this year as the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/02/02/2010-02-02_obama_proposes_using_30m_in_repaid_wall_street_bailout_funds_to_help_community_b.html">$30 billion</a> Obama wants to spread among smaller banks. But rather than make it easier for them to lend, Obama is making it harder by proposing to tax them simply for being large and by having his regulators restrict their ability to take risks. By encouraging banks to build up larger cash reserves, Washington is reducing the amount of money available for lending.</p>
<p>Clearly, Obama’s interest is not in freeing up money for small businesses. The only explanation for his behavior &#8212; taxing the largest banks and distributing money to smaller ones &#8212; is that he wants to use the power of the state to shift assets (and, thus, power) from large banks to smaller ones.</p>
<p>This is purely an ideological crusade. Obama believes that large banks are generally a bad thing, and small ones are generally a good thing. So, he’s taking from the large and giving to the small. It’s economic idiocy, but in his mind it’s a morally just cause.</p>
<p>What Obama did in New Hampshire is the same as he has done for the past year, and on the campaign trail before that. He presented a façade of an argument to justify actions Americans would not possibly support were he to state their real motives. It’s exactly how he tried to sell health care reform (it’s vital to economic recovery!), his massive transfer of wealth from private producers to government employee unions (it’s shovel-ready stimulus!), and his cap-and-trade bill (it will create green jobs!).</p>
<p>If we take any lesson from his New Hampshire &#8220;town hall&#8221; event (it wasn’t a town hall meeting), it is that we must ignore what the president says his proposals are intended to do and scrutinize what they actually do. More often than not, we will find that they simply transfer wealth and power from people and groups Obama dislikes to those he favors.</p>
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		<title>Preventing the Next Terrorist Attack – by Andrew Cline</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/andrew-cline/preventing-the-next-terrorist-attack-%e2%80%93-by-andrew-cline/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=preventing-the-next-terrorist-attack-%25e2%2580%2593-by-andrew-cline</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/andrew-cline/preventing-the-next-terrorist-attack-%e2%80%93-by-andrew-cline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:05:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43895</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the new airport security measures won’t stop future bombing attempts. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-43896" title="through-airport-security" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/through-airport-security1.jpg" alt="through-airport-security" width="470" height="301" /></p>
<p>Additional <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/us/27security.html">security measures</a> reported in the aftermath of the Christmas bomber’s failed attempt to down a U.S. airline will amount to naught because they don’t address the central security failure.</p>
<p>Keeping international passengers in their seats for <a href="http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/1226099">the last hour of a flight</a> will do nothing but create wet seat cushions, as those who need “to go,” including children, are prohibited access to the toilet. Any terrorist who sneaks an explosive on a plane will simply detonate it mid-flight or after takeoff.  Limiting passengers to a single carry-on bag will have no effect.  <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6969645.ece">Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab</a> had only one carry-on, and apparently strapped the explosive device to his leg.</p>
<p>Will additional pat-downs work? Not if a terrorist hides the explosive in his underwear.</p>
<p>Measures that might have prevented Abdulmutallab from getting his explosive aboard Flight 253 – air puffers and swabs that detect traces of the explosive he reportedly used, and full-body scanning – take time and money to deploy and won’t be used on all passengers. If security officials are not screening the terrorists, these measures will fail, too.</p>
<p>And that’s the central issue. The security system failed to screen out the terrorist.</p>
<p>“We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable,”  President Obama said in his brief press conference from his vacation in Hawaii on Monday. “This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face.”</p>
<p>That’s important, but it misses the point. The White House has announced a review of all security procedures. But based on what we already know, it is obvious that the United States effectively ignores, from an operational standpoint, the vast majority of intelligence it receives regarding terror suspects.</p>
<p>According to the administration, the government receives 18,000 tips a day. When Abdullmutallab’s father reported him to the U.S. embassy as a potential Muslim terrorist, it was treated as just another bit of “noise” in the system. It was just one of 18,000 bits received that day, the administration has said. And that is the problem.</p>
<p>Before 9/11, the government collected enough information on the plot to stop it, had anyone put the pieces together. “Connecting the dots” became a buzz phrase in the next year. We would not rest until we had the ability to do that. But in 2009 we still don’t, in part because we don’t have enough resources devoted to doing so.</p>
<p>A dedicated group of suicide bombers can beat even the beefed up security measures now being slowly put into place. For all of his flaws, President Bush understood that when dealing with terrorists, the best defense is a good offense. We shouldn’t be waiting until a terrorist gets to the airport. We should be going after them aggressively.</p>
<p>That means putting more resources into intelligence gathering and “connecting the dots” so we find them before they find us. Unfortunately, this president doesn’t seem interested in taking the war to the terrorists. He seems dedicated to the proposition that this is not a war at all, but a diplomatic problem first, a criminal justice problem second. That approach will work just as well as it did before 9/11.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.</em></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Broken Promises &#8211; by Andrew Cline</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/andrew-cline/obamas-broken-promises-by-andrew-cline/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-broken-promises-by-andrew-cline</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/andrew-cline/obamas-broken-promises-by-andrew-cline/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:12:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Cline]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The administration’s campaign rhetoric meets reality of the terror war.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-37797" title="y175992713239038" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/y175992713239038.jpg" alt="y175992713239038" width="400" height="300" /></p>
<p>Last Friday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States would try Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists in a federal court in New York City, not a military tribunal. The same announcement contained the news, subsequently under-reported, that the U.S. would try five other terror suspects in military tribunals, not civilian courts.</p>
<p>President Obama followed that bombshell with another: his admission on Wednesday that he won’t close the Guantanamo Bay prison by Jan. 22, as he had promised earlier this year.</p>
<p>The back-to-back announcements show that Obama continues to be torn between his campaign rhetoric and reality. If terrorism is a crime, why not try all suspects in civilian courts? The administration’s decision to try some terrorists in military tribunals is an acknowledgement that the tribunals are not inherently unjust, and that at least some acts of terror are acts of war.</p>
<p>If the tribunals are not unjust, as Holder tacitly admits, then why not try all terror suspects there? Strangely, Holder acknowledged on Wednesday that the 9/11 attacks were an act of war. His explanation for trying KSM and other terrorists in federal court was that the act of war committed on that day was also a federal crime. Said Holder:</p>
<blockquote><p>“…the 9/11 attacks were both an act of war and a violation of our federal criminal law, and they could have been prosecuted in either federal courts or military commissions…At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is in federal court.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Really? Holder cannot possibly be ignorant of the fact that the risks of failing to obtain justice are higher in a civilian criminal trial, where the government must expose sensitive secrets to public scrutiny if the defense requests them. And the defense certainly will. That fact alone can hamstring the prosecution. How in the world is the United States more likely to prevail in a criminal trial than a military one? It isn’t. Holder’s statement is an obvious rationalization.</p>
<p>But that is par for the course for this administration. Obama’s claims that the Guantanamo Bay prison must be closed quickly because holding suspects there is against our core national values was pure fiction. Obama railed against the prison during the campaign and pledged to close it within a year of taking office. That won’t happen, he acknowledges. But it’s not because, as he claims, the logistics are too difficult. It’s because his rhetoric was so obviously wrong that even Democrats in Congress refused to aid him in transferring terror suspects to civilian prisons inside the United States.</p>
<p>Had Democrats gone along with Obama’s plan, the prison could have been closed by the end of this year. But too many decided that campaign rhetoric is one thing, and having a terrorist in one’s own congressional district is another.</p>
<p>So Obama must break another promise and preside indefinitely over a military prison he claimed was a symbol of Bush’s betrayal of American values.</p>
<p>This is nothing new. In January, Obama signed an executive order banning the use of interrogation techniques not approved in the Army Field Manual. That very day, <em>The New York Times </em>reported that White House Counsel Gregg Craig “acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other than the 19 techniques allowed for the military.”</p>
<p>Symbolically, the president was banning harsh techniques, but in reality he reserved the right to use them at any time.</p>
<p>In March, the Defense Department sent a memo throughout the Pentagon which stated, “this administration prefers to avoid using the term &#8216;Long War&#8217; or &#8216;Global War on Terror&#8217; [GWOT.] Please use &#8216;Overseas Contingency Operation.&#8217; &#8221;</p>
<p>And yet on Wednesday Attorney General Holder said, “We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power &#8212; civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others &#8212; to win.”</p>
<p>Symbolically, Obama ended the “War on Terror” while reserving the right to fight it at any time – using the same methods President Bush used.</p>
<p>The trial of KSM and closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison are, to Obama, purely symbolic acts. Unfortunately, they will come with real costs. The United States seems fated to pay a heavy price for Obama’s obsession with style over substance.</p>
<p><em>Andrew Cline is editorial page editor of the</em> <a href="http://www.unionleader.com/">New Hampshire Union Leader</a>.</p>
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