Is the Obama administration unresponsive, unaccountable, and operating on its own self-interested ideological agenda?

Jonah Goldberg writes at National Review,

Chris Christie says, “We have people across this country who are scared to death.” No doubt that’s true. But for a great many of them, I suspect, the fear is not so much a fear of the Islamic State but a fear that our own government, starting with the president, just doesn’t take terrorism seriously. We now know he was very late in taking the Islamic State seriously.

I suspect most conservatives think that if America marshaled the sufficient will to defeat the Islamic State, we’d make short work of it. Obama has no interest in such an undertaking. He reserves his passion for attacking Republicans or pushing his other priorities, such as climate change, which persistently remains a very, very low priority for most Americans.

But the president himself is a symptom. The whole system seems to have lost its mind. That there’s even a debate about whether security officials should be allowed to look at the social-media posts of immigrants is a sign that our bureaucrats have such open minds their brains have fallen out. We should have seen this coming five years ago, when we learned that Obama told the new head of NASA to make one of his top priorities outreach to the Muslim world.

Terrorism is a big concern, but this sense that the political system is unresponsive, unaccountable, and operating on its own self-interested ideological agenda is bigger. It is the ur-complaint that explains everything from enduring outrage over the lies that greased Obamacare’s passage to fury over illegal immigration, disgust over corruption at the IRS and VA, the immortality of the Ex-Im Bank, and countless other outrages du jour.

The failure of credible politicians to address this anxiety created an opportunity for Donald Trump. At least he’s willing to say Washington is stupid.

Read more here.

Since when are foreign nationals granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?

Phillip Haney writes at The Hill,

There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration.

I was a firsthand witness to how these policies deliberately prevented scrutiny of Islamist groups. The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration’s closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized individuals into this country.

Read much more here.

Do you feel safe?

Do you feel safe from ISIS? That is one of the questions Ben Shapiro asks at Breitbart.

Obama Said You Were Safe From ISIS. On the day before ISIS terrorists attacked Paris, Obama said, “We have contained them.” On the day of the San Bernardino ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, Obama assured Americans that they were safe from ISIS. He told CBS, “ISIL will not pose an existential threat to us…The American people should feel confident that, you know, we are going to be able to defend ourselves and make sure that, you know, we have a good holiday and go about our lives.” He said that at the same time that one of the San Bernardino terrorists, Tashfeen Malik, pledged her allegiance to ISIS on Facebook. At the same exact time.

Obama Said You Could Trust The Government To Screen Immigrants. President Obama has derisively mocked Republicans for wariness over the government’s ability to screen Syrian Muslim refugees. Obama says that we have a thorough screening process for Syrian Muslim refugees; he scoffed at GOP critics: “Apparently, they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion.”

One of the San Bernardino terrorists, Malik, was in the country on a K-1 visa. That visa allows holders to come to the United States to get married, and as Breitbart reported, the State Department says that the K-1 visa does require that the fiancée “must meet some of the requirements of an immigrant visa.”

Oopsies.

Obama Thinks The Government Is Great At Tracking Down Terror Leads. President Obama repeatedly assures us that the government is doing amazing work in tracking down anti-terror leads. Surely that’s true. That doesn’t mean you’re safe. The FBI didn’t have Syed Farook on a watch list or a no-fly list, even though according to CNN, he was “in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism, law enforcement officials said Thursday.” The suspects were watching ISIS propaganda online.

Because the Obama administration doesn’t take Islamic terrorism seriously – climate change is far more important – they have a long history of ignoring terror information. As Joel Pollak points out, the Obama administration still has not exploited the intelligence value of information obtained during the bin Laden raid, and they left the Benghazi consulate completely open after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2012, risking intelligence assets in the process.

Obama Thinks Taking Your Guns Will Stop Terrorists. Josh Earnest said yesterday that gun control was the best way to stop terrorists. Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked if Obama thought gun control could deter terrorism; Earnest explained, “Yes. The president believes that passing common sense gun laws that makes it harder for people with bad intentions to get guns, makes the country safer.” But we know that the San Bernardino terrorists bought their guns legally, then modified them in illegal fashion. They also had IEDs. California has some of the strictest gun control in the nation. That fact led Senator Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (D-CA) to declare, idiotically, that “Sensible gun laws work. We’ve proven it in California and we are not going to give up.” She said this the day after the shooting in San Bernardino that prompted the conversation in the first place – the day after a bunch of unarmed people were shot while waiting four minutes for the cops to arrive.

Democrats Think They Can Disarm You Without Due Process. Well, over the past two days, Democrats have made it their chief talking point to blast Republicans for their failure to support removing guns from those on the terror watch list and no-fly list without due process of law.

...Neither Malik nor Farook were on the no-fly list or the terror watch list. There are, however, some 750,000 Americans on those lists. It requires no show of evidence to put someone on the list. But according to the left, mere presence on the list means we can remove guns from you in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Department of Justice Thinks Its Top Priority Is Prosecution of “Anti-Muslim” Speech.

The Media Don’t Care About Your Safety. The media keep parroting the administration’s lies about keeping Americans safe, but they couldn’t care less about that. Today, they demonstrated their willingness to enter the apartment of terrorists, without official permission, destroying evidence in their wake. As CNN ‘s law enforcement analyst said while watching all of this happen:

I don’t see any fingerprint dust on the walls where they went in there and checked for fingerprints for other people that might have been connected with these two. You’ve got documents laying all over the place; you’ve got shredded documents…You have passports, you’ve got drivers’ licenses — now you have thousands of fingerprints all over inside this crime scene…I am so shocked, I cannot believe it.

Read more here.

Protecting the right to vote

Can states require proof of citizenship in order to vote? A federal court ruled last month that Kansas and Arizona can. The Obama administration tried to stop them, but lost in court. Bryan Preston has more here.

"The morals of thugs and the agenda of totalitarians

Thomas Sowell writes that the Obama administration has the

morals of thugs and the agenda of totalitarians.

He cites the example of filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, who is being prosecuted for contributing $20,000 to a political candidate, an amount Sowell describes as

chicken feed, compared to what can be raised inside of an hour at a political fundraising breakfast or lunch.

Could this singling out of D'Souza for prosecution have something to do with the fact that he made a documentary movie with devastating exposures of Barack Obama's ideologies and policies? That movie, incidentally, is titled "2016: Obama's America," and every American should get a copy of it on a DVD. It will be the best $10 investment you are ever likely to make.

Arbitrary power is ugly and vicious, regardless of what pious rhetoric goes with it. Freedom is not free. You have to fight for it or lose it. But is our generation up to fighting for it?

2013: few new laws, but lots of new regulations

Paul Bedard writes that federal agencies issued a whopping 3,659 rules and regulations in 2013.

Only 65 public laws were signed by President Obama in 2013, meaning that his government issued an average of 56 new regulations for every one, a record high ratio, according to the annual analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The failures in 2013

Walter Russell Mead details 2013's biggest losers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, The EU, The Obama Administration, Israel, Democracy, Turkey, Brazil, Club Med ((Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece), The Syrians, Argentina.

Go here to read his detailed reason why each of these failed in 2013.