Did they break the law? Why not — laws are for the little people:

DOJ regulations make it clear that the Privacy Act’s strictures apply to exactly the class of OPR records that were leaked to, and used, by the Post. (I understand that there have been some minor modifications to the regs, but none that would change the analysis here). Thus, the leaking of such documents under circumstances that violate DOJ/OPR rules would appear to be a criminal offense.

The “fairness” the Washington Post calls for is, I assume, out of the question on this issue with this administration. But is it too much to ask that the Obama-Holder Justice Department comply with the law?

It seems to me that DOJ should consider the appointment of a Special Counsel to look into this matter. Surely this is what the Democrats, and the Washington Post, would be calling for if leaks like these had occurred under a Republican adminstration.

Don’t hold your breath.

Tigerhawk has some thoughts on the wealthy fools who gave money to Barack Obama and then express surprise when he goes to war against them. I think that this commenter has it nailed:

…a hefty number of the Democratic “rich” are those whose wealth was attained independent of effort.

Actors, musicians, trust fund recipients, etc. People whose acquisition of great wealth leaves them vaguely embarassed and strangely guilty. Bastions of familial wealth…the super rich…are different. They look upon the world as their own little “Pocket God” game.

So they become liberals. Suddenly, their intentions become more important than their actions (past or present). A big poultice is laid upon what is left of their conscience.

I doubt that these people will necessarily change their mind set. Obama delivering a torpedo below their waterline is EXACTLY what they were really bargaining for…like a mentally distressed woman who keeps going back to the boyfriend who beats her up.

I know that this is certainly the Hollywood mind set. It’s the kind of idiocy that has Spielberg visiting Cuba and lauding Fidel. It somehow assuages his guilt at what he perceives to be his own unearned wealth.

I also agree with the commenter who points out that, now that he has the reins of power, Obama doesn’t need the rich any more. He can (or at least thinks he can) retain it without them.

[Update a few minutes later]

What is the difference between Hugo and Barack?

If the Obama administration can put the United Auto Workers on Chrysler’s board of directors, negotiate the terms of its bankruptcy, give a third of the company to Fiat and can even decide how much marketing it should do … does anyone see a functional difference between Hugo Chavez’ and Barack Obama’s views of private companies?

It’s getting harder and harder.

[Update mid morning]

OK, he doesn’t want to turn the US into Venezuela — he wants to turn it into Haiti.

…but the notion that it was a photo shoot just doesn’t make any sense. Unless the people in charge are totally incompetent, which is possible, I suppose. But if so, do we really want them running the economy?

I wonder if we’ll ever learn the truth?

[Update mid morning]

The visual subtext of the photo:

The ominous and imposing aircraft dominates the scene in such a way that, in gestalt parlance, no one could mistake the figure for the ground. The figure is an aircraft that serves as Air Force One, representing the Messianic omnipotence of the Obama presidency. Below it, part of the background — a small and less relevant thing in comparison to the aircraft — stands the Statue of Liberty, representing the individual freedoms that Americans have come to treasure and enjoy.

The message and its purpose could not be clearer: we must reset our priorities. Now that the democracy is at last headed by this magnificent and elegant man, we must put the federal government and its needs ahead of our paltry individual freedoms. Of what value, after all, is the property Americans have spent their lifetimes to acquire, or one’s right to defend oneself with a firearm, or even the privilege of living in an upwardly mobile society that used to be the envy of the rest of the world, in comparison to the Leader’s magnificently powerful icon, glistening like a phoenix in the sun?

Well, maybe. Sometimes a lousy shot is just a lousy shot. But the fact that it took them so long to come up with this one, and only this one, and they did it on a lousy day for shooting, indicates to me that it wasn’t about photography. So what was it about?

Some thoughts on Dijongate, and what it says about the media.

I’ve never been as impressed with Colin Powell as the media establishment has long demanded that I be. I cheered this morning when, on Face The Nation, Dick Cheney said that if he had to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh, he’d take the latter. Bob Schieffer seemed shocked. He apparently remains under the delusion that the man who turned on his long-time fellow squish, John McCain, and endorsed Barack Obama last year is still a Republican.

Anyway, Mark Steyn isn’t impressed, either:

One of Powell’s more famous utterances was his rationale, after the 1991 Gulf War, for declining to involve the U.S. military in the Balkans: “We do deserts, we don’t do mountains.” Actually, by that stage, the U.S. barely did deserts. The first President Bush’s decision, at Powell’s urging, not to topple Saddam but to halt the coalition forces at the gates of Baghdad sent the world a message about American purpose whose consequences we live with to this day. As for the Kurds and Shiites to whom it never occurred that the world’s superpower would assemble a mighty coalition for the purpose of fighting half a war to an inconclusive conclusion, Saddam quickly took a bloody revenge: That’s an interesting glimpse of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Colin Powell’s much-vaunted “moderation.”

So I have no great regard for Powell’s strategic thinking, at home or abroad. As the general sees it, the Republican party ought to be a “big tent”: Right now, the tent is empty, with only a few “mean spirited” and “divisive” talk-radio hosts chewing the limbs off live kittens while gibbering to themselves. By comparison, over in the Democrat tent, they’ve got blacks, gays, unions, professors, Ben Affleck: diversity on parade.

In fact, the GOP’s tent has many poles: It has social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, national-security hawks. These groups do not always agree: The so-cons resent the libertarians’ insouciance on gay marriage and abortion. The libertarians don’t get the warhawks’ obsession with thankless nation-building in Islamist hellholes. A lot of the hawks can’t see why the fiscal cons are so hung up on footling matters like bloated government spending at a time of war. It requires a lot of effort to align these various poles sufficiently to hold up the big tent. And by the 2006 electoral cycle, between the money-no-object Congress at home and a war that seemed to have dwindled down to an endless, half-hearted, semi-colonial policing operation, the GOP poles were tilting badly. The Republican coalition is like a permanent loveless marriage: There are bad times and worse times. And, while social conservatism and libertarianism can be principled to a fault, the vagaries of electoral politics mean they often wind up being represented in office by either unprincipled opportunists like Arlen Specter or unprincipled squishes like Lincoln Chafee.

As he notes, don’t count the Republicans out yet. And they can do quite well without creatures like Benedict Arlen. Or Colin Powell.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts on the poor put-upon “moderates” by Melissa Clouthier.

The recreation of 911 with Air Force Two, or the release of the “torture” memos? Talk about a circular firing squad.

Looks like an interesting book.

It seemed to me as a historian that the concept of extremism begged a question: how do certain ideas, movements and political impulses come to be considered extremist? As a citizen whose political identity was shaped by the late twentieth century, I saw the militias’ assertion of a right to use armed force to change government policy as new, threatening, and beyond the pale of legitimate politics. But as a historian of early America I found achingly familiar their assertion of a right to take up arms to prevent the exercise of unconstitutional power by the federal government. As a historian, then, I was faced with a more specific question: how has the United States as a political society come to view the assertion of that right as extremist?

By conventional media wisdom, all of the Founders were “extremists.” But they have no problem with the big-government fascism taking hold of the country.