A Passion For Concrete

Jack Shafer writes in Politico Magazine about "strange new respect" that

The American Spectator’s Tom Bethell introduced the concept in a 1992 article to ridicule the practice of liberal journalists who would reward conservative politicians who migrated from right to left by commenting in print on how they were now commanding “strange new respect” in Washington, showing “growth,” “maturity,” “wisdom,” and “thoughtfulness.” Bethell’s initial example was Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed by conservative President Ronald Reagan but soon became a quasi-liberal, and was rewarded with praise by many in the liberal media. Kennedy has only continued to add to his strange new respect stockpile, the Weekly Standard commented in 2005

Shafer cites John McCain, Eric Cantor, former Presidents Carter, Reagan, and GW Bush, and (arguably) "religion" as among the beneficiaries of application of the concept.

Strange new respect is granted more broadly than Bethell claimed.  Numerous other individuals have benefitted from suddenly being regarded more highly by liberals, conservatives, or centrists in the mainstream media and elsewhere. It frequently arises among political candidates when they cross that invisible line, graduating from fringe candidate to serious candidate as interpreted by powerful interests. And so it is that Shafer observes

As journalists and others begin to view as inevitable—or at least genuinely possible—a Trump victory at the Republican National Convention, we should expect a rise in Trump coverage that expresses strange new respect for him. A vestigial example of the genre appeared today in POLITICO. Titled “Donald Trump’s Big Tent,” the piece suggests Trump may be deserving of strange new respect because his “appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach.” Trump isn’t weird, the story implies. He’s the new normal.

Trump himself may ironically benefit less from a sense that he is respectable and laudatory than that he is a rogue character.  Seven months ago, investigate journalist David Cay Johnston posed "21 Questions for Donald Trump," each of which focuses on personal finances and none of which he has seriously been pressed on (an exception- Thom Hartmann- below).  Several of them involved Trump's involvement in La Cosa Nostra.

In October, the Washington Post's Robert  O'Harrow Jr. explained that the 69-year old real estate developer got entangled with "mob-controlled entities" and

As his ambitions expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, Trump had to contend with New York’s Cosa Nostra in order to complete his projects. By the 1980s, crime families had a hand in all aspects of the contracting industry, including labor unions, government inspections, building supplies and trash carting.

“Organized crime does not so much attack and subvert legitimate industry as exploit opportunities to work symbiotically with ‘legitimate’ industry so that ‘everybody makes money,’ ” the organized crime task force’s report found. “Organized crime and other labor racketeers have been entrenched in the building trades for decades.”

In New York City, the mafia families ran what authorities called the “concrete club,” a cartel of contractors that rigged bids and squelched competition from outsiders. They controlled the Cement and Concrete Workers union and used members to enforce their rules.

Nearly every major project in Manhattan during that period was built with mob involvement, according to court records and the organized crime task force’s report. That includes Trump Tower, the glittering 58-story skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, which was made of reinforced concrete.

“Using concrete, however, put Donald at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers,” the investigative journalist Wayne Barrett wrote in “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall.”

Through (later disgraced and disbarred) attorney Roy Cohn, Trump dealt with La Cosa Nostra, including

S&A Concrete , which supplied building material to the Trump Plaza on Manhattan’s East Side, court records show. S&A was owned by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, boss of the Genovese crime family, and Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino family. The men required that major multimillion-dollar construction projects obtain concrete through S&A at inflated prices, according to a federal indictment of Salerno and others.

Fortunately, the boss of the Genovese crime family did not go unpunished, for

On Feb. 26, 1985, Salerno and 14 others were indicted on an array of criminal activity, including conspiracy, extortion and “infiltration of ostensibly legitimate businesses involved in selling ready-mix concrete in New York City,” the federal indictment said. Among the projects cited was Trump Plaza. Salerno and all but one of the others received terms of 100 years in prison.

Donald Trump frequently brags of having given generously to political candidates seeking office on all levels of government, and having reaped the rewards of having done so. He assiduously avoids the term "bought" but as O'Harrow notes

Trump’s donations were later cited by the organized crime task force’s report as an example of the close financial relationships between developers and City Hall. “New York city real estate developers revealed how they were able to skirt the statutory proscriptions,” the report said in a footnote. “Trump circumvented the State’s $50,000 individual and $5,000 corporate contribution limits by spreading his payments among eighteen subsidiary companies.”

Trump also did business with Cosa Nostra figures in Atlantic City, primarily through Kenny Shapiro, an investment banker for Nicademo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, and with whom he had "a close association," according to The Federalist's David Marcus.  Scarfo and nephew Phillip “crazy Phil” Leonetti "controlled two of the major construction and concrete companies in Atlantic City."

Two months ago, when it seemed to most political observers (and certainly me) that Marco Rubio was the person to beat in the GOP primary, questions were raised about the Florida Senator's personal finances, including his house, a retirement account, and use of a GOP credit card.  It seems Rubio, who has had a terrible 7 or 8 weeks, has trouble handling money.

Donald Trump, it seems, has wallowed in the sewer of  organizedcrime, which has largely been ignored.  Examination of his personal finances should not  be neglected in favor of a "strange new respect."















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It's What He Does

"If you're.... it's what you do" goes the theme of the current series of GEICO commercials (immediately below and way below).







And if you're a spokesman for the far-right wing of the Republican Party, it's what you do.

Amid the controversy stirred up about the eligibility of Ted Cruz, born in Canada to an American mother, to be President of the United States, Amanda Marcotte informs us of

Rush Limbaugh, who added even more cover to the story by shifting the blame to Hillary Clinton. “And if Cruz is the nominee, you can make book on the fact that Trump is right about one thing, that Hillary’s gonna raise it,” Limbaugh warned. “So I wouldn’t doubt that Trump’s right, that the Democrats might bring up Cruz’s citizenship aspect, maybe even challenge it in court, because they’ve done it before.”

Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution limits the presidency to a "natural born Citizen." Given that  "the original meaning of the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent," Cruz, the son of a Cuban-born father and an American-born mother, is almost certainly qualified.

Nonetheless, Trump has remarked "Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: 'Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?' That'd be a big problem,"

And it was a big problem for the biggest name in talk radio, who has stayed clear of endorsing anyone for the GOP nomination, both to avoid alienating some listeners and because once the nomination of a particular individual is assured, he will be falling all over himself praising the presumptive nominee. Nevertheless, it has been clear (at least to me) for several months that the extremely conservative Limbaugh, who has placed himself rhetorically against the Republican establishment while being a vital part of it, prefers Ted Cruz to any current or former candidate.

As an anti-establishment poseur and recognizing that Trump might win the nomination, Limbaugh daily defends the latter.  Now Trump has criticized Cruz, and Limbaugh needed a way of simultaneously defending both the front-runner and his own guy.

So blame it on Hillary while complaining "And if Cruz is the nominee, you can make book on the fact that Trump is right about one thing, that Hillary’s gonna raise it."

That's sheer speculation, but it gets better. He has "heard it before," Limbaugh maintained, "that the Democrats might bring up Cruz's citizenship aspect, maybe even challenge it in court, because they've done it before. John McCain and Barack Obama.

Limbaugh did not identify the Democrats who have "done it" to John McCain or Barack Obama. However, in an earlier presidential election cycle, in April of 200,8 the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution reading

Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a natural born Citizen of the United States;

Whereas the term natural born Citizen, as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;

Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;

Whereas such limitations would be inconsistent with the purpose and intent of the natural born Citizenclause of the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the First Congress's own statute defining the term natural born Citizen;

Whereas the well-being of all citizens of the United States is preserved and enhanced by the men and women who are assigned to serve our country outside of our national borders;

Whereas previous presidential candidates were born outside of the United States of America and were understood to be eligible to be President; and

Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it

That John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born Citizen under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.

The resolution had been introduced by one Republican, and five Democratic, Senators. The five included Hillary R. Clinton of New York and Barack H. Obama of Illinois.


















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Playing Fast And Loose On Immigration

As CNN describes, it an advertisement (below) due to start running in New Hampshire on Tuesday

Immigrants are streaming across our border, and they're wearing pumps and wingtips -- at least according to Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Texas Republican on Tuesday morning released a new presidential campaign ad that showed a different side of border security, featuring actors wearing business suits and clutching laptops and briefcases fording rivers and running through the desert.

The images play as a voiceover runs in the background of Cruz delivering part of his stump speech, where he says illegal immigration would be taken more seriously if the people coming into the country were working different jobs.

"The politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were coming across the Rio Grande," Cruz said. "Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press. Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation."









Jobs, and their wages, are declining for reporters in the USA, so they have more to worry about than unemployed men and women streaming over the border from Juarez.  Still, it's encouraging that politicians such as Cruz are concerned about the American worker. It wasn't always thus.

During a recent debate, the Texas senator and the Florida senator squared off on immigration:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “As far as Ted’s record, I’m always puzzled by his attack on this issue. Ted, you support legalizing people who are in this country illegally. Ted Cruz supported a 500-percent increase in the number of H-1 visas, the guest workers that are allowed into this country, and Ted supports doubling the number of green cards. …”

Dana Bash, CNN: “Senator Cruz?”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.): “Look, I understand Marco wants to raise confusion, it is not accurate what he just said that I supported legalization. Indeed, I led the fight against his legalization and amnesty. … I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization. Let me tell you how you do this, what you do is you enforce the law.”

The Washington Post's Fact Checker recently evaluated Cruz's claim that he never supported legalization of  illegal  immigrants but concluded "we can’t read minds, and it’s not The Fact Checker’s job to rate claims using speculation, so we will not issue a rating. But readers can certainly draw their own conclusions."

Conclusions may vary only because Cruz claims his intent in offering in 2013 five amendments to the Gang of Eight bill was to defeat the legislation with what is commonly referred to as a "poison pill."   According to The Fact Checker, the amendments were

Cruz 1: To triple the number of Border Patrol agents and quadrupling the equipment along the border.
Cruz 2: To deny means-tested government benefits to those who entered illegally.
Cruz 3: To strip away the pathway to citizenship.
Cruz 4: To expand legal immigration, by increasing employment-based immigration 
             from 140,000 to 1,012,500 per year.
Cruz 5: To raise the H-1B high-skilled worker cap from 65,000 visas to 325,000 per year.

Opposing a path to citizenship, The Fact Checker observed, "Cruz repeatedly said unauthorized immigrants would still be eligible for lawful permanent resident status and for the registered provisional immigrant status." Ted Cruz doesn't want journalists, lawyers, or bankers crossing the border. But when it comes to engineers and other professionals, he's not so negative. They can come and take jobs, the more the better, because they're not so easily stigmatized.

Cruz's dream is the dream of  the  GOP donor class. Legalize illegal immigrants, denying them the benefits of the social  safety net and of voting.  Bring in more immigrants so as to flood the labor market while leaving them beholden to their employer.  Meanwhile, pose as the defender of the great American working class against liberals and pointy-headed intellectuals.  It's a pretty good ploy, if he can get away with it.








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No Barack Sanders

Charlie Pierce and Tom Sullivan need not worry so much about Democratic primary voters.

Pierce deservedly criticizes Justice Antonin Scalia for arguing that government must remain neutral both among religions and between believers and non-believers. With the next President possibly given the opportunity to appoint three more Justices similar to Scalia, Pierce concludes "But, like I said, there's not a dime's bit of difference between a president who would not nominate another Scalia, and a president who would nominate three of them. So feel free to exercise your purity of conscience, while you still have a right to do so."

Sullivan, who blogs impressively at Digby's Hullabaloo, believes too few Democrats are concerned about the course of the Court if a Republican wins. Nonetheless, he finds

What's stunning about the Bernie phenomenon is how lefties disillusioned with Obama's stymied presidency are ready to fall in love all over again with electing someone to the White House who they're sure will deliver sweeping change from Washington this time. I'm over that. 

And so, without Sullivan noticing, is almost everyone else.  Much of candidate Obama's appeal, as Sullivan obviously recognizes, went far beyond ideology and experience. It probably began when- and was well captured by- Obama delivered a largely idea-free but stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and declared

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

(Eventually, it became clear that President Obama's concern about "federal agents poking around our libraries" did not extend to federal agents poking around e-mail and Internet usage by American citizens.)

As a presidential candidate, Obama assured audiences "we are the ones we've been waiting for," whose presidency would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." It was even more inspirational coming from an individual raised by a single, white mother and who was poised to become the nation's first black President, an anthropological contradiction but culturally inspiring, nonetheless.   It's unsurprising that the Obama candidacy would inspire love and devotion from voters unmatched since at least the Reagan era.














But in contrast to Obama 2008 and notwithstanding Sullivan's inference, infatuation is neither what Bernie Sanders is counting on nor the response he's evoking.   On the Senator's website, we read "there is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent" accompanying graph from his website, below), characteristically uninspiring rhetoric.

Bernie Sanders is no Barack Obama. He is whiter, much older, less charismatic and inspiring, gruff where Obama is soothing. The Sanders' campaign is about issues, in marked contrast to Obama's march to the nomination in 2008, which was primarily about the man himself. This is not about love.

Rose-colored glasses are much less in evidence among Democratic voters now than they were eight years ago. However, what swooning there is has not been for Bernie Sanders but for his major opponent and likely nominee, Hillary Clinton. For some limited number of Democrats, 2008 was to be the year a man would break the racial ceiling. Check. For some of those, 2016 is to be the year a woman would break the gender ceiling. Check that off.

Sullivan can r-e-l-a-x.  The Democratic campaign will not be dominated by voters with psychological lust for an elderly, white Jewish man with limited charisma and unremarkable personality.







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Armed And Dangerous

A military order mandating the expulsion or, faling that, the execution of all Mormons has been issued by the governor of Missouri.

Fortunately, that governor was Lilburn W. Boggs on October 27, 1838,  whose order was rescinded by Christopher "Kit" Bond in 1976, proving that Republicans are capable of doing the right thing.

This "curious interpretation of the Bundys' Mormon faith," as Vox's German Lopez describes it, is only one of the factors prompting Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, to lead a group of armed members of a militia to occupy the headquarters of  the Malheur Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon (photo from AP/Les Zaitz). The individuals are protesting the sentences meted out to Oregon ranchers Dwight L.Hammond and son Steven D. Hammond, who were convicted of purposely in 2001 setting on fire 139 acres of land owned by the US Bureau of Land Management. The Hammonds originally were given a five year mandatory minimum sentence, which was overturned by a US District Court for being overly harsh, then reinstated by the US Circut Court of Justice.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega argues

African-American protesters in Ferguson were met with lethal rounds from police, faced down by snipers, were bludgeoned with nightsticks, shot with rubber and wooden bullets, spied upon by drones, and shown the full range of power that is capable of being summoned by America’s hyper-militarized police forces. The protesters in Ferguson were also confronted by the National Guard—a step that the governor of Oregon has so far not taken in order to neutralize the estimated 150 armed white men who are making terrorist threats and engaging in armed insurrection in his state.
A black 12-year-old boy who was guilty of the “crime” of playing with a toy gun in an “open carry” state was summarily executed by local police.

A black man who was selling loose cigarettes on a street corner in order to help support his family was choked to death by police while he screamed “I can’t breathe.”

White folks can brandish real weapons, steal public resources, engage in acts of terrorism and insurrection, and threaten to kill the police and other State authorities with little if any consequences.

Thus, the rule along the color line would seem to be as follows. The State escalates its violence against the defenseless and vulnerable if they are black or brown. In contrast, the State backs down and deescalates if the persons involved are white, right-wing and heavily armed.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out  that if some 150 heavily armed black men took over a federal building in the rural Mountain West (as that part of Oregon could be fairly characterized) and were willing to die to make their point, the reaction of the federal government would be nearly identical.

Of course that won't happen, because Black Lives Matter and other movements of the left don't arm themselves to the teeth and issue an implied threat to take on with unceasing gunfire any government agents who theaten to end their siege. Additionally, such protests likely wouldn't take place in rural Oregon, rural Washington, or rural anywhere, in which waiting out the activists is a viable option.

In two other infamous incidents, Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and Waco, Texas in 1993, the federal government acted forcefully to end a siege by armed, white gunmen.   These did not end well for either the culprits or government employees- law enforcement or officials- and have stood (fairly or otherwise) as examples of how not to address such standoffs. Slate's Jamelle Bouie observes

Confrontations at Ruby Ridge and in Waco, Texas, ended with scores of dead (white) civilians, and inspired the Oklahoma City bombing—the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to Sept. 11, 2001.

Law enforcement has been willing to use lethal violence against armed white protesters and the results were catastrophic. It’s no surprise federal agents are cautious; they walk with the hard-learned lessons of the 1990s. Even if the Bundys are paper tigers, no one wants to relive the past. In that, law enforcement officials are correct.

Bouie then suggests "the question to ask on this score" is not why don’t they use violence, it’s why aren’t they more cautious with unarmed suspects and common criminals?

But the circumstances of the two kinds of confrontations are not in any way analogous.   The vast majority of the time, law enforcement personnel respond responsibly to street crime, violent and non-violent acts committed by individuals acting alone or nearly alone in an illegal manner because humans are imperfect, and some more imperfect than others.  When terrorists take over a federal building or land, it is "a fundamental disagreement about who controls public land." The armed occupiers are wrong in their methods and in their politics, but arguing while staring down the barrel of a gun is not a good life insurance risk.

Which leaves as the best question: why are such groups of men, or of men and women, not labeled  terrorists?








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Pander "Girl"

She has done it again. Last month, Abby Johnston of Bustle observed

When Carly Fiorina entered the race for the Republican nomination, it seemed that the only platform she had was not playing the "gender card" and despising the other woman gunning for the highest office in the land. Her major talking points included hating Hillary Clinton and criticizing her for daring to mention that she is a woman. Admittedly, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO has developed a few other positions since then. But during the fifth GOP debate, Fiorina pulled the dreaded gender card, betraying her previous claim that she never would. Rather than making her relatable to female voters, this exposed her blatant hypocrisy to liberals who have been taking note and conservatives who trusted her to deliver on her promise.

As recently as last month, Fiorina was ripping Clinton on The View for what she perceived as using her gender as a basis for her candidacy:

"I think Hillary Clinton has made a case for her candidacy based on being the first woman president. On the other hand, I would never ask people to vote for me just because I’m a woman."

This is a talking point that Fiorina has parroted repeatedly throughout her campaign — that Clinton's recognition of the fact that she is a woman is somehow indicative of her running on her vagina. So it was surprising, then, that Fiorina's debate strategy seemed to have turned right from her opening statement:

"I have been tested. I have beaten breast cancer. I have buried a child. I have started as a secretary. I fought my way to the top of corporate America while being called every B-word in the book. I fought my way into this election."

Only one of those things is truly gendered, and I'd give you two guesses if I thought you actually needed them. I'm honestly scratching my head on how you could fill a whole book full of B-words, but there are two that come to mind fairly immediately which would certainly never be used to describe a male. Fiorina knows that, and bringing it up is putting an inherently feminine spin on herself.

But that wasn't the last time that Fiorina would allude to her lady bits. After listening to her male counterparts stumble over strategies to stop international terrorism, Fiorina offered a Margaret Thatcher quote as her qualification for stopping ISIS and the like: "If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman."

That's a good burn as the only woman on a stage full of men. But it's also a pretty telling as to what you want everyone else to recognize sets you apart from the crowd.

None of this would actually be a problem if Fiorina hadn't vehemently sworn up, down, and sideways that she would never even think about being a woman whilst running for president. Rejecting femininity completely is saying that the unique perspective a woman holds has no value in the Oval Office. But that spark of newness, of possibility, is certainly something which people appreciate about Clinton (even though it's certainly not the limit of her qualifications, as Fiorina alleges). Assuming that a woman running for president is no different than a man is also assuming that sexism doesn't exist.

So Fiorina already had demonstrated hypocrisy reaching nearly the level of Donald Trump when he tries to make hay out of past WJ Clnton sexual practices.  Then on New Years Day, prior to the Rose Bowl matchup between Iowa and the Stanford Cardinal, Fiorina tweeted "Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today."










Two days after Stanford, at which Fiorina received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976, defeated the University of Iowa 45-16, Fiorina appeared on CNN's State of the Union and complained

Oh, for heaven's sakes, Dana- for heaven's sakes, can't a girl ever have a little bit of fun? That was a tongue-in-cheek tweet, which the people of Iowa understand, because I was asked over and over again in Iowa, having attended a Hawkeye tailgate. I  was asked. They knew that my heart was torn.

Then she blamed Barack Obama. And the media.

Can't a girl ever have a little bit of fun was classic Fiorina, who denies playing the "gender card," then uses it whenever she sees an opening.  It's the give me a break, I'm the weaker sex card.  It's no more qualifying for the office of the Presidency to be one of "us girls" than it is to be one of "us boys."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a tweet is just a tweet, and Fiorina is just being Fiorina.

And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?

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Some Friends We Have

Riyadh is none too subtle. It was only on September23 that Glenn Greenwald wrote

Last week’s announcement that Saudi Arabia — easily one of the world’smost brutally repressive regimes — was chosen to head a U.N. Human Rights Council panel provoked indignation around the world. That reaction was triggered for obvious reasons. Not only has Saudi Arabia executed more than 100 people already this year, mostly by beheading (a rate of 1 execution every two days), and not only is it serially flogging dissidents, but it is reaching new levels of tyrannical depravity as it is about to behead and then crucify the 21-year-old son of a prominent regime critic, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was convicted at the age of 17 of engaging in demonstrations against the government.

The day before the piece ran, the AP's Matt Lee questioned Deputy State Department spokesperson Mark Toner. Informed- or reminded- of the selection of the Saudis, Toner was asked "Well, how abut a reaction to them heading the council?"  He responded, "again, I don't have any comment, don't have any reaction to it. I mean, frankly, it's- we would welcome it. We're close allies. If we-"

Unimpressed- or perhaps emboldened- by the kind words from Washington

Saudi Arabia kicked off the new year with mass executions. The Saudi monarchy beheaded 47 people in one day, across 13 cities, leading politicians, human rights experts, and journalists on social media to compare the close U.S. ally to the extremist group ISIS.

Among those killed was Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent cleric in the Shia minority religious group. Al-Nimr was arrested and tortured for his role leading the peaceful democratic uprising against the western-backed Saudi absolute monarchy in 2011.

The Executive Branch has never revealed an unredacted, 28-page portion of the report of the joint congressional inquiry into intelligence community activities on about September 11, 2001. Released in 2002, the report was approved by Presdient Bush, who blocked release of the 28 pages, as has President Obama. It cannot be ascertained whether it implicates foreign countries- especially Saudi Arabia, as it said to- because members of Congress must go to one spot in the Capitol, read it alone while guarded,  and cannot take notes.

A few months before the UN handed Saudi Arabia the key human rights role, the C.I.A. released its report on intelligence failure on the same topic. with virtually everything redacted from 30 pages (sample pages, below).

A year ago Dr. Yousaf Butta British intelligence officer, found

...a Wikileaks cable clearly quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." She continues: "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups." And it's not just the Saudis: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also implicated in the memo. Other cables released by Wikileaks outline how Saudi front companies are also used to fund terrorism abroad.

All  the major candidates should speak up. Especially, though, we need to hear from Hillary Clinton, who spent several years as Secretary of State; and from Marco Rubio, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, who implies his position grants him the credibility his opponents lack on all manner of national security issues. Not likely, but it's a new year, and anything is possible.









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