North Korea's Nukes
The U.N. Security Council held an emergency, closed-door meeting this morning to discuss North Korea's claim that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.
The underground detonation was some kind of nuclear device, but intelligence analysts are skeptical, for the moment at least, that it was in fact a hydrogen bomb. If it was a hydrogen bomb, the national security threats to our allies and us would grow significantly.
Not only is the explosive power of a hydrogen bomb dramatically greater than anything North Korea is known to currently possess, H-bombs are also generally smaller and lighter. It is conceivable that the missiles North Korea possesses could easily carry the payload.
Those missiles can strike much of Asia, including U.S. military bases in the region. Moreover, a top U.S. military official recently expressed his belief that the regime can strike the U.S. homeland.
Whatever this test was, it is one more example of provocative actions from a hostile nation that believes Obama is weak. But it is also the result of multiple administrations that were unwilling to follow policies that could have prevented one of the worst actors in the world from gaining access to the worst weapons in the world.
What you are seeing with North Korea now is what you will see with Iran under the weak policies being pursued by Barack Obama. Don't forget that North Korea has been working very closely with Iran to develop the arsenals of both nations.
Perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry might want to go to a microphone today and explain to the American people why the Obama Administration believes that the greatest threat facing mankind is that average temperatures may go up two degrees over the next few decades.
The warming we should be worried about is the temperature a city reaches when a hydrogen bomb explodes.
Iran Shows Off Its Missiles
While North Korea is flexing its muscles, Iran is showing off its vast arsenal of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Iran recently test-fired these missiles in clear violation of U.N. resolutions.
Don't miss the significance of this display, my friends. We are just days away from "Implementation Day," when sanctions are formally lifted against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Billions of dollars will pour into the mullahs' coffers at this sensitive moment, and the regime is literally bragging about its illegal missile capabilities! The Iranians are declaring victory over the West.
The president should immediately announce -- and should get our European allies to join us -- that sanctions will not be lifted because Iran is clearly violating both the letter and spirit of the nuclear agreement, as well as existing U.N. resolutions. Unfortunately, this president won't do that.
I can only hope that Congress will do everything it can to hold the administration responsible for the deal it negotiated and resist efforts to lift sanctions on the rogue regime in Tehran.
Obama's New Rules
President Obama's announcement yesterday of new regulations designed to restrict access to firearms had liberals applauding and conservatives fuming. But the impact of his proposals on limiting mass shootings appears negligible at best. The biggest impact will be to make it harder for law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
The Associated Press wrote that the effectiveness of the "centerpiece of Obama's plan" -- his attempt to force the registration of all gun sales -- "is an open question, and one not easily answered." In a separate analysis, the AP declared that Obama's actions "would have had no impact in keeping weapons from the hands of suspects in several of the deadliest recent mass shootings that have spurred calls for tighter gun control."
Our friends at Breitbart.com offered a good analysis of the proposed rules, which you can read here. The only thing that seems guaranteed is that government will get bigger and more intrusive.
For example, as Breitbart notes, Americans have been selling guns privately since the founding of the country. With the stroke of his pen, the president is wiping out 225 years of precedent without any input from the people's elected representatives.
In addition, the plan reportedly gets the Social Security Administration involved in deciding who can and cannot own a gun. People could be denied based on financial considerations. Consider this excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:
"A potentially large group within Social Security are people who, in the language of federal gun laws, are unable to manage their own affairs due to 'marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.' . . . If Social Security, which has never participated in the background check system, uses the same standard as the VA, millions of its beneficiaries would be affected."
How can this be a good idea? This is the same bureaucracy that gave us the VA and the IRS scandals. It can't tell whether foreign visitors overstay their visas. It has millions of active Social Security numbers for dead people. And it couldn't build a functioning website for a billion dollars!