Earlier this weekend, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that the Obama administration’s position on dissent is that detractors should “sit down and shut up.” The Huffington Post crowd immediately jumped on the statement, saying it couldn’t be supported. Well, 24 hours later, White House homeland-security adviser John Brennan put this argument to rest by publishing a blog in USA Today that not only tells Americans to sit down and shut up but also accuses them of “serv[ing] the goals of al-Qaeda” if …
Following his speech, Senator McConnell sat down with us In The Green Room, where he discussed how the Administration should be handling Guantanamo Bay detainees and reflected upon how the Administration’s “wrong-headed” approach to terrorism led to the mishandling of the case of Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) today swung hard against a public-relations campaign by the Obama Administration to clean up its tattered image over its handling of the war on terrorists, and especially Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In a major address at The Heritage Foundation, McConnell gave a point-by-point refutation of all of the administration’s failures in this area, from the decision to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay to the botched attempt to try some terrorists in New York. But McConnell took special aim at the administration …
“I just think what’s pervasive through the country, and has been now for a number of years, is a complacency, an inertia, a business-as-usual. You ask anyone, is this an important problem? They say yes of course it is, then they stack it up with 150 other priorities. You either have to give this top priority or not. We have not given it sufficient priority. And as a result, there is a complacency, there is a business-as-usual attitude that I think is harmful … including the president, including the leaders …
On New Year’s Eve, the White House received the preliminary assessment from federal agencies detailing the shortfalls of a terrorist bomber got on a plane bound for Detroit. The president admitted the government had more than enough information to justify keeping Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab off the aircraft. Obama concluded the system failed. Here is what the president did not explain: This is the same system that stopped the London-based terrorist plot in 2006. On that occasion, intelligence connected the dots; counterterrorism agents penetrated the conspiracy; Homeland Security developed countermeasures; and …
By now, you’ve heard the news. On Christmas Day, a 23-year-old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow a full Northwest Airlines jet out of the air above Detroit. The only events that stopped this from happening were courageous passengers and a faulty explosive device. If either one of these two events had not taken place, nearly 300 passengers and crew would be dead, and immeasurable collateral damage would have occurred on the ground in Michigan. What you did not hear between this attempted attack on our nation and …
Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), the explosive Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253, is among the most powerful of explosives in the world and was widely used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s. The only reason the passengers of Flight 253 are still alive today is because Mr. Abdulmutallab’s syringe detonator failed for still unknown reasons. Yet despite the facts that PETN is easily detected and Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. embassy in Nigeria about his son this November, Homeland Security Secretary Janet …
