Healthcare of Hypocrisy
BELTWAY BITS By Ronald Kessler
CNN INTERNATIONAL A BIG TURN-OFF
Having vacationed this summer in Marbella, Spain, I was struck once again by how boring CNN International is. Most of the programming consists of soft features focusing on hardship in Third-World countries or else tedious interviews with obscure but self-important people, all rerun constantly. The same headlines crawl across the bottom of the screen for days after events. When grunting and shrieking by female tennis stars became an issue, the network teased a segment on the controversy. It turned out to consist of two anchors giggling between themselves about the matter. Any college TV station could do better than that.
“Go Beyond Borders” is CNN International’s slogan. It should be, “Bore Yourself Silly.”
pushed it; and Gingrich and DeMint say they now oppose a mandate. Romney has said the fi rst thing he would do as president is grant waivers from the Obama healthcare law to all states and seek to repeal it. But to demonize the former Massachusetts governor for having adopted an idea that was supposedly anathema to Republicans is to rewrite history. “The one thing Romney can say and has said basically is, ‘I am the only guy who grappled with this at the state level,’” Keene says. “He can say, ‘Some things worked and some things didn’t. Some things that came out of the legislature I didn’t like . . . I’m the only one who really knows how complicated it is, and what can and can’t be done.”
Ronald Kessler, chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax, can be contacted at
ronaldk@newsmax.com Pamela Kessler contributed to this column.
‘DESPERATE’ AL-QAIDA MORE DANGEROUS Successful strikes against al- Qaida have made the terrorist organization more desperate and more likely to take risks to kill Americans, FBI offi cials tell me. “The decapitation of al-Qaida leadership and the killing of a senior al-Qaida commander in Pakistan . . . are making them more desperate,” one FBI offi cial says. “When they are desperate, they may be willing to change tactics. They might try something more risky.”
As a result, “We believe they are going to start being more active, willing to take more risks with communications or plotting, with shorter timelines on their actions, as opposed to long, extended conspiracies,”
the offi cial adds. “Now that they feel more pressure on them, it’s harder to plan long-term conspiracies. You could see more, but smaller-scale, attacks. They will shotgun their opportunities, hoping that one or two of them are successful.”
CIA PROBE AN AFFRONT TO AMERICANS After reopened Justice Department investigations into use of CIA enhanced interrogation, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. admitted that he had not actually read the memos of his own department’s lawyers explaining why no criminal laws had been violated.
Holder assigned John Dunham, the assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to re- investigate the cases. Dunham has concluded that the lawyers who closed the case were right, and no criminal charges are warranted. The re-
investigation ordered by Holder subjected former CIA offi cers to the chilling prospect of jail time. As seven former CIA directors who served under
Eric Holder Jr.
Republicans and Democrats have said publicly, the probe sent a message to CIA offi cers that if they take risks in defense of their country, they may suffer consequences. Placing CIA offi cers in jeopardy for clearly political purposes is an affront to the cause of justice and undermines the safety of us all.
SEPTEMBER 2011 / NEWSMAX 23
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