Well, if appears that the Radical Left, the Radical Muslims, and fellow traveler, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, are not going to be able to put on a “really big shoe” (as Ed Sullivan used to say).

Per foxnews.com, Khalid Sheik Muhammed, who has been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006, after being captured in Pakistan in 2003, and four alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirators, will face prosecution by a military commission in Guantanamo, instead of being the star attractions in an “Ain’t America Awful” series of show trials in New York City.

Attorney General Holder made the announcement today, purely disgusted that he could not put the city of New York in peril and put America on Trial at the same time.

Holder, determined not to acknowledge the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans did not want to try Muslim Terrorists in New York City in the first place, blamed Congress for tying the Obama administration’s hands in trying the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and his accomplices.  AG Holder was noticably upset as he announced that he was left without a choice.

Holder blasted Congress for blocking any detainees from being tried in the U.S.  He claimed that the “unwise and unwarranted restrictions” placed on trying the Terrorists by Congress undermine the U.S. in counter-intelligence and counter-terror efforts.

Seemingly on the verge of either a meltdown or tears, Holder said that as a native New Yorker, he knows as well as anyone the federal court’s capacity to try the suspects. He then said that he’s intimately familiar with the cases, much moreso than congressional members, or the public, who opposed allowing the cases to be held in the United States.

Well, he should be, because he’s the Attorney General.  But, then again, he’s very familiar with Muslim Terroists in general.

As I reported in my post Holder:  Failure is Not an Option:

…from 2001 until he became Attorney General, Holder worked in private practice for the prestigious law firm of Covington and Burling.  Researching his time there is quite illuminating.  Can you say Conflict of Interest?

In her best-seller, Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin wrote:

One wonders what the Obamas would say about Holder’s lucrative work for Chiquita Brands International if it had been performed by, say, John McCain’s top lawyer? As chief counsel for the global company, Holder won a “slap-on-the-wrist plea deal to charges that it had paid off” Colombian paramilitary death squads. Liberal critics of Holder point out that he used his influence as a former Clinton Justice Department official to negotiate a sweetheart deal for Chiquita.

…Putting on the best terrorist defense is a Covington & Burling specialty. Among the firm’s other celebrity terrorist clients: 17 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The law firm employed dozens of radical attorneys such as David Remes and Marc Falkoff to provide the enemy combatants with more than 3,000 hours of pro bono representation. Covington & Burling co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in the Boumediene v. Bush detainee case, and secured victories for several other Gitmo enemy combatants in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Falkoff went on to publish a book of poetry, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, which he dedicated to the suspected terrorists: “For my friends inside the wire, Mahmoad, Majid, Yasein, Saeed, Abdulsalam, Mohammed, Adnan, Jamal, Othman, Adil, Mohamed, Abdulmalik, Areef, Adeq, Farouk, Salman, and Makhtar. Inshallah, we will next meet over coffee in your homes in Yemen.”

But, hey, that’s not the reason.  It’s because he’s so much smarter that everybody else.  Just ask the AG:

Do I know better than them? Yes. I respect their ability to disagree but they should respect that this is an executive branch function, a unique executive branch function.

Prosecutors from both the Departments of Defense and Justice have been working together since the beginning of this matter, and I have full faith and confidence in the military commission system to appropriately handle this case as it proceeds.

KSM’s co-conspirators are Walid Muhammed Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi. The five Muslim Terrorists are accused of killing 2,976 people, all named in an 81-page indictment dismissed which was unsealed Monday by a federal judge.

The order to dismiss signed by U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy reads:

Because a timely prosecution in federal court does not appear feasible, the attorney general intends to refer this matter to the Department of Defense to proceed in military commissions.

So, there you have it.  AG Holder and his boss, Scooter, were foiled in their plans to put America on trial in front of the world, in the very city that experienced the worst Terrorist attack on American soil.

Their planned Dog and Pony show, not only was a horrible idea, it was a degradation….a dragging-though-the-mud of our nation and the horrific images and memories that remained seared in our minds to this day.

Obama and Holder ought to be be ashamed for even proposing such a crass idea.

But, they aren’t…and more’s the pity.

There was a lot of gnashing of teeth up in the Halls of Elitism in the Grand Old Party yesterday. One of their potential presidential candidates, had gotten his clock cleaned in fundraising by **gasp** one of those Tea Partiers…and she’s a woman! **double gasp**!

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann brought in a combined $2.2 million for the first quarter of 2011. This topped the $1.9 million that GOP legacy Mitt Romney brought in, per politico.com.

According to Bachmann adviser Andy Parrish,

Bachmann raised $1.7 million for her congressional committee, and another $500,000 for her leadership PAC.

The delicious thing is, most of her donations are reportedly small checks.

What is it about Michele Bachmann to has caused Rush Limbaugh to say about her and Sarah Palin:

The gonads on our team happen to be wearing skirts.

From her website:

Elected in 2006, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is the first Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. From the beginning, Congresswoman Bachmann has demonstrated bold reform, pushing to fix Washington’s broken ways. Every day she puts her constitutional conservative values to work as she represents the people of Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District, a district which contains parts of six counties, stretching from Stillwater past St. Cloud, including suburbs of the Twin Cities.

Congresswoman Bachmann is a leading advocate for tax reform, a staunch opponent of wasteful government spending, and a strong proponent of adherence to the Constitution, as intended by the Founding Fathers. She believes government has grown exponentially, with ObamaCare being the most recent example of its uninhibited growth. Congresswoman Bachmann wants government to make the kind of serious spending decisions that many families and small businesses have been forced to make. She is a champion of free markets and she believes in the vitality of the family as the first unit of government. She is also a defender of the unborn and staunchly stands for religious liberties.

Prior to serving in the U.S. Congress, Bachmann served in the Minnesota State Senate. She was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000 where she championed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

…Congresswoman Bachmann also led the charge on education issues in Minnesota calling for the abolishment of Goals 2000 and the Profiles of Learning in its school. She recognized the need for quality schools and subsequently started a charter school for at-risk kids in Minnesota.

…As a mother of five children and 23 foster children, she has a deep appreciation for that portion of the Oath of Office in which members of Congress vow to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

In July 2010 Congresswoman Bachmann hosted the first Tea Party Caucus meeting because she saw the need for Tea Partiers to have a listening ear in Congress. She is seen as a champion of Tea Party values including the call for lower taxes, renewed focus on the Constitution and the need to shrink the size of government.

Congresswoman Bachmann is a graduate of Anoka High School and Winona State University. She has been married to Marcus for more than thirty years and they live in Stillwater where they own a small business mental health care practice that employs nearly fifty people. The Bachmanns have five children, Lucas, Harrison, Elisa, Caroline, and Sophia. In addition, the Bachmanns have opened their home to 23 foster children, which has inspired Congresswoman Bachmann to become one of Congress’ leading advocates for foster and adopted children, earning her bipartisan praise for her efforts.

But hey, what about Mitt?

Per thehill.com:

Romney sources said that the potential 2012 presidential candidate raked in the money while dispatching over $400,000 to Republican candidates and conservative causes.

There was no indication as to the breakdown in the haul between Romney’s federal PAC, Free and Strong America, and his state-level organizations in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and Alabama.

From biography.com:

Born Willard Mitt Romney on March 12, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Mitt Romney attended the prestigious Cranbrook School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in 1971. He attended Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School and received both a law degree and an M.B.A. in 1975.

The son of George Romney, Michigan governor and Republican presidential nominee (he was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968), Mitt Romney began his career in business. He worked for the management consulting firm Bain & Company before founding the investment firm Bain Capital in 1984. In 1994, he ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts but was defeated by longtime incumbent Edward Kennedy.

In 1999, Romney stepped into the national spotlight when he took over as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. He helped rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics from financial and ethical woes, and helmed a successful Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002.

Mitt Romney parlayed his success with the Olympics into politics when he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2003. After serving one term, he declined to run for reelection and announced his bid for U.S. president.

Mitt Romney married Ann Davies in 1969; they have five sons, Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. Romney is the author of the 2004 book “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.”

And, of course, he happily signed off on the state of Massachusetts’ own version of government-run Health Care, RomneyCare, in 2006.

 With America besieged by enemies, foreign and domestic, enabled by a feckless Federal Government, who seems more interested in the rights of Muslim fanatics halfway across the world that the economic suffering of Americans, the Republicans had better wake up and realize that November 2nd, 2010 was not just an aberration,  flash in the pan, Bigfoot-sighting type of event.  No matter how they wish to deny it, the pendulum of American politics has swung back to embrace Reagan Conservatism. 

The next Presidential Election will not be won by anything less.

It appears that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet had a little help from his friends in the Midterm Elections.

According to thehill.com, Republicans on the House Administration Committee are calling for a severe tightening up of voter registration rules. Unexpectedly, a Colorado study has found as many as 5,000 non-citizens in the state voted on November 2nd, 2010.

The Committee Chairman, Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.),called the study “a disturbing wake-up call”:

We simply cannot have an electoral system that allows thousands of non-citizens to violate the law and vote in our elections. We must do more to protect the integrity of our electoral processes.

Gee, DiNozzo.  Ya think?

According to Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, his department’s study showed that nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens, were nevertheless registered to vote in Colorado.

Of those illegal alien voters, nearly 5,000 took part in the 2010 general election in which Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet narrowly defeated Republican John Buck.

And all the state of Colorado had to do to find out about it was to compare the state’s voter registration database with driver’s license records.

Gessler said:

We know we have a problem here. We don’t know the size of it.

Now, that’s reassuring.

Meanwhile, there has been a law enforcement bulletin issued that states that members of drug cartels have been overheard planning to kill federal agents and Texas Rangers who guard the border.

The bulletin, issued in March, said that the cartel members are going to use AK-47 assault rifles to murder agents and Texas Rangers from across the border. It did identify the cartels involved.

This bulletin was discussed at a hearing before a panel of the House Committee on Homeland Security named The Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management. The topic for discussion was “The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against the Drug Cartels.”

Our role? How about keeping these murderous thugs from crossing the border?!

Well…there seems to be a little problem with that…

Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office, Richard M. Stana told the Senate Homeland Security Committee yesterday that the federal government can actually prevent or stop illegal entries into the United States along only 129 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.

That leaves 1,825 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border where the Border Patrol cannot prevent or stop an illegal entry.

This professional bureaucratic bean counter’s office is responsible for “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively”

Stana proudly told the committee that the Border Patrol itself says it has established “an acceptable level of control” along 873 miles of the 1,954-mile-long southwest border. This is because of the way the Border Patrol defines “an acceptable level of control” of the border.

Acceptable? To whom???

Well, it certainly is not to Arizona’s Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever. He told FoxNews.com that an U.S. Border Patrol supervisor let him know as recently as this month that the patrol’s office on Arizona’s southern border was under orders to keep apprehension numbers down during specific reporting time periods.

According to Sheriff Dever:

The senior supervisor agent is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back. “He said, ‘I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. … They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back.”

The sheriff said that he had been talking to several federal agencies concerning this subject over the last two years. Dever will be telling the powers-that-be all about it when he testifies under oath next month before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

I will raise my hand to tell the truth and swear to God, and nothing is more serious or important than that. I’m going to tell them that, here’s what I hear and see every day: I had conversation with agent A, B, C, D and this is what they told me.

Of course, a commander with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection vigorously denied Dever’s charges.

Why would the Border Patrol not be arresting illegal aliens coming into our country?

Four words:  President Barack Hussein Obama

According to Scooter, he cannot sign an executive order to stop deportations. However, he did pledge to push for changes because he wanted to see students succeed rather than be deported.

Obama was speaking at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington D.C. in a Townhall Event, sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision.

When the meeting got started, student Karen Maldonado, via Skype, held up her deportation letter and asked him:

Why is the government saying that deportations have stopped,or the detention of many students like me, why is it that we are still receiving deportation letters like this one?

I wonder if this illegal alien is going to one of America’s Universities on American taxpayers’ money?  But, I digress…

Scooter answered:

We have redesigned our enforcement practices under the law to make sure that we’re focusing primarily on criminals, and so our deportation of criminals are up about 70 per cent.

Our deportation of non-criminals are down, and that’s because we want to focus our resources on those folks who are destructive to the community.

And for a young person like that young woman that we just spoke to who’s going to school, doing all the right things, we want them to succeed.

Respectfully, Mr. President, what part of the word illegal do you not understand?

Read this and guess who said it:

Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

… After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

Back in the day, this politician said that deposing Saddam militarily was not necessary, because Iraq posed no “direct threat” to the United States. He also used Iraq’s weakened economy as a reason to leave Saddam alone.

He stated that we could still handle the militaristic despot and claimed that the Bush administration’s statement that Saddam posed too great a threat to American interests and his own people to be left in power was a bunch of political hyperbole.

That was the current President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, serving as an Illinois State Senator in 2002.

Scooter was giving his politically correct opinion concerning President George W. Bush’s planned invasion of Iraq. The murderous dictator that he was speaking of was Saddam Hussein. Obama was speaking at an anti-war rally in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002.  Back then, his stance was, that while Saddam was a brutal tyrant, that alone was not enough to justify using military force to remove him from power.

My, how his opinion has changed in 9 short years.

On March 28, 2011, in a speech to the American people, desperately attempting to justify attacking the government of Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi, Obama brought up Kadhafi’s record of atrocities. But in this instance, our flip-flopping president tried to make the case that letting Kadhafi continue his genocide was not an option:

Kadhafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. “He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.

Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we waited, if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

According to Scooter, Kadhafi had to be stopped because he would slaughter his own people in order to keep his throne. Per the president, this somehow constituted a threat to America’s “interests and values:

But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.

Back in 2002, Illinois Senator Scooter proclaimed that, America should fight Saddam Hussein through Democratic reforms in neighboring countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia instead of force. He also called for stronger international nuclear safeguards and nuclear independence:

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join – the battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

But now, the worm has turned (Oops. Can I say that?).

Obama is endorsing his Kinetic Military Action in order to enforce America’s “responsibility as a [global] leader”. He proclaimed that the United States was “different” from other countries and therefore had no other choice but to attack Libya:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.

There goes Barack Hussein Obama Antoinette again.  Wanting to have his cake and eat it, too.

At least, according to Sen. Charles (Chuckie) Schumer, D-N.Y., we are.

Chuckie, a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, got caught giving marching orders to 4 Democratic Senators about the budget stalemate yesterday morning. Schumer was unaware that reporters were listening in.

This upstanding public servant told this non-musical quartet, composed of Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, to tell anyone who would listen that the GOP is refusing to negotiate.

He then reminded the Senators to be sure that they call the propsed GOP spending cuts “extreme.”

When caught red handed, Schumer’s feeble response was:

I always use extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use.

One of his aides must have told him that reporters were listening in, because he ended his instructions midsentence.

According to Susan Ferrechino, of the Washington Examiner, Chuckie said the following, during his instructions to the quartet, about House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio:

The main thrust is basically that we want to negotiate and we want to come up with a compromise but the Tea Party is pulling Boehner too far over to the right and so far over that there is no more fruitful negotiations. The only way we can avoid a shutdown is for Boehner to come up with a reasonable compromise and not just listen to what the Tea Party wants.

Schumer also said that Boehner was “in a box,” over the budget negotiations.

The Senatorial Quartet started contributing to the conference call after they realized that reports were listening in.

Chuckie’s conference call is a continuation of a Democratic Party theme begun before the Midterm Elections, labeling the Tea Party Movement as Extreme, because the American public are daring to call for a fiscally-responsible Federal Government.

Oh, the horror!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.), two weeks ago, blamed “tea party extremists” for standing in the way of a compromise to allow Congress to keep the government running through September.

Dinghy Harry whined that:

Some Tea Party extremists seem to think ‘compromise’ is a dirty word, and have said that they would rather shut down the government than work with Democrats to find a common-sense, bipartisan solution.

He went on to plead with “reasonable Republicans” to

break from tea party extremists and join Democrats to find a responsible, bipartisan solution free of extraneous riders.

Or will they sacrifice American jobs to appease their base?

Harry, your shoving of Obamacare down our throats and your Democratic Congress’ fiscal mismanagement of the Federal Budget cost Americans jobs.

And the Conservative base is composed of the majority of Americans.

A coordinated message released by either Political Party is certainly not uncommon.  However, at this crucial juncture in the budget negotiation process, this will certainly not help avoid a shutdown.

The meme of Tea Party Extremism is certainly nothing new.  Remember this?

or how about this charming young lady (and I’m being kind):

Merriam-webster.com defines the phrase ad hominem as:

1: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect

2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made

Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, whatever you wish to call these out-of-touch imbeciles, are having a problem:  They are stuck in a reverse-Midas situation.  Everything they touch turns into garbage.

Their president’s poll numbers are tanking, as his Smart Power! Foreign Policy appears to the public to have all of the well-thought out logistics of a Three Stooges short. (Hey, Moe! Nyuk, nyuk!)

Meanwhile, his domestic policies have resulted in 1/6th of Americans being on Food Stamps and a horrible employment situation, as Americans live in dread of the start of the unwanted monster called Obamacare.

So, as their political reality is collapsing around them, all Progressives have left are ad hominem attacks, or, name-calling.

Like the bully on the playground, whose false bravado masks a deeply-set insecurity, Democrats are now lashing out at the Tea Party Movement and the rest of Conservatives, in an attempt to protect their phony-baloney jobs and their acquired power.  All their carefully crafted schemes and long-term plans are turning to ash in their hands, as Christopher Lee did at the end of The Horror of Dracula.

On July 16, 1964, American Senator Barry Goldwater said the following during his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

And, if you go further back in American History, I suppose that these namby-pamby passive-aggressive Progressives would have labeled our Founding Fathers as Extremists, also.  Lord knows, they said some pretty Extreme things.  Like Patrick Henry, who said:

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Is wanting a fiscally-responsible Federal Government an act of Extremism?  No.  Therefore:

We’re all Extremists, now.

When President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama says it is not, evidently.

Speaking Monday night from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., Obama claimed that [by his command] the United States started a Kinetic Military Action against Libya in order to prevent a slaughter of civilians that would have stained the world’s conscience and “been a betrayal of who we are.” 

He then stated that he ruled out removing Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi because trying to oust him militarily would be a costly mistake.

The Leader of the Free World then announced that NATO would assume command over the entire Libya operation on Wednesday. While this action symbolically keeps his ideologically driven promise to allow the other countries in his Coalition of the Unwilling to take over command authority, it does nothing to illuminate when the end of our involvement is or what the endgame of Obama’s KMA is supposed to be.

Carefully avoiding calling the Libyan offensive a WAR, Obama desperately attempted to justify why he involved America in his international coalition.

According to Scooter, his brilliant move had stopped Kadhafi’s advances and halted a slaughter that could have shaken the stability of an entire region:

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Obama also said, during his address to the nation, that:

For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.

Waitaminute, Scooter.

Per reuters.com:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Libya was not vital to U.S. interests but the broader Middle East was, arguing that instability in Libya could undermine democratic transitions under way in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

“I don’t think it’s a vital interest for the United States. But we clearly have interests there,” he told NBC in an interview taped on Saturday and broadcast Sunday.

To further muddy the waters, an Administration official said yesterday that it was not any sense of precedent that guided President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya.

Denis McDonough, the administration’s deputy national security adviser told a bunch of reporters, away from the cameras, that:

We don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.

He went on to explain that there were compelling reasons to get involved in Libya as opposed to Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, four other countries in the Middle East where pro-democracy crowds have battled authoritarian governments.

White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked by a reporter on Monday about an interesting report:

There was a report out of West Point in 2007 about the people going through Syria to get into Iraq to fight U.S. troops, and that report had about a fifth of those going in to fight U.S. troops from Libya.

There was also a Libyan opposition group that was affiliated with al-Qaeda. And my question is, how concerned is the administration about the possible presence within this broad group of Libyan opposition figures that there are those who fought jihad against the United States in Iraq, or are affiliated with al-Qaeda or affiliated groups?

According to Carney, the administration had

obviously spent a lot of time looking at the opposition in Libya and speaking with opposition leaders.

What we have seen in Libya is something that’s national and organic ( like Iran in 1979?), where, as we’ve seen in other countries, the people of Libya have expressed their desire for greater participation, greater voice in their government, more representation. But beyond that, I don’t have anything specific on elements of the opposition that would be of concern.

Something smells fishy here…and it’s not the Potomac River.  Can you say Caliphate?

So how much is Obama’s Odyssey costing Americans?

Per George Stephanopoulos at ABC News:

One week after an international military coalition intervened in Libya, the cost to U.S. taxpayers has reached at least $600 million, according to figures provided by the Pentagon.

U.S. ships and submarines in the Mediterranean have unleashed at least 191 Tomahawk cruise missiles from their arsenals to the tune of $268.8 million, the Pentagon said.

U.S. warplanes have dropped 455 precision guided bombs, costing tens of thousands of dollars each.

A downed Air Force F-15E fighter jet will cost more than $60 million to replace.

Our Best and Brightest are in harm’s way, 1/6th of our fellow Americans are on Food Stamps, gas prices have risen 50 cents per gallon since the first of the year, and the man who is supposed to be our country’s greatest advocate is more interested in being a part of an international coalition, intervening in a civil war in Libya, and telling Brazil to Drill, Baby, Drill!

What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is a-goin’ on here?

KJ UPDATE 7:15 AM CENTRAL:  NATO just announced that there will be a delay in their “takeover” of the Libyan KMA.

I’m shocked, I tell you.  Shocked!