The Iraqi branch of al Qaida, seeking to exploit the bloody turmoil in Syria to reassert its potency, carried out two recent bombings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and likely was behind suicide bombings Friday that killed at least 28 people in the largest city, Aleppo, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

The officials cited U.S. intelligence reports on the incidents, which appear to verify Syrian President Bashar Assad’s charges of al Qaida involvement in the 11-month uprising against his rule. The Syrian opposition has claimed that Assad’s regime, which has responded with massive force against the uprising, staged the bombings to discredit the pro-democracy movement calling for his ouster.

The international terrorist network’s presence in Syria also raises the possibility that Islamic extremists will try to hijack the uprising, which would seriously complicate efforts by the United States and its European and Arab partners to force Assad’s regime from power. On Friday, President Barack Obama repeated his call for Assad to step down, accusing his forces of “outrageous bloodshed.”

The U.S. intelligence reports indicate that the bombings came on the orders of Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian extremist who assumed leadership of al Qaida’s Pakistan-based central command after the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden. They suggest that Zawahiri still wields considerable influence over the network’s affiliates despite the losses the Pakistan-based core group has suffered from missile-firing CIA drones and other intensified U.S. counterterrorism operations.

More will be said about this in the near future, and it remains unknown just how the U.S. government confirmed AQI’s involvement. However, the expansion of al Qaeda in Iraq beyond that state’s borders – evidently for the first time – demonstrates AQI’s strength in Iraq’s post-America phase. Despite years of hunting terror cells and individuals within AQI, the U.S. was not only unable to defeat the AQ franchise, but left it in good enough condition that it has now begun to carry out acts on an international (if still regional) scale.

Along with a testament to AQI’s resilience, the three deadly attacks in Syria over the course of three months show the risk of assuming the makeup of the centers of protest or the active anti-regime population. The risk of al Qaeda and other criminals and terrorists having a presence among the Libyan opposition was intentionally ignored or glossed over during the NATO action there, and the ongoing fighting within that nation and the steady stream of weapons across its borders into neighboring countries in the weeks and months since NATO’s involvement ended demonstrate the problematic nature of that decision. As discussions about aiding the Syrian rebels in any number of ways (from arming them to intervening militarily on their behalf) continue, the likelihood that AQI is operating among the rebels (even without their approval) will need to be taken into very serious account.

Finally, it is worth noting (even if only for its ironic value) that Assad played a role over the last near-decade in arming and supporting al Qaeda in Iraq. Additionally, counterterror analyst Leah Farrall notes that “the most recent place [al Qaeda] is known to have held a “summit” of leaders [circa 2004] was Damascus.”

As with the rest of the developments in Syria, this will bear watching. However, the presence of an active AQI in revolutionary Syria should give all of us pause – particularly those calling for support of the rebels through such means as arms shipments, which have the distinct potential to put firepower in the wrong hands.

What’s worse than that though is when the occupiers can’t even manage to occupy anything. They can’t even execute their strategy, let alone see it through to policy results. That’s what happened tonight when they tried to Occupy CPAC. They failed, badly.

We don’t have all the specifics. But it is pretty apparent that Obama’s “deal” on contraceptives is a trick.

As to Catholic institutions, Catholic hospitals and universities would pay insurance companies premiums, which would pay for contraceptives and abortifacients. Evil doesn’t become good because it’s laundered through a third party.

But, says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, premiums would go down because, inter alia, you would not have to provide health services to those pesky babies who would have been born, had you not aborted them.

But if this was a theological defense, it would have applied, whether or not contraceptives and abortifacients were specified in the insurance policy.

Incidentally, the 98-99% contraception usage figure which is being thrown about unchallenged?  It is from the virulently pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Finally, what about individual Catholic or fundamentalist or other employers who have religious objections to abortions and contraceptives? The “deal” would throw them under the bus.

Unlike some in the Catholic hierarchy, I vigorously fought against ObamaCare and predicted the abortion-related problems they are now facing.  Am I now to go to prison for exercising my conscience? And does the First Amendment apply any less to my religious beliefs.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89 and a Dunbarton, New Hampshire resident.

President Barack Obama’s budget request to Congress on Monday will forecast a deficit of $1.33 trillion in fiscal year 2012 and will include hundreds of billions of dollars of proposed infrastructure spending, according to draft documents viewed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

The projected deficit is higher than the $1.296 trillion deficit in 2011 and also slightly higher than a roughly $1.15 trillion projection released by the Congressional Budget Office last week.

Hence, even though revenues are projected to go up by $220 billion this year, the deficit will still tick up another $37 billion.  Using CBO’s baseline, that would mean spending will rise $257 billion this year under Obama.  And that’s during an election year.  You can imagine what he would pull out of the hat if he wins a second term.

The specifics aren’t published yet, but we have these nuggets from the article:

The budget includes more than $350 billion in short-term measures for job growth; a six-year, $476 billion proposal for roads and other surface-transportation projects; and more than $360 billion in savings in health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. [...]

The budget also calls for a 5% increase in nondefense research-and-development spending over the previous year and proposes $2.2 billion for advanced manufacturing research and development—a 19% increase over 2012.

Surprise! More stimulus spending, plus more top-down federally-managed transportation, not unlike the Republican proposal in the House (yeah, we’re looking at you), and almost identical to the Senate proposal, which raises taxes (supported by all Republicans except for 9).  So how does Obama plan to reduce his $1.6 trillion deficit from last year?  We’ll wait and see, but undoubtedly, it will come out of the military.

Regarding the healthcare cuts, until we reform the entire healthcare system to reflect the free-market, these cuts are either notional or will squeeze Medicare patients even further.

Finally, what would an Obama budget be without tax increases:

The draft documents don’t include all the details of the president’s budget but show similarities to the budget plan the White House laid out in September 2011. The budget proposal, for example, repeats a call for $1.5 trillion in new revenue, mostly from ending Bush-era tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year.

Let’s pray with all our might that this will be Obama’s final budget.

Cross-posted to The Madison Project

He ad-libbed one particular portion of his speech that just may give away the game for him with the CPAC crowd. He threw in this line:

“I fought against long odds in a deep blue state, but I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

What the heck is a severe conservative? The man who likes to fire people should probably fire Miriam-Webster, in addition to whoever came up with his strategy for Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado.

A severe conservative? It sounds more like a critique of conservatives from the left than that of a conservative himself. In fact, if you want to read only one thing on Mitt Romney’s views of conservatives, I actually think Chris Orr of The New Republic captures the situation best.

Orr writes on Quentin Tarantion’s view of Superman as discussed in the movie Kill Bill 2.

Superman was born Superman. It’s Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the “costume.” And in the way Superman plays Kent–weak, self-doubting, cowardly–we see his critique of the human race.

It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney’s desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona–angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic–is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.

I think that is perhaps one of the most accurate reads on Romney today and why so many of us think he is not what he claims to be.

Just randomly, on the actual issue of Superman, Jim Pethokoukis is correct that Quentin Tarantino got Superman wrong. I think what he means is that Mitt Romney is actually Bruce Wayne, a shallow playboy super rich businessman. (Kidding)

But nooooooo, said Keehan. The bishops were being irrational and engaging in fearmongering.

Then came another “devout” Catholic, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius who ruled that health insurance provided by Catholic organizations had to provide “reproductive health services” and suddenly Keehan found that not only was she wrong, she was clueless.

Today, the Obama Administration announced that it was pressing ahead with its plan to require contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients to be included in all medical plans by the mechanism of having the insurance carrier provide those services for “free” regardless if the policy held by an employer covered those items. Who was first in line to affix herself to Obama’s fourth point of contact: none other than the egregiously stupid Carol Keehan.

Really one shouldn’t be surprised at this. In the interview linked above, Keehan basically endorses abortion:

Why did the U.S. bishops and other pro-life leaders oppose the final legislation’s approach to abortion?

Many people are uncomfortable with it because it will allow more people to be in plans that cover abortion, even though no federal dollars are used. That is not a happy thought.

On the other hand, it is also not a happy thought that women who are at 300 percent of the poverty level and below have abortions at four times the rate of women in any other socioeconomic group. We haven’t found ways to reach out to those women.

Lest you think I am unfair to Keehan, you need only to read her objection to HHS allowing minors to buy the abortifacient “Plan B.”

Back in December 2010, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix withdrew Catholic standing from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix and formally excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride for conducting at least one abortion at the hospital. Naturally, Keehan weighed in against the Bishop and the opinion of the actual doctor who advised the diocese on the matter.

Again and again we are seeing this behavior by a disturbing number of Catholics who really should know better. Their romance with Obama has become their lodestar and if endorsing abortion and inviting someone who declared that killing a child who had survived an abortion was just dandy to give a commencement address at Notre Dame was what it took to get that leg tingling then so be it.

These people may not yet be as vile as the kapos who led fellow prisoners to the gas chambers but they are certainly the philosophical fellow travelers of Pierre Laval and Vidkun Quisling.

From the White House statement:

Under the new policy announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works.

If a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide contraception coverage but her insurance company will be required to offer contraceptive care free of charge.

If we actually believe that in the real world TANSTAAFL is an immutable fact, who, then, is actually paying for the “free of charge” contraception and abortifacient cover. My guess is that the employer whose employees are getting the “free of charge” service is going to see their bill go up.

This is not a trivial issue. This is an attack, one of several staged by this Administration, on religious freedom. One hopes that the Catholic Church and other religious groups see through this charade and continue to oppose the supplanting of conscience by federal regulations.

They have tents, you see. Tents which they carry with them, everywhere that they go. For JUSTICE!

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Open thread. These goofballs aren’t even worth a full post.

It seems Representative Bachus has discovered the power of information. In particular, he has been accused of leveraging his position in Congress to learn things that other participants in the stock market would have no way to possibly learn. This is called Insider Trading, it is highly illegal and carries significant penalty. The Washington Post (which never seems to fail to rapidly identify the partisan affiliation of a !REPUBLICAN! under an ethics investigation) is dutifully on the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred.

The case is the first of its kind involving a member of Congress. It comes at a time of intense public scrutiny of congressional ethics, with the House passing legislation Thursday to tighten rules against insider trading by lawmakers. The impetus for the legislation, a version of which passed in the Senate a week earlier, came from a “60 Minutes” report and a book mentioning Bachus’s trades, “Throw Them All Out,” by Peter Schweizer.

Blatant embarrassment and public humiliation work wonders in getting The House of Representatives motivated and doing their jobs. Perhaps a similar scourge needs to be applied to the backsides of the voters who kept saying “Bah-Bah!!” and returning this ethical Philistine to the House of Representatives for ten terms. Spencer Bachus’ inexcusable career longevity is a prime example of the evils resident in our current systems of gerrymandering and seniority.

I’ve previously pointed out the base moral turpitude of Democrat James Moran of The Great State of Virginia. It wouldn’t be right or fitting to cut a Republican any more slack. Thus I call upon the membership of the Republican Party of Alabama to primary Spencer Bachus. A process that is fortunately beginning to get underway.

Three candidates have announced plans to oppose Congressman Bacchus. Perhaps the most formidable challenge is from State Senator Scott Beason. He is the author of Alabama’s Immigration Reform Bill and is also hated by The Alabama Democratic Party for role in sending several of their richest backers to jail during the Alabama Gambling Scandal of 2010. He has also aggressively intervened in the corrupt affairs of Jefferson County and championed legislation to resist Obamacare and restrict abortions.

Local salesman and military veteran Al Mickle has also joined the race to replace Spencer Bacchus. He argues that his experiences in combat and in running a business make him uniquely qualified to represent the average American. He further states that the experiences from his daily life will make him more representative of the average American than someone who is a career politician.

The 3rd candidate, Judge David Standridge has worked in law enforcement, served as a County Commissioner in Blount County, Alabama, and is currently a Probate Judge in Blount County. Judge Standridge reminds potential voters that as a County Commissioner in Blount County, he helped pay off a major debt that the locality had accrued. He claims the National Deficit is America’s biggest problem, and that as a member of Congress, reducing the debt by reducing government spending will be his number one priority.

For Redstate readers in the State of Alabama, the three candidates seeking to end the corrupt shenanigans of Spencer Bachus will be speaking at an Alabama District 6 Candidate Forum. The event is sponsored by Rainy Day Patriots which describes itself as a Tea Party organization that operates in and around Birmingham, Al. It takes place 1 March and offers you an opportunity to get involved in securing our nation’s precarious future.

The man the Republican Party has sent to Washington, DC from the 6th Congressional District in Alabama is both corrupt and venal. He is a parasite; not a patriot. He needs to be replaced, and not by a Democrat who would probably be no better. The Republican Party has got to police its own. The 6th District Primary offers us many options to do this. (One of whom is even as ex-cop). This needs to happen. We have the means in our hands. Let’s get it done.

.

It’s glaringly obvious to many people that abortion, sterilization, and similar procedures are a strictly-required component of women’s health. These people often see the opposition of the Catholic Church to these procedures not as a core belief, but rather as a retrograde, pernicious, and even cynical attack on women.

It’s just as glaringly obvious to many other people that religious freedom in America is sacrosanct. Of all the guarantees given in the Bill of Rights, religious freedom is indeed the very first one!

In this case, the Obama Administration has ruled unilaterally that health insurance programs provided by the Catholic Church must pay for abortions. Forget about the welter of discussion about whether the Federal mandate extends beyond those of many states. That’s not the core issue here.

For the government to say, as it has, that its goals are prior to the Catholic Church’s core beliefs, is precisely to say that government power is unambiguously senior to all other claims.

This is radically counter to the doctrines of the American founding. It’s more radical than anything that even FDR said during the New Deal. It quite simply elevates government to the level of a religion.

Personally, it’s clear to me that people on the pro-abortion side of this debate simply don’t understand the stakes. (Notably, that includes Sen. Chuck Schumer, who ought to know better.) If they accept that government is prior to all other claims, they’re opening themselves to the potential for some future government to take away the things that THEY hold as non-negotiable core beliefs.

To put it another way, we’ll have become a society that forthrightly elevates the collective over the individual. Again, radically counter to the doctrines of the founding.

He’s spent $38 in gas – in two months! (He’s home a lot these days.) See how, and see what Bob thinks of his new Volt, his fire insurance, and what it’s like to stay home most of the time!

The wondrous Chevy Volt, and the enlightened President Obama: that’s a team with the smallest amount of gas in the 2012 race. Check out their explosive new ad campaign at ObamaVolt2012.com

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the recent foreclosure settlement, why it’s not that bad for banks, and whether or not there is another round of QE on the horizon.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Moe Lane (crosspost)

Yes, you heard that right: the Senate Majority Leader took a page out of former Rep. Alan “Republicans want you to die quickly” Grayson’s (D-FL) book and delivered that accusation from the floor of the United States Senate.

Naturally, this came only two weeks after Reid called on both sides – the dirty, evil, water-poisoning Republicans and the good-hearted Democrats – to “achieve greater results for the American people.”

Video and transcript are below:

In exchange for extending this middle class tax break, Republicans are insisting, among other things, that we pass unrelated ideological legislation that will make our water less safe to drink. This would allow mercury and other carcigonens [sic] to be put in our water supply. That’s a pretty stark compromise. We’ll give you a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans if you will let us continue to put things like arsenic and mercury in the water of the American people.

I’d say that rhetoric like this is beyond the pale – which it is, of course – but the media and civility police (inasmuch as they’re different) are busy reserving their outrage for the next Republican “dog whistle” of a comment whose insensitivity and violent intentions only they can hear.

Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

“In dealing with Libya and Syria, consistency need not be the hobgoblin of little minds but can rather be the hallmark of a consistent and coordinated foreign policy.  There are equivalencies to be drawn between the two crises, and once these are recognized we should take equivalent action.  It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but we would not be alone and the cause is just.  We have the unified support of our European and Arab allies.  We have moral and strategic interests at stake.  Rather than whining about the shocking moral turpitude of the United Nations, the President of the United States needs to remember his responsibilities as the leader of the free world–and lead.”

While I have the utmost respect for Dr. Coates, I am hesitant to agree with her in this case.  There is no question that the bloodshed in Syria, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to a mere nine months ago as a simple “police action” and contrasted favorably to the violent crackdown in Libya, has been both constant and staggering (in that same interview, Clinton favorably contrasted Assad to Qaddafi, saying “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer”).   The death toll in Homs alone has reportedly grown to 3,500 over the last eleven months, and while the Arab League has repeatedly called for an end to Assad’s crackdown, opposition from Russia and China has left the UN Security Council unable to pass even a simple resolution condemning the government’s murderous actions.

As the bodycount continues to rise in Syria, there has been an increase in calls for intervention conducted outside the auspices of the UN.  However, while these calls are understandable on humanitarian grounds, their authors almost invariably neglect to include any details on just what it is they wish to see take place with regard to that intervention.

At Abu Muqawama, Andrew Exum sums up the problem nicely:

“The problem is, for me at least, ‘military intervention’ at once means everything and nothing. On the one hand, the decision to use force to achieve a desired political end is momentous in and of itself. On the other hand, though, I cannot determine whether or not “military intervention” is a good or bad idea until I have some idea of what, precisely, is meant by the term. Analysts who argue either for or against military intervention have an obligation to sketch out the ways in which one could possibly intervene so that we can determine which ways, if any, make sense given the circumstances.”

This is the real question: what would an intervention in Syria look like, and under whose auspices would it be carried out?  In Libya, the most frequently cited example, the UN-approved intervention succeeded in its ultimate goal of preventing Qaddafi from crushing the rebels.  It also succeeded in removing him from power, despite that not being part of the UN authorization (and despite the effort taking far longer than the “days, not weeks” that President Obama promised).

Two points on Libya are particularly worth noting.  First, despite people declaring victory and then tuning out as usual upon Qaddafi’s capture (including, it appears, several of those ‘experts’ who called for intervention in Libya and who are calling for it again in Syria), the situation on the ground is poor and growing worse by the day.  As Anthony Shadid noted in the  New York Times Wednesday:

The country that witnessed the Arab world’s most sweeping revolution is foundering. So is its capital, where a semblance of normality has returned after the chaotic days of the fall of Tripoli last August. But no one would consider a city ordinary where militiamen tortured to death an urbane former diplomat two weeks ago, where hundreds of refugees deemed loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi waited hopelessly in a camp and where a government official acknowledged that “freedom is a problem.” Much about the scene on Wednesday was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace.

[...]

The force at the Tripoli airport is the powerful militia from Zintan, a mountain town south of the capital, which played a role in Tripoli’s fall and still holds prisoner Colonel Qaddafi’s most prominent son, Seif al-Islam. By its count, it has 1,000 men at the airport, and one of its commanders there…The militias are proving to be the scourge of the revolution’s aftermath. Though they have dismantled most of their checkpoints in the capital, they remain a force, here and elsewhere. A Human Rights Watch researcher estimated there are 250 separate militias in the coastal city of Misurata, the scene of perhaps the fiercest battle of the revolution. In recent months those militias have become the most loathed in the country.

Second, the “no-fly zone” enforced over Libya was, in actuality, no such thing; as anybody who was paying attention at the time will recall, air power and other standoff weaponry were employed not just to ensure that the skies over Libya stayed clear, but to take out Qaddafi’s armor, vehicles, and troops between Tripoli and Benghazi. As Exum notes in another post:

The balance in Libya was only tipped when NATO warplanes began “enforcing the no-fly zone” by destroying Libyan tanks and armored personnel carriers. (I know those things don’t actually fly, but the only way you can be really sure they won’t grow wings is by dropping a GBU-31 on top of them.)

Of course, the reality – that massive mission creep was necessary to break the gridlock in Libya and push Qaddafi out of power – is frequently obfuscated or ignored when discussing the Libyan “success.”  Writing in the Times a few weeks ago, Robert Pape used Libya and Syria as examples of the need for a “new standard for humanitarian intervention” (which he didn’t go into detail on), while arguing that such intervention is incumbent on America et al if people are being killed as long as there is no danger to the interveners. Along with proposing a “new standard” for intervention without actually going into what that standard should be, Pape misrepresents NATO’s Libya action (which he supports) while contrasting it with a prospective intervention in Syria (which he currently opposes, basically because it would be more difficult and more dangerous). He writes:

“[R]ather than seeking regime change to prevent genocide, President Obama focused on the narrower objective of preventing “a humanitarian catastrophe” and explicitly ruled out foreign-imposed regime change.

These more modest, pragmatic goals sidestepped Mr. Gates’s objections and reflect the emerging new standard for humanitarian intervention. The United States took the lead, but initially only to halt the mass-homicide campaign. And it rightly set goals that would not require an ambitious military commitment.”

Of course, as alluded to above, anybody who was paying attention at the time knows that the disavowal of regime decapitation and change was little more than lip service to the UN resolution that specifically authorized the protection of civilians rather than the overthrow of Qaddafi, in part because it was widely recognized that the protection of civilians from Qaddafi could only be ensured via his removal.

Libya is not Syria – and the ‘Pottery Barn Rule’ is being thoroughly ignored by those who are now focused on the latter, having abandoned the former to militias and growing chaos.  However, the intervention there has impacted the willingness of America, NATO, and the United Nations to approve and participate in a similar intervention in Syria (in an interesting if incomplete piece, Joshua Foust suggeststhat Russia and China are opposing Syrian intervention specifically because of the NATO action in Libya and the severe mission creep it entailed).

More importantly, though, Syria has a functional military with significant firepower and a government that is still largely in control throughout the country.  It has a powerful ally in Russia, which continues to give aid and comfort to Assad’s regime as the violent crackdown continues (and which will continue to do so as long as they consider it to be in their interest to do so, which I think may be a more significant period of time than P.J. Crowley predicts). Further, Syria currently has no Benghazi: rebels haven’t gained control of any geographic area significant enough to use as a refuge or base from which to conduct defensive operations, and potential targets for interventionist air power are interspersed with civilians and rebels, which greatly limits the effectiveness of standoff weaponry while simultaneously increasing the risk of collateral damage by orders of magnitude.  In his New York Times column referenced above, Pape writes:

“Unlike Libya, where much of the coastal core of the population lived under rebel control, the opposition to Syria’s dictatorial president, Bashar al-Assad, has not achieved sustained control of any major population area. So air power alone would probably not be sufficient to blunt the Assad loyalists entrenched in cities, and a heavy ground campaign would probably face stiff and bloody resistance.”

If arming the rebels is a serious consideration, it is important to consider just how that would be carried out, who would be armed, what the response would be (on both sides), and what difference it would make in the overall battle. If employing air power and standoff weaponry is being proposed, then targeting, ordnance control, and the avoidance of collateral damage – as well as the effectiveness of that course of action – must be taken into consideration. If “boots on the ground” is a realistic option to those calling for intervention – well, a whole host of further issues must be addressed, including the risk of a proxy war with Russia that brings along its own risk (however small it might be) of further international escalation.

All of this is not to declare outright that a Syrian intervention to be outside the realm of propriety or possibility.  However, it is incumbent on those who are calling, to use Foust’s term, for America and NATO to become a sort of “Team America for R2P” to address these and other issues that such action faces, and to present coherent and specific plans for the intervention they are proposing.   Additionally, given the current situation in Libya mere months after the conclusion of NATO action there, it is important that conditions in Syria both during and after the proposed intervention, and over the longue duree following the conclusion of offensive operations, be both considered and adequately planned for.

Until then, it is probably best for all involved if the talk of a Syria intervention remains just that, despite the terrible human cost of Assad’s actions.

He is right.

Yet the Republican Party has decided instead of finding a new guy to do what it can to get Romney across the finish line no matter how bad the limp.

On Tuesday, Santorum swept. Romney came in third in Minnesota. Counties he won big in Colorado turned on him overwhelmingly. Our “frontrunner” has won three of the first eight. With the exception of Florida, he has shown he can only win states with strong family ties like New Hampshire and states with strong Mormon participation like Nevada.

That may give him Michigan and Arizona, but it spells trouble elsewhere.

This is the seventh CPAC I have been to. The crowd is the least excited I have seen. On the first day, before the candidates have had a chance to bus in their supporters to stack the deck and straw poll, this is the least excited I’ve seen them. The crowd’s heart is with Santorum. But in their mind they do not think he can win.

Today, Mitt Romney must convince the crowd he is one of them or at least won’t betray them. Rick Santorum must convince them he can beat Barack Obama. Newt Gingrich must convince them he is still viable.

Along the way a funny thing has happened. Romney supporters are starting to be openly critical of him. The business whiz has failed to restructure his own failing organization. His support is a mile wide and an inch deep.

And he has been replaced as front runner by the crowd. They are with Rick Santorum in heart, but also in money and votes. On the horizon looms a brokered convention.

At any rate, the Senator and I spoke briefly about CPAC.  Check out the video.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

On days like today we should begin to wonder if there really would be much of a difference when there are 51 senators with an R next to their name as opposed to just 47.  In another terrible day on the Hill, Senate Republicans caved on two issues; judicial nominations and the stimulus highway bill.

When Obama announced his illegal appointments to executive positions last month, Republicans shook their fists heavenward and pledged to vigorously challenge those nominations.  Well, instead of engaging in vapid rhetorical promises, Senator Mike Lee took action.  He pledged to block all of Obama’s judicial nominations until he agrees to rescind his illegal appointees and resubmit them for confirmation before the full Senate.

Unfortunately, Senator Lee is like a general without an army.  The Senate voted on a nomination for a federal district court, yet only 5 others joined him.  They were Senators DeMint, Crapo, Paul, Risch, and Shelby.  I’m sure that will send a powerful message to Obama and serve as a strong deterrent against future illegal appointments.

Regarding the highway bill, I know this sounds naive, but I’m stupefied by the number of Republicans who voted for it.  As bad as the House version is, the Senate bill makes it look conservative.  The Senate bill is a brainchild of Barbara Boxer supported by Obama.  It will radically bust the budget, continue to place officious mandates on the states, and fund mass transit at prodigal levels.

Now we know that most Republicans are insincere about cutting spending, limiting government, and devolving power to the states, but one would expect them to at least hold the line against tax increases.  This bill contains $7 billion in tax increases to partially fund a small portion of the deficit generated by the higher levels of transportation spending.  Yet, just 9 Republicans (along with 2 Democrats) voted against cloture.  Here are the Republicans who voted no DeMint, Hatch, Johanns, Johnson, Lee, Murkowski, Paul, Risch, Rubio.

It has become abundantly clear that we will get nowhere in terms of limiting government unless we elect Republicans like Jim DeMint and Mike Lee.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project