Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Mount Vernon Statement

The Mount Vernon Statement states, in simple and elegant prose, what I've been trying to say for years.

The Mount Vernon Statement

Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.

A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.
  • It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
  • It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.
  • It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
  • It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
  • It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.
If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.

We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

February 17, 2010

You can sign on to the The Mount Vernon Statement here.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Hiding Under the Steps Is Not An Option: GBU-57A/B

Bernie sends this one along with the missive, "the fact that this story was leaked when it was is a little whisper in Ahmadinejad's ear."

GBU-57A/B

The Pentagon is accelerating by three years its plans for a super bunker buster, the GBU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a powerful new bomb aimed squarely at the underground nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea . The gargantuan bomb is longer than 11 persons standing shoulder-to-shoulder or more than 20 feet base to nose and weighs over 15 tons (31,862 pounds). Some 18 percent of its total weight is comprised of explosives.

The GBU-57A/B MOP is so immense it can only be carried by either a B-52 or a B-2A Stealth bomber. The weapons explosive power is 10 times greater than its predecessor, the BLU-109. Moreover, the GBU-57A/B MOP is one third heavier than the MOAB dubbed the Mother of All Bombs.

This super buster all started with a break-through by the Raytheon Company when it developed and tested a new conventional warhead technology to defeat hardened and deeply buried bunkers. The new technology, called Tandem Warhead System, consists of a shaped-charge precursor warhead combined with a follow- through penetrator explosive charge.

A small MOP prototype was exploded deep under the rugged mountains of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the caverns of the little-known Weapons of Mass Destruction National Testbeds. The slender orange-colored MOP small prototype was vertically hung, nose down, just inches from the floor of a narrow cavern and then detonated. During the test, the newly developed 1,000-pound-class test warhead set a record when it punched through 19 feet, 3 inches of a 20-foot,330-ton, steel rod-reinforced concrete block rated at 12,600 pounds per square inch compressive strength. In fewer than 10 milliseconds, the explosion delivered into the target more than 110 million foot-pounds of energy via a high-velocity jet of molten metal.

Simultaneously, the Air Force contracted to have an extremely accurate GPS guidance system developed for the MOP; a system more accurate than those deployed in Iraq . It is believed that the CEP (Circle of Error Probably) for the new system is less than five meters.

Guided by the new precision GPS system, the MOP can penetrate an unprecedented 200 feet down before exploding with devastation into an underground bunker, such as those buried in Iran and North Korea currently used to shield rogue nuclear programs.

A test of the full sized prototype was conducted using a B-52 for the test drop. The prototype weapon met each and every flight, guidance, penetration and detonation requirements.

Its sheer explosive power was demonstrated in the test. By the end of 2007, a full-size dummy mock-up of the eventual GBU-57A/B MOP was loaded into the bay of a B2 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri . A member of the 509th Maintenance Group personally handling the bomb remarked, "I couldn't help but notice how enormous the bomb was hanging in the weapons bay".

A crash program was then approved to modify B-2A Stealth bombers to carry a payload of two GBU-57A/B MOP bombs. The speed and urgency comes at a time when Iran , NATO and Israel are approaching a denouement over Tehran 's nuclear ambitions, its development of long-range, multi-stage missiles and a new awareness that it is clearly developing a nuclear bomb. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and the AFRLs Munitions Directorate and the Air Armament Center , both headquartered at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida , are now rushing to modify the bay of a radar-evading B-2A Stealth Bomber to deliver the bomb. A collage of private sector subcontractors is also working on effort, from Stealth bomber manufacturer Northrop Grumman to Boeings Phantom Works, maker of the bomb itself and prime contractor for the entire project. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Virginia has been coordinating among the various air force groups from the beginning.

Thus, we will now have a non-nuclear weapon capable of deep penetration and massive explosive power. Welcome to the.....

GBU-57A/B

Daddy like.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Lech Walesa's Warning for America

At a campaign event in Chicago for GOP gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski, the legendary Lech Walesa issued an ominous warning for America. The co-founder of Poland's Solidarity Movement and the man who presided over its transition from Communism to Democracy is none too pleased with the Obama administration (hat tips: Drudge and the EIB Network).

WALESA (via translator): The United States is only one superpower.

Today they lead the world.

Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily.

They also lead economically but they're getting weak.

But they don't lead morally and politically anymore.

The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States.

Today, we lost that hope.

Walesa is a man who knows despotism all too well.

Perhaps some of Obama's few remaining drones could explain to me why this Walesa is wrong.


Thursday, February 04, 2010

Someone is Lying About the Detroit Underwear Bomber

Someone is lying.

Item One: After concerted pressure from Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder confessed that he was behind charging the alleged Detroit crotch-bomber in civilian court, thereby terminating the interrogation process after a scant 50 minutes. But, he says, he had consulted the heads of the various intelligence agencies and -- after no one objected -- he went forward with Miranda-izing the accused terrorist.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said Wednesday that he personally made the decision. "I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government," Holder said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Among the Washington heavy-hitters in the Situation Room when that decision was made, according to Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary: Dennis Blair, the national director of intelligence; FBI Director Bob Mueller; CIA Director Leon Panetta; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

So Holder says that all relevant intelligence agencies were consulted. But:

Item 2: On February 2nd, however, CNN reported that no one in the intelligence communities knew of Holder's decision.

The official was not authorized to speak for attribution because the case remains under investigation. Mueller said none of the intelligence chiefs at Tuesday's hearing were consulted about the decision to read AbdulMutallab his Miranda rights. That decision was made by the chief security interrogator at the scene in consultation with the Department of Justice, Mueller said.

And:

Item 3: According to Politico, "Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted they had not been consulted about the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab."

And:

Item 4: The former chairs of the 9/11 Commission criticized the handling of the Crotch-bomber case, saying that the terrorism and intelligence communities should have been consulted.

The two former chairmen of the 9/11 Commission expressed concerns today about how security agencies responded to the arrest of alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the decision to quickly charge him instead of attempting to gain valuable intelligence information...

"Here is a man who may have trained with other people who are trying to get into this country one way or another, who may have worked with some of the top al Qaeda leadership in Yemen or al Qaeda generally and we don't know the details of that," Thomas Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 Commission, told the committee. "He may know about other plots that are pending and we haven't found out about them."

... "The decisions of this kind should never have been made without consulting without the full input of the greater intelligence community, particularly the DNI, but also the CIA the FBI and other members of the intelligence community," said Kean.

In short, the heads of the intelligence agencies say that Eric Holder never consulted them about the decision to Miranda-ize the crotch-bomber.

Eric Holder, in writing, says he did.

Someone is lying -- and an immediate investigation is needed. Eric Holder needs to be put under oath and questioned extensively about his side of this bizarre story. The safety of innocent Americans -- men, women and children -- hangs in the balance.


Hat tip: Commenter Brian.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Hit on Hamas: When You Want to Say Goodbye, Say It With Bullets

CCTV cameras captured the events alleged to have related to the killing of a Hamas terror honcho in Dubai. Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh (Arabic: محمود عبد الرؤوف المبحوح;) was a senior Hamas military commander and a founder of the deadly Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Al-Mabhouh was assassinated in the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai on January 19, 2010, having arrived in the country earlier that day from Syria. It is suspected by Dubai police that he was murdered in his hotel room.





















 













































































I personally suspect Mahmoud Al Mabhouh committed suicide. He probably suffered from great remorse over his many terrorist activities against innocent civilians, which led to his electrocuting himself, followed by a wanton act of self-suffocation.