Heinous and cowardly.

President Obama was cautious about using the loaded word in his first address in the few hours after the bombing last night, but this morning reported that the FBI is now investigating the attack as the “act of terrorism” that it was. From the WFB: I’ve just been briefed by my national security team, including [...]

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Drip, drip, drip.

Alternate headline: “Liberals remember why they like Chuck Hagel.” Two problems here. Problem one: Like the earlier report when he allegedly said that the State Department is controlled by Israel’s foreign ministry, there’s no hard proof. There’s not even a direct quote. It sounds like him, which isn’t something you can say of most would-be [...]

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One and done.

Senator Mike Johanns will hit the exits after a single term in the upper chamber, his office announced yesterday.  The Nebraska Republican will bow out of a re-election bid despite having done well by all accounts in a first term.  Johanns reportedly has grown too frustrated with gridlock to fight for another six years: Despite [...]

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"A massive cover-up."

If I had tried to guess on Saturday which Sunday talk show would get the most contentious, the pairing of John McCain with NBC’s David Gregory on Meet the Press would have come in last on my most-likely list.  After all, this clip starts off by discussing the confirmation of Chuck Hagel, which McCain has [...]

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The fundamental question.

The answer, for the moment, is “an emphatic no,” Bob Woodward tells the Fox News panel today, but the problem for Hagel is the other question that they’re asking (via Daniel Halper): “I think there is another dimension here and that is, what are Democratic senators really thinking about the Hagel nomination? I understand some [...]

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Plus: Paul confirms hold on Brennan.

Hey, who knew that Chuck Hagel wasn’t a guy to go along with a Republican consensus?  Despite a full-fledged effort to filibuster Hagel, he insists he’s staying in the mix: Chuck Hagel, known for his unswerving relentlessness both as a senator and as a soldier, plans to stand fast as President Obama’s nominee to head the [...]

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Droning on.

This time, the delay didn’t come from Republicans, and not even Democratic back-benchers.  The White House took a body blow today when Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein pushed off the confirmation vote of John Brennan for CIA Director by at least two weeks.  Feinstein wants the Obama administration to turn over seven memos related [...]

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McCain on board, too?

Can Republicans delay the confirmation of Chuck Hagel — at least long enough to force the White House to provide more information on Barack Obama’s actions on the night of the Benghazi attack, along with more transparency on Hagel’s speeches over the last few years?  Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) says yes, and that eventually the [...]

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Confirmation.

Major news from Major “Shirty Business” Garrett: I am reliably informed Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, will soon announce backing Chuck Hage. WH and Hagel backers believe they have 60 votes. — Major Garrett(@MajorCBS) February 12, 2013 Remember, to date, not a single Senate Democrat has said he/she will oppose Hagel. That’s 55 votes in the [...]

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"No confirmation without information."

Lindsey Graham threatened to block the confirmations of both Chuck Hagel and John Brennan yesterday on Face the Nation, after last week’s hearings on the Benghazi attack forced unanswered questions to the surface — and the White House provided no answers.  Graham told Bob Schieffer that he would place a hold on both candidates and [...]

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Awkward.

It’s a measure of just how much credibility Dick Cheney retains in national-security matters that the AP sent a reporter to his speech at a dinner for the Wyoming GOP.  CBS also picked up the story and featured it on its Sunday Morning site.  When Cheney criticizes Obama, more than four years after leaving office, [...]

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Readiness.

Via the WFB, Panetta is really sounding the alarm on this recently; at a speech on Wednesday, he warned not only of the degrading effect of the pending spending cuts on military readiness, but also spoke about cyberspace as the new frontier on which the United States will increasingly need to do battle in the [...]

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Rebuttal.

John McCain set the stage for a truly embarrassing spectacle last week for Chuck Hagel, ripping into his former colleague and friend for opposing the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The tense exchange rattled Hagel and left him off-balance for more pertinent questions about Iran and the Department of Defense that Hagel fumbled.  However, that’s [...]

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Confusion.

Before you answer that question, take a look at this video from the Emergency Committee for Israel, which put together one of the most embarrassing episodes ever by a Cabinet nominee during a confirmation hearing: “Is it too much to ask,” ECI wonders, “that Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel knows the Obama administration’s policy [...]

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No decision yet on filibuster.

Certainly support for Chuck Hagel isn’t intensifying, not after the weak defense offered for the Defense nominee over the weekend.  Republicans had mostly decided to oppose Chuck Hagel’s confirmation even before Thursday’s confirmation hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, so “opposition” isn’t exactly news.  But will Republicans filibuster Hagel?  Mitch McConnell isn’t quite ready [...]

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"Disconcerting."

How do you know a nominee is in trouble?  Well, when reliable White House apologists on Sunday morning talk shows call him “unimpressive and unprepared,” it’s not exactly a good sign.  Robert Gibbs dismissed the rough treatment John McCain gave Chuck Hagel as a grudge match, but admitted that watching Hagel fumble his way through [...]

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Yep.

Carl Levin gazes upon the future of “smart power” and sees … Chuck Hagel. “I don’t think he’s going to lose any Democratic votes, that we know of,” Sen. Carl Levin told reporters after the hearing. “I think there’s at least a few Republicans who’ve already said, publicly, that they support his nomination.” When pushed, [...]

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Bust?

Watch the clip below. He’s also been reassuring senators that he won’t have a policymaking role as SecDef, in case they’re leery of tasking an unqualified incompetent with so much responsibility. He’s basically daring Democrats to vote no, isn’t he? Question: Are there Democratic votes in play that weren’t before? A GOP Senate aide tells [...]

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“I’m not going to give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I’ll defer that to the judgment of history."

Presidents will nominate Senators to Cabinet positions in part to get an easy ride to confirmation, and soft treatment during confirmation hearings.  If that’s what Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel expected, they got a rude awakening, almost literally, when John McCain took his turn at the hearing this morning.  McCain ripped Hagel for opposing the [...]

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Unserious.

This morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee will take up the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, replacing the retiring Leon Panetta.  Panetta got the job after his surprisingly effective tenure running the CIA, taking his political connections and extensive experience in executive leadership in bureaucracies into one of the largest such bureaucracies [...]

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"Game changer."

The problem of the Iranian nuclear program may become acute more quickly than analysts predicted.  The IAEA has warned its member states that Tehran has embarked on a modernization program of its uranium enrichment facilities that will speed up production of weapons-grade fissile material — by a factor of five: The U.N. nuclear agency has [...]

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"I used that terminology only once ..."

How concerned is the White House over Chuck Hagel’s confirmation chances?  Enough to have him produce a written apology for the most inflammatory of his comments well ahead of his first hearing.  In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Hagel expressed regret for referring to a “Jewish lobby,” claiming he only did so once: [...]

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Big Sis staying on.

A momentous occasion, to be sure, since Obama tried to get by without holding any more press conferences with White House correspondents than absolutely necessary: Today: President Obama will hold the last press conference of his first term in the East Room at 11:15 AM — Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) January 14, 2013 So what’s on [...]

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Reserving judgment.

Another Democrat refused to offer a vote of confidence in Defense nominee Chuck Hagel yesterday.  Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that he wants to “reserve judgment” on Hagel, and expressed disappointment with colleagues who have immediately and irrevocably decided on their positions without first hearing from Hagel.  However, Blumenthal has [...]

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Code words?

It’s not unusual to see a conservative publication and the mainstream media look at the same event and come away with different conclusions.  After Colin Powell went on Meet the Press yesterday, the Washington Post headline read, “Colin Powell: Chuck Hagel ‘superbly qualified’ to be defense secretary [sic]“.  The Weekly Standard and the Daily Caller [...]

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