By Michael Ruhl, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service
> House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) Photo by Michael Ruhl
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called congressional voting cards “the most dangerous credit card in the history of the world”, because then enable Congress and the president to engage in reckless spending. This was not Boehner’s first criticism of Obama, but his statement came on the 101st day of the Obama Administration, a time which Boehner has criticized as being pock marked with excessive borrowing, reckless spending and a massive growth in government.
Boehner said that Democrat’s “record on spending and debt is staggering, but our economy is growing weaker, and it’s not going to get any better by growing the size of the government here in Washington.”
Boehner believes that the Democratically controlled Congress has enabled and contributed to the recklessness, and thinks it is up to the Republicans to put a stop to it. Republicans must be “the party of better solutions” if they are going to stand up to the Democrats in Congress, Boehner said, adding that he hopes Democrats will be committed to a bipartisan policy approach..
Citing the elections of 2008, Boehner said “out brand has been tarnished”, but to help the party serve the American people, Republicans must stand up to the Obama Administration when disagreements arise, and to offer alternative solutions.
Leader Boehner applauded President Obama on his strategy towards Afghanistan and Iraq, but showed concern at Obama’s greater national security policy.
“The big question continues to be: what is the Administration’s overarching plan to fight terrorism? Judging from their recent decision to release 30 terrorist detainees with no plan on where to put them, it continues to beg the question,” referring to Obama’s closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center without knowing where the detainees will be sent.
Senior McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt says that the William Ayers link is only relevant because Obama has not been truthful about the relationship.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) says that after September 11th he realized that the U.S. would not be able to capture and kill every terrorist, but rather that we stood the risk of creating more terrorists than we removed from the battlefield. He also says that while there was an ideological component to our opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, since then our “us versus them” perception has greatly receded, to our detriment. (:57)
Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, says that the terrorist watch list is ineffective at best, likely useless and perhaps even harmful by creating it’s own security weaknesses and needs to be changed immediately. (1:00)
Zeyno Baran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says that we must not confuse religious Islam and politcal Islamism. She says that all Islamist terrorists start with non-violent Islamism. (1:12)
In a full Senate committee hearing on “The Roots of Violent Islamist Extremism and Efforts to Counter it,” witnesses spoke about where violent Islamist extremism begins and what steps the United States should take to maintain strong national security. (more…)
Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law discusses torture at the Committee on Judiciary hearing. Cohn says that torture does not work and the best way to get information out of prisoner or suspected terrorist is through other means. (0:30)
At the House Armed Services Global Threat Assessment, Dr. Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, says he thinks that the most likely threat is a terrorist threat because of how suicide bombers create an asymmetrical threat in which the psychological threat may be greater than the physical destruction. (:44)
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