BREAKING NEWS: The Army is charging Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. So it's now official -- Obama traded five Taliban "generals" for a deserter.
Obama's Secret Deal
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki went "on the record" last night with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. Greta went straight to a major concern about the pending deal with Iran -- the degree of secrecy that surrounds it and President Obama's refusal to submit it to Congress.
When asked whether the American people would be told about the details of the nuclear deal Obama is negotiating with the Iranians "before it's actually signed, sealed, and delivered . . . so we can have some input," Psaki declined to give a clear answer. Instead, she talked about how international agreements are historically negotiated.
Pressed a second time, she was again evasive, saying, "We don't have a deal yet, but I can promise you that if there's a deal it's something we will be communicating quite aggressively with the American people."
Nobody doubts that. Yes, Ms. Psaki, I fully expect Obama to crow about a nuclear deal with Iran. Obama has been reaching out to Iran since the first days of his administration. He seems far more interested in making a friend out of Iran while remaking Israel as our enemy.
We got a perfect example of Obama's upside down world this week. The White House has repeatedly slammed Prime Minister Netanyahu for comments he made during last week's elections. It is even threatening to punish Israel in response. Yet when the ayatollah says, "Of course yes, death to America," the White House was quick to brush it off.
In terms of Obama's legacy, a deal with Iran will be the foreign policy equivalent of passing Obamacare. But as Nancy Pelosi told us, Obamacare had to be passed so we could find out what was in it. That is an unacceptable risk when it comes to the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism potentially gaining access to nuclear weapons.
We hear over and over again that no deal is preferable to a bad deal. I am not convinced Obama truly believes that. And from everything we know, this going to be a very bad deal.
Iran Cannot Be Trusted
Here's what everyone should know: The Iranians cannot be trusted. The regime's leaders call America "the great Satan" and threatened to annihilate our ally Israel. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of America soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has tried to hide its nuclear research facilities and has even buried some in mountains.
And it is also cheating, right now, on current agreements while it is negotiating a new one. Consider this excerpt from the Washington Post:
"The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has failed to provide the information or access needed to allay the agency's concerns about the weapons potential of the country's nuclear program."
The Associated Press reported yesterday that Iran refused an IAEA request for "snap inspections" that would guarantee its compliance.
At this point, U.S. and European negotiators should simply get up and walk out. Clearly, Tehran is not negotiating in good faith. If they will not adhere to existing agreements, why on earth would we trust them to follow the terms of a new deal?
My friends, it is impossible to overstate just how crucial this is. As we have explained, the controversy over the letter by Republican senators and the controversy over whether Israel sought details of the nuclear negotiations are not what the media say they are.
Both are controversial only because they undermined what the Obama Administration intends to do -- make a deal with a foreign power whose very constitution essentially calls for the destruction of America and Israel.
The administration does not want the Israeli or American people to know what is in this deal and it wants to tie the hands of future presidents by transferring our sovereignty to the unelected bureaucrats at the U.N.
That is a scandal bigger than Hillary's missing emails. It is worse than Benghazi, where four Americans were tragically killed. Hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk with this deal.
These negotiations, more than anything else in recent memory, resemble Neville Chamberlain's abject appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
Crony Capitalism
A few years ago, tech giant Google was facing a federal investigation over its business practices. To the surprise of some observers, the company managed to avoid a federal antitrust lawsuit. But it shouldn't surprise anyone. In recent years, the company has tripled its lobbying expenditures and got tremendous access for all that cash.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Google lobbyists have visited the White House 230 times, an average of roughly once per week since Barack Obama became president. But there's more.
The Journal notes that "On Nov. 6, 2012, the night of Mr. Obama's re-election, Mr. Schmidt was personally overseeing a voter-turnout software system for Mr. Obama. . . . By the end of the month, the FTC had decided not to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company."
Mr. Schmidt is not some lowly campaign staffer. He is Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. The report also notes that "Google employees were the second-largest source of campaign donations to [Obama's] campaign by any single U.S. company."
There's another story making headlines today in Politico. The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security issued a blistering report yesterday accusing the deputy secretary of the department of creating "an appearance of favoritism and special access." Those benefitting from this favoritism and special access were Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Tony Rodham, brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
McAuliffe and Rodham reportedly received "unprecedented" intervention by the Department of Homeland Security for a program that Virginia state officials denounced as a "visa-for-sale scheme."
Given the state of affairs in Washington today, I'm under no illusions that the Justice Department or FBI will be acting on this report. I seriously doubt it will make the evening news.