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Sen. Rubio delivers weekly address - Americans have always believed that all of us can succeed

In the weekly GOP address, Florida's U.S. Senator Marco Rubio talks about why President Obama didn't talk about his accomplishments -- because there isn’t much that Obama has accomplished and Obama made everything worse:

The bottom line is this President inherited a country with serious problems. He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse.

In the second part of the weekly address, Senator Rubio takes Obama to task for asking us to abandon our economic heritage and accept Obama's devise class warfare:

He tells all of us that the only way for some of us to climb up the economic ladder is for others to be pulled down.

This divisive rhetoric, this effort to gain political support by convincing some that they will be better off if we punish others, this stuff has never worked anywhere it’s been tried.

Rubio continues with an optimistic call to embrace the American Free Enterprise system.

Americans have always believed that all of us can succeed.

[. . .]

This is what has made us different. This is what has made us prosperous. This is what makes us exceptional.

Watch Rubio's outstanding address:

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Full transcript of Senator Rubio’s Address:

"Hello, I’m Marco Rubio, a Senator from Florida. Right now all eyes are focused on my home state ahead of next week’s Republican presidential primary. It’s an exciting contest and I know that passions are high. So I wanted to take a moment to explain to the rest of the country why Republicans in Florida are so excited about this primary: Because we believe our country is in big trouble.

As you know, earlier this week, President Obama delivered his fourth annual address to Congress. It was an opportunity for the President to talk about his accomplishments over the last three years and to lay out his plans for the year ahead.

And he missed on both counts.

You didn’t hear much talk about the success of his Administration—and that’s because there isn’t much.

Yes, this President inherited a significant national debt, but over the last three years he’s made it worse. Our national debt has grown by nearly 50 percent since he took over, and now, for the first time since World War II, our national debt is larger than our country’s economy.

Yes, this President inherited an economy where unemployment was too high, but over the last three years he’s made it worse. Today our unemployment rate is higher than the day he took office. In fact, since he took over, it’s been stuck over 8 percent every single month.

This President didn’t talk about his record for one simple reason; he doesn’t want you to know about it. But you do know about it, because you feel the failure of his leadership every single day of your life.

The bottom line is this President inherited a country with serious problems. He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse.

President Obama has a year left in the White House. So what are his plans now to make things better? What does he plan to do now, that he didn’t do before? Well we got our answer Tuesday night. He plans to divide us against each other. To pit Americans against other Americans in the hopes of generating enough votes to get re-elected.

He tells Americans worried about their jobs that the way to help them is to raise their bosses’ taxes.

He tells those who are hurting that the only way they can be better off, is for others to be worse off.

He tells all of us that the only way for some of us to climb up the economic ladder is for others to be pulled down.

This divisive rhetoric, this effort to gain political support by convincing some that they will be better off if we punish others, this stuff has never worked anywhere it’s been tried.

People end up fleeing countries who adopt economic policies based on these flawed principles. And more often than not, they come here.

They come here because this is not who we are.

Americans have always believed that all of us can succeed.

That those who have made it fairly, can stay there. And those who are trying to make it will have a real chance to join them.

This is what has made us different. This is what has made us prosperous. This is what makes us exceptional.

And now, for the first time in my adult life, we have a President who’s asking us to abandon our economic heritage.

To become like the countries people come here to get away from.

To become like everybody else.

Yes, people are hurting. Yes, there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor.

But the way to solve it is not to embrace the ‘trickle up poverty’ economics of other nations.

The way to solve it is to embrace the American Free Enterprise system.

No economic system is perfect. But the American Free Enterprise system has empowered millions of people in the past. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes. 

My father was a bartender. And I thank God every night that there was someone willing to risk their money to build a hotel on Miami Beach and later in Las Vegas where he could work.

I thank God that there was enough prosperity in America so people could go on vacation to Miami or Las Vegas. Where people felt prosperous enough to have weddings or Bar Mitzvahs and, by the way, could leave tips in my Dad’s little tip jar. Because with that money he raised us. And he gave me the opportunity to do things he never had a chance to do.

Now, we had help along the way. I had student loans and grants from the government to help me get my education. And I went to our public school system.

That’s an important role for government to play. And so I also thank God that we had an economy prosperous enough to afford to pay for these things as well.

So, I’ll just close by saying, I hope this year will be the beginning of our work towards a new and prosperous American century.

Because I know that this idea of a nation where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything, it’s not just something I read about in history books. I’ve seen it in my own life. And there’s no reason why we cannot continue it here, if only we do the right things.

May God bless all of you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America."

Libby Disbarred

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been disbarred.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. President Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2 year federal prison sentence sparing him from prison, but leaving Libby's $250,000 fine and two years probation intact.

I won't defend lying under oath. Nevertheless, Libby's sentence hardly seemed just. Yes he was convicted. Convicted for statements made in the course of a two-year investigation that should have ended the day prosecutor Fitzgerald took it over.

Compare the sentence received by Libby to the slap on the wrist received by former National Security advisor to President Clinton, Sandy Berger. Berger stole classified documents and lied about the theft. The Justice Department negotiated a guilty plea to a misdemeanor, a $10,000 fine and loss of security clearance for three years for Mr. Berger. A settlement which was so lenient it was rejected by the Judge Deborah Robinson and replaced by a $56,000 fine, two years probation, 100 hours of community service and loss of security clearance.

Then there is former President Clinton, who was disbarred from the Supreme Court, had his Arkansas law license suspended for five years, and paid a $25,000 fine for some of his lies.

Petraeus Not Interested In Presidency

General David Petraeus is not interested in being president.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" if he had an interest in running for president, Petraeus invoked the words of General Sherman:

A leading Union general in the war, Sherman said in a telegram to the Republican National Convention in 1884, when he was being urged to run for president, "I will not accept if nominated, and I will not serve if elected," according to "The Yale Book of Quotations."

Here's the video. Petraeus talks about the decline of news coverage about Iraq before he is asked about the presidency.

Timing's Everything

With the Democrats' Defeatocrats' plans to force our surrender in Iraq setback by all the progress recently reported from Iraq, the Dems decided to change the subject:

This underscores the party leadership’s concern to avoid getting bogged down in more debate about Iraq and to make sure it is President Bush and Republicans who are blamed in the 2008 election for voter anxieties about the economy.

No sooner did The Hill report on the Congressional Democrats attempt to change the subject and seize on public fears of an economic downturn, than the Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy expanded at the fastest pace in four years during the third quarter, growing at a real annual rate of 4.9%.

Genuinely Afraid

Former Republican congressional leader Newt Gingrich discusses the War On Terror at the National Press Club on August 7, 2007.

Referring to his grandchildren, Gingrich said:

I believe they are in greater danger of dying from enemy activities than we were in the Cold War … I am genuinely afraid that this political system will not react until we lose a city.

Watch the video.

I wish there were more evidence with which one could refute Gingrich's pessimism.

New Media Empowers Social Protest

At Compassion in Politics, Nathan Ketsdever contemplates new media's role in social protest:

It used to be that social protest was limited to a) a letter to a prominent government official b) civil disobedience in the civic square c) crossing district lines d) voting.

New media, such as blogs and YouTube video, empowers and amplifies the ability of everyone to make their voice heard.

It's like a digital bullhorn .... but in technicolor and sometimes with a swanky soundtrack.

New media is chipping away at the Iron Curtain-like barrier that the mainstream old media has used to control political debate.

Join the revolution. Be heard.

Finding Libby Guilty

A federal jury convicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby of obstruction, perjury, and lying to the FBI in the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity.

The conviction of the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney is almost all there is to show after Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent two years and more than $1.5 million investigating the 2003 leak of the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The total reported cost of the investigation would be much greater, but the bean counters didn't include the salaries of FBI agents doing all the investigation's leg work

Plame is the wife of Bush administration critic, career diplomat, senior director for Africa policy for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, and one-time official in John Kerry's failed presidential campaign.

The Wilsons complained that Plame's identity as a CIA agent was made public in retribution for the opinion piece Joe Wilson wrote for the New York Times in July 2003, nearly three months after the fall of Baghdad. In the Times article, Wilson complained that, on behalf of the CIA, he investigated and found "highly doubtful" the report that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa in 2002. The famous sixteen words mentioned by President Bush in the 2003 State of the Union address. Thus started often refuted but never ending lie that we were "misled" into the War in Iraq.

A week after Wilson's article appeared in the Times, Robert Novak wrote that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA operative and that it was Plame who suggested sending Wilson to Niger. Two months later, after a CIA request, the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the leak of Plame's identity. After another three months, more than six months after Wilson's article appeared in the Times, Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the leak probe, citing an appearance of conflict of interest, and named Fitzgerald, to take over the investigation.

After a year long legal battle between Fitzgerald and the New York Times, Reporter Judith Miller was jailed by a federal judge for contempt of court. Miller's contempt was her refusal to humor Fitzgerald and testify before the grand jury regarding her source for the information that Plame was a CIA agent. Miller stayed in jail for twelve weeks until her source, Libby, called her in prison and released her from her pledge of confidentiality.

On September 7, 2006, more than three years after Novak published the fact that Plame was a CIA agent, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage publicly acknowledged that he was the source who first revealed Valerie Plame's identity to Novak. The Armitage revelation was not news to Prosecutor Fitzgerald. The prosecutor knew from his first day on the case that Armitage was the one who "leaked" that Plame was a CIA agent.

After Armitage finally came clean, the New York Times questioned the prosecutorial integrity of special counsel Fitzgerald:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, knew the identity of the leaker from his very first day in the special counsel’s chair, but kept the inquiry open for nearly two more years before indicting I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, on obstruction charges.

Now, the question of whether Mr. Fitzgerald properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in continuing to pursue possible wrongdoing in the case has become the subject of rich debate on editorial pages and in legal and political circles.

Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, first told the authorities in October 2003 that he had been the primary source for the July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak that identified Valerie Wilson as a C.I.A. operative and set off the leak investigation.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s decision to prolong the inquiry once he took over as special prosecutor in December 2003 had significant political and legal consequences. The inquiry seriously embarrassed and distracted the Bush White House for nearly two years and resulted in five felony charges against Mr. Libby, even as Mr. Fitzgerald decided not to charge Mr. Armitage or anyone else with crimes related to the leak itself.

Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald’s effort to find out who besides Mr. Armitage had spoken to reporters provoked a fierce battle over whether reporters could withhold the identities of their sources from prosecutors and resulted in one reporter, Judith Miller, then of The New York Times, spending 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify to a grand jury.

Back to Libby. Prosecutor Fitzgerald, got convictions on four of the five charges he brought against Libby:

Obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative;

Making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;

Perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;

A second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.

Fitzgerald failed to get a conviction on a second count of making a false statement relating to a conversation he had with writer Matt Cooper, formerly of Time magazine.

The prosecutor didn't see fit to charge Armitage, or anyone else with leaking Plame's status as a CIA agent. As the Washington Post editorialized, it turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband:

But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

This tragedy isn't over. Mr. Libby will fight his conviction, first seeking a new trial, then if that fails, by appealing the convictions. Then there is the "civil" suit the Wilsons have brought to harass Mr. Libby and Vice President Cheney. The President's opponents will be able to keep this chapter of the politics of personal destruction going for the rest of the President's term, and beyond.

One other point that needs to be kept in mind as we continue to wallow through this absurd abuse of the legal system.

According to the Washington Post, Wilson's assertions about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information were exposed for the lies that his claims are in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report:

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

[. . .]

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

[. . .]

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Finally, think about the 25 years in jail faced by Libby, if he is unsuccessful in the efforts undo his convictions. Compare that to the slap on the wrist received by former National Security advisor to President Clinton, Sandy Berger.

Berger stole classified documents and lied about the theft. The Justice Department negotiated a guilty plea to a misdemeanor, a $10,000 fine and loss of security clearance for three years for Mr. Berger. A settlement which was so lenient it was rejected by the Judge Deborah Robinson and replaced by a $56,000 fine, two years probation, 100 hours of community service and loss of security clearance.

Then there is former President Clinton who was disbarred from the Supreme Court, had his Arkansas law license for five years, and paid a $25,000 fine for some of his lies.

It hardly seems just that Mr. Libby should face decades in prison and more than a million dollars in fines if his convictions stand. Yes he was convicted. Convicted for statements made in the course of a two year investigation that should have been over the day prosecutor Fitzgerald took it over.

The Surge Is Working

The Democrats have fallen into disarray, unable to accomplish anything regarding Iraq other than the so-called bipartisan House resolution dissing the surge and thereby those charged with carrying out the revised strategy.

While the Democrat's endlessly fight among themselves about whether it will poll better to micro-manage the war using Pelosi-Murtha "slow bleed," or to rewrite history by amending the 2002 "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq," some have noticed that the revised strategy - the surge - is working.

Now you can hear it straight from the horses mouth. The following video presents the perspective of the Crazyhorse Troop of the 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry:

Linked to today's Beltway Traffic Jam.

What Senator Lieberman Wants

Connecticut Senator Lieberman, now an Independent Democrat, has thrown a hand grenade into the Pelosi-Murtha "slow bleed" Iraq retreat strategy.

Lieberman told the Politico on Thursday that he has no immediate plans to switch parties but suggested that Democratic opposition to funding the war in Iraq might change his mind:

"I have no desire to change parties," Lieberman said in a telephone interview. "If that ever happens, it is because I feel the majority of Democrats have gone in a direction that I don't feel comfortable with."

Asked whether that hasn't already happened with Iraq, Lieberman said: "We will see how that plays out in the coming months," specifically how the party approaches the issue of continued funding for the war.

According to Time magazine, with the Democrats' control of the Senate dependent on just one vote, and with Republicans courting Lieberman, the Senator is playing the brinkmanship game:

Lieberman says leaving the Democratic Party is a "very remote possibility." But even that slight ambiguity — and all his cross-aisle flirtation — has proved more than enough to position Lieberman as the Senate's one-man tipping point. If he were to jump ship, the ensuing shift of power to Republicans would scramble the politics of the war in Iraq, undercut the Democrats' national agenda and potentially weaken their hopes for the White House in 2008. Those stakes are high enough to give Lieberman leverage with both parties no matter how slim the chance of his crossing the aisle. Which means Senate leaders aren't worrying only about whether Joe Lieberman will switch parties. They're wondering what, if anything, he plans to do with the power that comes from keeping that possibility alive.

[. . .]

It stands to reason that Lieberman, a lifelong Democrat, would be interested in extracting concessions from Republicans as well. He describes himself as a hawk abroad, and lately his rhetoric has come to resemble the G.O.P.'s, notably when he said Democratic opposition to Bush's troop surge would "discourage our troops, hearten our enemies." But he's progressive at home; he has a long record of fighting for environmental concerns, prides himself on his early support for the civil rights movement and has earned strong ratings from labor. He's even working on a military mental-health bill with California liberal Barbara Boxer. His staff claims he votes with Democrats more than 90% of the time, if Iraq is removed from the calculation.

He wants the Democrats to support a war victory strategy rather than the Pelosi-Murtha "slow bleed" retreat strategy.