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Obama's outrageous oversight
Washington Times ^ | February 12, 2009 | Editors

Posted on 02/12/2009 5:49:29 AM PST by Sergeant Tim

Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.

White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911; barackobama; burlingame; cole; detainee; detainees; gitmo; guantanamo; militarycommissions; obama; wot
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I've read elsewhere this morning that Obama was actually the elected President of the Harvard Law Review, not its editor. Yet I think this goes far beyond the fact he merely won a popularity contest. Twenty-five years later, now U.S. President Obama is no Constitutional scholar, nor does he have the CIPA law right in his mind on this. His vastly more experienced WH counsel at least honest about their ignorance. Moreover, justice for our 17 sailors murdered aboard the USS Cole was reaching a culminating point when the prosecutions were halted for the “120-day review.” It will take years to restart the detainees' trials in federal courts and “fashioning solutions” will not bring "swift and certain justice." The ACLU, Human Rights First, and the Center for Constitutional Rights all have hands up his shirt, Barack Obama is only moving his lips, and his top folks at the DoJ are too his legal left. What is decided will affect more than justice for those 17 sailors and 2,975 more dead a mere eleven months later.
1 posted on 02/12/2009 5:49:29 AM PST by Sergeant Tim
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To: Sergeant Tim

The year Obama got elected as President of the Harvard Law Review, they changed the criteria so that more minorities could be represented. It was not based primarily on scholarship and academic performance. Obama himself has been quoted as saying that he was the beneficiary of affirmative action.


2 posted on 02/12/2009 5:57:16 AM PST by kabar
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To: Sergeant Tim
He is like the new winner of the Westminster Dog Show. The oldest dog ever (10 yrs) was chosen by the judges, because the dog almost died 5 years ago and was just now able to be shown again. He won the sympathy vote.

The major difference for me, is that I really like the dog, and I cant stand Obama.

3 posted on 02/12/2009 5:58:16 AM PST by Vaquero ( "an armed society is a polite society" Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: Sergeant Tim
From the article:
"Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, ...
The teleprompter must have been out-of-order.
4 posted on 02/12/2009 5:59:08 AM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: kabar

We elected someone with nothing more than “homecoming king” on his resume.


5 posted on 02/12/2009 6:06:43 AM PST by anniegetyourgun
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To: Sergeant Tim
I've read elsewhere this morning that Obama was actually the elected President of the Harvard Law Review, not its editor.

You are correct. Archived NYT article:

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

"The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. "

6 posted on 02/12/2009 6:15:50 AM PST by Yo-Yo
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To: Sergeant Tim

He knows so little it is stunning.

Probably the most intellectually inept of the men to hold the office in modern times.

Fiscally weak, morally adrift, mentally incurious. Being led by socialists of his choosing.

The media cheered and encouraged his election, and his worshipers got the empty suit.

We’re screwed.


7 posted on 02/12/2009 6:33:21 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: anniegetyourgun

We’ve put a high school quarterback in the Super Bowl and surrounded him with the varsity cheerleaders.


8 posted on 02/12/2009 6:38:33 AM PST by TheGrimReaper (Charter Member: Armed Conservative Resistance)
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To: TheGrimReaper
We’ve put a high school quarterback in the Super Bowl and surrounded him with the varsity cheerleaders.

The average Obama voter would understand the language but never comprehend the thought.

9 posted on 02/12/2009 6:44:32 AM PST by lonestar
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To: DuncanWaring
It bears repeating:

"Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77......

"Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."

-------

What disturbs me is that the general public is utterly ignorant of WHY these guys were sent to Gitmo. The stock answer is that "so they could be tortured." If you ask "what was the stated reason given by the Bush administration?", you get a blank stare....from law students!

10 posted on 02/12/2009 6:52:45 AM PST by cookcounty (President Barack Hoover Obama needs a few history lessons.)
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To: Vaquero

Re the Dog Show. By marginalizing the criteria by which a champion of all breeds is chosen, in this case making a dog a champ because of the sympathy felt for him, renders those who won before him something less then champions as they were.

The same sort of thing happened when they gave the Nobel Peace prise to Passer Arafat. That award has lost every single bit of it’s prestige for anyone who has a modicum of common sense.


11 posted on 02/12/2009 6:56:26 AM PST by 101voodoo
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To: Sergeant Tim

BTTT


12 posted on 02/12/2009 7:10:09 AM PST by kellynla (Freedom of speech makes it easier to spot the idiots! Semper Fi!)
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To: All

My apologies but I have wanted a place to park the following comment on our prez....(not mine) but everyone’s:

“Dummer ‘n a bar of soap!”

Boy that felt good!


13 posted on 02/12/2009 7:12:21 AM PST by imintrouble
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To: lonestar

Must be something in that Kool Aid they like so much.


14 posted on 02/12/2009 7:17:00 AM PST by TheGrimReaper (Charter Member: Armed Conservative Resistance)
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To: Sergeant Tim

Obama’s learning curve is going to kill us.


15 posted on 02/12/2009 7:19:51 AM PST by NonValueAdded (May God save America from its government)
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To: Vaquero

I think the Bamster is winning the most disliked contest between Bill Clinton and himself. You will not see Obama shaking hands on a rope line as Clinton did. I think the Bamster is to much of a coward.


16 posted on 02/12/2009 7:28:47 AM PST by Piquaboy (22 year veteran of the Army, Air Force and Navy, Pray for all our military .)
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To: Sergeant Tim

On February 6th, 1990, Obama became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

He manages to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review without ever publishing a SINGLE piece of signed, written work — not one!

Update: Politico claims that an unsigned — and previously unattributed — 1990 article was produced by Obama and offers a glimpse at hi’s views on abortion policy and the law during his student days, and provides a rare addition to his body of work.

The six-page summary, tucked into the third volume of the year’s Harvard Law Review, considers the charged, if peripheral, question of whether fetuses should be able to file lawsuits against their mothers. Obama’s answer: No.

I sent Politico an email asking how they knew the document was produced by Obama, since it is “unsigned — and previously unattributed.” They never responded.

Obama’s timing, however, was better than his writing. In the same spring 1990 term that he would stand for the presidency, the Harvard Law School found itself embroiled in an explosive racial brouhaha.

Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that the Harvard Law School appoint a black woman to the law faculty.

This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.

Feeling the pressure, HLR editors wanted to elect their first African American president. Obama had an advantage. Spared the legacy of slavery and segregation, and having grown up in a white household, he lacked the hard edge of many of his black colleagues.

“Obama cast himself as an eager listener,” the New York Times reported, “sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.”

In February 1990, after an ideologically charged all day affair, Obama’s fellow editors elected him president from among 19 candidates. As it happened, Obama prevailed only after the HLR’s small conservative faction threw him its support.

Obama was elected after a meeting of the review’s 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970’s the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

Curiously, once elected, Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, “A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time. “After his appointment, the NY Times carried a story in February 1990, which included a few quotes from Obama:

“The fact that I’ve been elected shows a lot of progress,” Mr. Obama said today in an interview. “It’s encouraging.” “But it’s important that stories like mine aren’t used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don’t get a chance,” he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment...

On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: “I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I’m fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.” Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a “forum for debate,” bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

Unlike most editors, and likely all its presidents, Obama was not a writer. During his tenure at Harvard, he wrote only one heavily edited, unsigned note.

In this note for the third volume of the 1990 HLR, he argued against any limits on abortion, citing the government’s interest in “preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair.” Well, the new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

And, it worked!

In other words, Obama was the first affirmative action President of the Harvard Law Revue.

http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaEducation.htm


17 posted on 02/12/2009 7:30:46 AM PST by Beckwith (A "natural Born" citizen)
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To: Beckwith

BO has been on the affirmative action fast track his whole life. And now we suffer and pay.


18 posted on 02/12/2009 8:03:21 AM PST by Sig Sauer P220 (There ought to be one day -- just one -- when there is open season on Senators --- Will Rogers)
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To: SoFloFreeper
He knows so little it is stunning.

But just think...he makes up for that lack of knowledge with an overabundance of arrogance! Isn't he just dreamy? :-D

(OK, I can't do that anymore...)

19 posted on 02/12/2009 8:10:10 AM PST by Allegra
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To: 101voodoo

I agree.

I can’t imagine how all of the other owners and trainers felt when a sympathy vote won Best in Show. Especially after all the promos given to Uno, the previous year’s winner, and what a champion he was for his whole year of appearances, a la Miss America.

What will this year’s old dog be able to actually do?

That choice totally diminished the prestige of the title.


20 posted on 02/12/2009 8:37:04 AM PST by maica (Barack Obama is a Communist Party Project.)
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