Frank Gaffney Jr.

Lost Leader: Farewell to Jim Schlesinger

There is never a good time to lose a man of the caliber, character and vision of James R. Schlesinger. As it happens, however, the nation he loved and served for decades with such distinction is in particular need of his unique leadership at this juncture. So, his passing last week is a double blow.

‘Civilization Jihad’ Comes to Court

Want to know what our Islamist enemies have in mind for America? Look at Europe.

Don’t Give Away the Net

On the afternoon of Friday, March 14, 2014, the Obama administration announced that it was taking a step – without prior notice or evident consultation with Congress – to “support and enhance the multi-stakeholder model of Internet policymaking and governance.” Like so many other of Team Obama’s unilateral decisions, this one is not just contrary to the national interest. It amounts to fraud.

An American Fukushima? Lawmakers neglect our vulnerable power grid

Three years ago today, an earthquake-induced tsunami devastated Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power complex. The flooding knocked out power required to cool reactors and their spent fuel pools, causing dangerous – and continuing – radioactive contamination. Unfortunately, unless we act quickly, such a catastrophe is in the cards for America, too.

CPAC’s Blind Spot

What would you call an issue portfolio that is vital to the future of our country, central to conservatism’s past electoral success and compelling to significant parts of the demographics likely to determine the Right’s future competitiveness? If you were the American Conservative Union, sponsor of the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference, you would evidently call it taboo.

Thwart Putin’s ‘Evil Empire’ 2.0

Vladimir Putin is claiming that his invasion of parts of Ukraine is required because Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine as Adolf Hitler came to that of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. He seems intent, however, on bringing all of the Ukraine to heel, as his predecessors in the Kremlin did with Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. What is in prospect makes the sort of aggression Putin previously engaged in with Georgia in 2008 pale by comparison.

America’s Provocative Weakness

Among former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s many illuminating “rules” is his trenchant observation that “weakness is provocative.” Indeed, the accelerating instability we see worldwide is, in no small measure, a product of the weakness being communicated at every turn by Barack Obama’s administration. Worse yet, the steps the President is taking to weaken America further will make it vastly more difficult to contend with the aggression he has invited.

Deadly Life-Support for a Threatening Iran

In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama committed national security fraud. He claimed to have “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program and rolled parts of that program back.” Unfortunately, it is becoming ever more apparent that the only thing he’s actually “rolled back” is the sanctions regime meant to halt that program.

Protect the Grid Now

Americans have discovered that Silicon Valley and much of the San Francisco Bay area literally dodged a bullet – or more precisely 110 of them – last April. The grace of God and quick thinking by control room operators narrowly averted disaster when a highly professional and disciplined attack on an electric substation outside San Jose might have inflicted a protracted blackout on millions of us and our economy.

While Obama Resets, Putin Rearms

There is an oft-proven adage: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.” When our nation – under administrations of both parties – has been fooled, first by the Soviets, and more recently by the Russians, on virtually every arms control accord we have signed with them, however, it is not simply shameful. It is evidence of systematic official malfeasance.

Obama’s Nuclear ‘Perfect Storm’

America is confronting a very dangerous nuclear “perfect storm.” You might be forgiven for thinking that prospect has sufficient importance to warrant mention in President Obama’s State of our Union. But, if past experience is any guide, it probably won’t make the cut in a speech with an Alinskyite focus on persuading the public and his Republican opponents that the greatest threat the country faces is “income inequality.”

Obama Splits the N.S.A. Baby

King Solomon was immortalized for saving a baby’s life by threatening to split it between the real mother and a pretender. President Obama may become infamous for actually splitting the baby with his decision Friday to praise, and then undermine, critical intelligence collection operations conducted by the National Security Agency.

Now Bob Gates Tells Us

For most of the past five years, President Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of American national security policy, practice and capabilities has largely gotten a pass from the public, the press and even his political opponents. Indeed, his reelection in 2012 was made possible in no small measure by Team Obama’s substantially uncontested claims that his leadership had put al Qaeda “on the path to defeat,” “ended the war in Iraq” and successfully set the course for doing the same in Afghanistan.

The wages of national security fraud

As al Qaeda raises its black flag of jihad over parts of Iraq liberated from its clutches at the cost of enormous American blood and treasure, we are getting a taste of what President Obama’s serial national security fraud is wreaking around the world.

When the press is a poodle

This nation’s founders had a special role in mind for the media in the constitutional arrangements they carefully constructed. It was to provide a fourth source of checks and balances on the potential abuse of power by the three branches of government, by virtue of journalists’ independence and, if assured freedom of the press, their ability to expose and, thereby, to counter overreaching presidents, legislators or courts.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s winter offensive

Sixty-nine years ago this month, Nazi Germany mounted its last, horrific offensive in the dead of winter in what came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Perhaps taking a page from the playbook of their fellow totalitarians, the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have its own audacious winter offensive underway – only this one is being waged inside America, a country the Brothers have declared they seek “to destroy from within.”

How to Tell When Barack Obama is Lying

Want to know how to tell when President Obama is lying? These days, it’s easy: His lips are moving.

Obama’s One-War Posture Invites Two

The latest manifestation of Barack Obama’s serial national security fraud is on display at the moment in East Asia. For much of his presidency, Mr. Obama has contended that the defense budget could be dramatically reduced because, henceforth, the United States would only need sufficient military capability to fight one war at a time.

Obamabomb: Iran can keep its weapons program

The president who promised us that his health care legislation would allow us to keep our insurance plans and doctors now insists that his agreement with Iran will not allow it to keep a nuclear weapons program. What the two pledges have in common is that they are both lies. No matter how many times such statements are repeated and seconded by President Obama’s partisans and the press, they amount to fraud – serial, intentional and potentially fatal fraud.

American Betrayal 2.0

Franklin Delano Roosevelt should have described November 16, 1933 as a day that will live in infamy. As syndicated columnist Diana West notes in her splendid new book, American Betrayal, that date marked the beginning of a sustained and odious practice of our government lying to us about the Russians. It appears that the Obama administration is determined to perpetrate a reprise of this practice. Call it American Betrayal 2.0.