[White House exercise facility]

MICHELLE:  Well, come in, people.  Geithner, Carney–get your skinny butts over here and spot for me while I press 250.  Everybody else, pull up a mat and sit so we can start.

JOE BIDEN:  Huh?  Why’s the Boss over in the corner in his PJs staring out the window?

MICHELLE:  Off the record.  He’s stressed out.  I’m running things until his therapist clears him for duty. Anybody got a problem with that?

DAVID PLOUFFE:  No Ma’m, but, uh . . . .

MICHELLE:  What happened?  Yesterday, he had to layup on the first par 5 at Burning Tree and couldn’t choose between a 6-iron and 7-iron.  Told his playing partners he wanted to sleep on it.  At dinner, a steward asked what flavor parfait he preferred for dessert.  Midnight, he was still muttering, “I like the strawberry, but the peach appeals to me, too.”

BILL DALEY:  Deteriorating decision-making skills.  It’s worse than when I came on board.  Hell, CIA knew where bin Laden was hiding since mid-2009.   The President couldn’t pull the trigger.  I had to use his autopen to sign the order okaying the Seal operation on Osama’s compound.

MICHELLE:  Hmmph.  Didn’t have a problem deciding on those chili dogs and stepping on my nutrition message the other day. (more…)

Bad news today for President Obama, his Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, and other proponents of the idea that the United States can safely reach out to “moderate” elements within terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.  In a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court found that no distinction can be made between violent and non-violent wings of such groups and that the former will be beneficiaries of whatever “material support” is given them.

As Stephen Landman of the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism’s IPT News reported in a post Monday:

“The court roundly rejected the claims that there’s a distinction between aid to a terrorist group’s “social” wing, as opposed to its military wing….:

Material support meant to “promote peaceable, lawful conduct” can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups – legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds – all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.

As a result of this ruling upholding the material support statute, it remains illegal to provide to designated terrorist groups “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instrument or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (one or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser said Sunday that authorities believe the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attempted bombing at Times Square.

White House adviser John Brennan said that while the investigation is ongoing, it appears that accused bomber Faisal Shahzad was working for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The militant group is believed to be hiding senior al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Brennan said the finding “underscores the serious threat that we face from a very determined enemy.”

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Three terror attacks on U.S. soil in their first year and the Obama administration dares lecture us?

It takes a special kind of arrogance to lecture the American people about terrorism. Especially when in the past year, your administration has allowed three al Qaeda-related terrorists to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

But that’s what the Obama administration has done with Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan’s op-ed in today’s USA Today entitled We Need No Lectures.

Brennan even goes so far as to accuse critics of the Obama administration of aiding al Qaeda.

Brennan boasts of the Obama administration’s successes against global terrorism:

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Jaw-dropping story in today’s Washington Post:

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser on Sunday defended the administration’s decision to try in federal court the man charged with attempting to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day and indicated that he would be offered a plea agreement to persuade him to reveal what he knows about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, was initially “talking to people who detained him” but now has a public defender and “doesn’t have to,” John O. Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have different ways of obtaining information from individuals” in the criminal-justice process, Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people . . . understand what they’re facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, [and] we’re going to pursue that.” Brennan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that other terrorism suspects have “given us very valuable information as they’ve gone through the plea-agreement process.”

(more…)