We’re looking more deeply today into the case of Hassan Nemazee, the big-time Democratic fundraiser who’s now been charged with a massive Ponzi scheme, which he used to fund not only a lavish lifestyle but also extravagant giving to Democrats over most of the last decade. Read More
From President Obama’s speech this morning to the UN on global climate change:
[T]he journey is long. The journey is hard. And we don’t have much time left to make it. It is a journey that will require each of us to persevere through setback, and fight for every inch of progress, even when it comes in fits and starts. So let us begin. For if we are flexible and pragmatic; if we can resolve to work tirelessly in common effort, then we will achieve our common purpose: a world that is safer, cleaner, and healthier than the one we found …
The full text of the President’s speech is here.
Former Secretary of State Condi Rice says “If you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.” One might hang this on her. But that wouldn’t make sense since it’s the assumption that supports our entire Afghanistan policy.
I should say upfront that I was one of those many people who thought, for much of the last decade, that one of the many problems with our involvement in Iraq was that it distracted us from a more serious fight in Afghanistan. Read More
Hassan Nemazee isn’t the first alleged Ponzi schemer connected to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
There was also Norman Hsu, whom you might recall. He was the big Hillary donor with a criminal past who funneled campaign contributions through straw donors. He’s in jail now on a conviction from the 1990s that he was on the lam from when he got caught on the campaign finance misdeeds, and he’s subsequently been convicted for a separate Ponzi scheme and for campaign finance violations. So Hsu had more than his share of trouble.
While Hsu was melting down in 2007 — he jumped bail in Los Angeles, left a suicide note and was found in the fetal position on the floor of an Amtrak train in Chicago surrounded by pills — the Clinton campaign rolled out one of its fundraising honchos to defend itself against the blowback from Hsu: a guy by the name of Hassan Nemazee, who, hindsight being 20/20 and all, gave some quotes to the press that drip with irony considering what Nemazee himself was allegedly up to at the time.
As promised …
Our special Tom Delay Dancing With The Stars highlight reel.
Behold the artistry. Feel the power of … The Hammer.
Sen. Ensign tries to reclaim some post-sex scandal credibility with conservatives with a few dozen nonsense amendments to the Finance Committee health care reform bill.
Paul Pilar, former CIA counter-terrorism hand, took up on the question of ‘safe havens’ on the Post oped page last week …
Rationales for maintaining the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan are varied and complex, but they all center on one key tenet: that Afghanistan must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, especially al-Qaeda. Debate about Afghanistan has raised reasons to question that tenet, one of which is that the top al-Qaeda leadership is not even in Afghanistan, having decamped to Pakistan years ago. Another is that terrorists intent on establishing a haven can choose among several unstable countries besides Afghanistan, and U.S. forces cannot secure them all.
The debate has largely overlooked a more basic question: How important to terrorist groups is any physical haven? More to the point: How much does a haven affect the danger of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, especially the U.S. homeland? The answer to the second question is: not nearly as much as unstated assumptions underlying the current debate seem to suppose.
Read the rest here.
Mass senate passes bill to allow a special appointment to Sen. Kennedy’s vacant seat. Now it just needs the governor’s signature.
“Fascination” isn’t one I like using about an apparent terror plot, especially not one that may have been planned for the city my family and I live in. But I keep feeling drawn to learn more about this apparent terror plot centered on Queens, New York and Denver, Colorado, because the more we hear of it the more it sounds like this may be the first really genuine terror plot to be publicly rolled up in the United States since September 11.
Let me first be clear by what I mean by ‘genuine’. Read More