Friday, August 28, 2009

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

From last night's Fox News "All-Stars":

On health care:

What's killing the Obama health plan is not the Republicans, it's not the Blue Dogs, it isn't the rallies in the town meetings. It's numbers. It's reality. Obama says: "I'm going to expand coverage and reduce the cost." And the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, steps in and gives you numbers. It says: No, it will not reduce. It will increase our costs by $1 trillion.

Obama says: "Oh, yes, [cost might rise] in the first decade , and then it will decline." The CBO says no. There will be an increase in the deficit in the second decade. It's the numbers and the reality that is sinking Obamacare.

On Howard Dean appearing at town-hall meetings on health care:

You got to love Howard Dean. He is our best friend. He speaks the truth on this. .. Again, the more discussion in the town halls, the more discussion, you know, in the workplace, in private or on television — the more these truths are coming out:CBO on numbers, and Howard Dean on the hidden political realities.

It's a question - tort reform would save tens of billions of dollars. That is known widely. It is a question of between $60 and $200 billion every year, an enormous amount of money. It is nowhere in the bills, never spoken about. Obama hasn't spoken a word. Why? It is because the trial lawyers own the Democratic Party.

On the CIA interrogation report:

This new HIG unit — with no lines of authority, ostensibly [under] FBI, all kinds of people in that committee with no one who decides, the White House apparently abjuring ultimate authority on this — is a disaster in the making.

If we capture Usama tomorrow, we will learn how he likes his lamb prepared, and that's it. We will learn nothing else from him. And we are going to read him his rights. And a White House official reported by "The Washington Post" earlier in the week said that we would not necessarily read all of the high value terrorists Miranda rights.
 
Is it even a question?

The idiocy of imagining that if you capture Aymen al-Zahiri, one of the cruelest terrorists in world history, you would actually think of saying to him . . . that he doesn't have to actually tell you anything, is insane. Of course he doesn't have a right to remain silent. This man barely has a right to live. You capture him, you make him talk.

Now, it doesn't mean by all means, but if you stick him in a situation in which he is Mirandized, you are guaranteed you will learn nothing.

This isn't a game, and we are actually involved in two wars. It's incredibly irresponsible.

08/28 01:52 PMShare