The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 killed over 2,400 Americans and led directly to the entry of the United States into World War II.

In his powerful, thickly researched new book, December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World, Craig Shirley chronicles the day-by-day shifts in American culture, politics, and national identity through that horrible month. Before December, Shirley tells Reason’s Nick Gillespie, a solid majority opposed entry into World War II and the “eminently respectable” America First movement was poised to help select the next president of the United States. Non-interventionism was so universal that Franklin Roosevelt himself had campaigned for his third term as president on a promise to keep “American boys” out of European wars.

By the start of 1942, says Shirley, the long tradition of isolationism was over, never to be seen again. The nation that had rejected the League of Nations after World War I helped create the United Nations and America quickly became not simply a global economic, political, and military power but the dominant player on the globe.

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When the President ordered the attack on Libya without Congressional authorization, he crossed a very bright Constitutional line that he himself recognized in 2007 when he told the Boston Globe “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

The reason the American Founders reserved the question of war to Congress was that they wanted to assure that so momentous a decision could not be made by a single individual. They had watched European kings plunge their nations into bloody and debilitating wars and wanted to avoid that fate for the American Republic.

The most fatal and consequential decision a nation can make is to go to war, and the American Founders wanted that decision made by all the representatives of the people after careful deliberation. Only when Congress has made that fateful decision does it fall to the President as Commander in Chief to command our armed forces in that war.

The authors of the Constitution were explicit on this point. In Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton drew a sharp distinction between the American President’s authority as Commander in Chief, which he said “would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces” and that of the British king who could actually declare war.

To contend that the President has the legal authority to commit an act of war without Congressional approval requires ignoring every word the Constitution’s authors said on this subject – and they said quite a lot.

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Thursday morning at 12:01 a.m. local time, Arizona’s well publicized anti-illegal-immigration law will  finally go into effect.  Or at least parts of it will.  U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled today to block several provisions of the law that some consider controversial (even though these mimic federal law).   However, the judge has allowed the remainder of the law to move forward as planned while the case is being litigated.  This includes allowing the state of Arizona to stop rogue state officials from implementing “sanctuary city” policies, and allowing the state to pursue civil lawsuits over sanctuary cities.  In addition, Arizona will still be permitted to implement the portion of the law that makes it a crime to pick up day laborers, an issue that law enforcement and officials say has become a major problem in the state.

While yesterday’s ruling is being praised by opponents of the law, it won’t stop their protests, it will prolong them.  For years.  In fact, hordes of angry protesters are scheduled to descend upon the state first thing Thursday morning.  And the propaganda machine on the left continues to run at full speed, cranking out intentionally misleading statements, disinformation, and outright lies.  We’ve watched the boycotts.  We’ve watched as the protests have erupted into hate events, directed not from the right against illegal immigrants as the left portrays them, but from the left and illegal immigrants against peaceful people on the right (and many in the center!).

Meanwhile, as the left continues their manufactured barrage of anger at Andrew Breitbart for supposedly taking things out of context in the Shirley Sherrod story, they fabricate their own version of context propaganda on video in examples like this one from the SEIU:

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I was thinking about opening up a Japanese cultural center across the water from the sunken USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. Just as soon as I lay the cornerstone of a new German Brauhaus on the grounds of Auschwitz. What’s the problem? After all, not all Japanese attacked us on Dec. 7. And I reckon most Germans are genuinely ashamed and horrified by the crimes of the Holocaust committed in their  name. Insensitive nonetheless? Even insulting, despite the passage of time and goodness of these two nations far removed from their WW2 past? Of course it is. Which is why no one in their right mind would propose such hypothetical projects.

I guess the key phrase here is “in their right mind” because wouldn’t you know it, a plan to build what would, at 15 stories, be the largest community center/mosque in New York City is being hotly debated at the moment. Why the debate? Because its location will be only two blocks from the World Trade Center Ground Zero site. Yes. You read that correctly. And just like in my hypothetical examples I set forth above, the obvious question arises: why there?

First, a little background on the mosque’s sponsors helps frame the discussion. The imam leading the project is Faisal Abdul Rauf. Like many imams, Rauf seems to be a split personality. If one were to pull up CNN’s website or open up the NY Times, one would be dutifully fed the story of a soft-spoken introspective man. A respected religious and community leader who is dedicated to reaching across the chasm of religious animus to achieve peaceful co-existence with his Western hosts. A man with a sonorous voice and hypnotic charm who, according to his book What’s Right With Islam wants the mosque to be a place where inter-faith understanding is fostered. Aww shucks!

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Short answer: no… but then again, we seriously doubt that we’re in any greater danger either.  The new policy is both revocable and subject to review and modification if circumstances so warrant.  The questions we want to explore are the rationale for announcing a new policy in the first place and whether the recent summit of 47 nations to deal with nuclear risks accomplished any positive good.

The argument which is made by the right against the president’s newly announced policy, namely that enemy nations that are in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPR) can attack us with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction with complete impunity from nuclear retaliation seems a bit hysterical. One way or another, any nation that attacks us with biological or chemical weapons should count on a rendezvous with their stone-age ancestors.   On the other hand, the argument from the left, that we have moved the hands of the doomsday clock back several minutes, seems like wishful thinking.  America and the world is not safer… not yet, anyway.

Some of those who have been the biggest critics of our Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies, and whose main motivation in life seems to be to prove George Bush’s policies were wrong contend that Iran or North Korea may, as a result of the new policy, be incentivized to abandon their plans to build nuclear arsenals and now comply with the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.  This seems more the stuff of Saturday Night Live than serious foreign-policy thinking.

We do not expect that the President will ever answer the phone in the oval office to,.. “Hello, Barack, this is Mahmoud Admadinejad.  Sorry I haven’t responded earlier to your outstretched hand, but your new nuclear policy made me realize that I owe you an apology.”  Or “Hi there Mr. President, Kim Jong-Il calling to let you know that your new policy is so impressive that I, today, personally ordered the dismantling of all our nuclear forces.”

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Today, in 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

For the Left, one of the most defining images of the previous administration can be summed up in three words “ My Pet Goat.”

If you remember, when President Bush was informed of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center, while his photo op with school children at the Emma  E. Booker elementary school was about to start. For the next several minutes, (much maligned by Michael Moore, in “Faranheit 9/11″) we saw a man confused by the situation. It has been joked about by comedians as him wanting to see how the story ended.

Every time I watch this footage, I always saw a strong man, who knew that twenty school children had looked forward to their chance to read to the President, for weeks. He decided they would not be disappointed. And knowing that this was an attack on the United States, the President did his best to neither disappoint nor alarm the children.

I’ve always imagined his narcissistic predecessor bolting straight out of the room and into a bunker, stepping over any children in his path. In reality, what could the President do? In that moment of confusion there really was nothing that could be done, other than have him sit there uncomfortably, and pretend that everything was normal. It takes a strong man not to flinch under adversity.

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