Toby Harnden

It still seems unthinkable that the Democrats could lose a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Ever since everyone got it wrong in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire in January 2008 we’ve all been reluctant to call New England election races before the votes have been cast. But Barack Obama’s party is already forming a circular firing squad and engaging in a big-time blame game. So if Scott Brown does beat Martha Coakley what will it mean? Here are 10 suggestions:

1. Health care reform is dead. Even if there was (and it’s doubtful) some procedural way the Democrats could push it through, such a move would be political suicide.

2. Obama will have failed to achieve his signature reform despite Democrats having had a healthy majority in the House and a 60:40 advantage in the Senate. That is a… Read More

Check out this passage from the unclassified six-page summary of the President Barack Obama’s review of the intelligence failures that led to the attempted attack by the Knicker Bomber on Flight 253 on Christmas Day:
Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father about Mr. Abdulmutallab’s potential radicalization. A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa.
So this means that the US government’s computers apparently don’t have an equivalent of Google’s “Did You Mean?” tool that picks up misspellings and finds results for similar words.

If it had been realised immediately that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a valid US visa then presumably the alarm bells would have begun to ring weeks before he actually flew – but they believed he had no visa because the State Department database or whatever… Read More

Barack Obama is angry. Very angry, apparently. The intelligence agencies “screwed up” (White House aides were eager to quote him as saying this inside his big meeting). There was no “I screwed up” moment from the commander-in-chief but he has repeatedly mentioned the a-word recently – “accountable” for the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab knicker bomber fiasco.

As in:
“we need our intelligence, homeland security and law enforcement systems – and the people in them – to be accountable” (Jan 5th)
and
“I will do everything in my power to make sure our hard-working men and women in our intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security communities have the tools and resources they need to keep America safe.  This includes making sure these communities-and the people in them-are coordinating effectively and are held accountable at every level.” (Dec 29th)
and
“a full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism and we will… Read More

There are 34 seats in the Senate up for grabs Photo: EPA

A few months ago, anyone suggesting that Republicans might be able to retake the Senate – where they currently have 40 seats compared to the Democrats’ 58 plus two Independents who caucus with Barack Obama’s party – would have been liable to be certified insane.

But with the shock decision of the Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, to retire it’s beginning to go from impossible to long shot. Some 34 seats are up for grabs, 18 Republican and 16 Democratic. The GOP needs to pick up 11 seats to secure a majority.

I certainly wouldn’t bet the farm (or even an outbuilding) on a GOP win that gives it 50 seats - far from it. Obama’s poll fortune… Read More

My Sunday Telegraph “American Way” column this week is about how Barack Obama’s intensely political response to the foiled 12/25 attack and Underweargate underlines how vulnerable he is on the issue of terror:
In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Barack Obama patted himself on the back for having “refocused the fight – bringing to a responsible end the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks”.

He then told people to remember that “our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans”, before decrying “fear and cynicism” and “partisanship and division” – the code phrases for horrid Republicans used during his 2008 election campaign.

Complacency, faux moralising and partisan shots at Republicans. It was a neat summary of where Obama is going wrong after the Christmas Day debacle when the Nigerian knicker bomber managed to waltz onto a Detroit-bound flight.

Read the… Read More

There are currently 90 stars on the CIA’s Memorial Wall at the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. They represent the CIA officers killed in the line of duty – 55 of the names are known publicly, 35 (including several killed since the 9/11 attacks) remain secret.

Today was one of the darkest days in the Agency’s 62-year history. A suicide bomber somehow managed to infiltrate the supposedly ultra-secure Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost in eastern Afghanistan and detonated a bomb in the gym. Eight CIA officers or contractors were said to have been killed – soon there will be up to 98 stars on the Memorial Wall. Six others  at the base were wounded, some severely.

In April 1983, eight CIA personnel were killed when the US Embassy in Beirut was hit by a Hezbollah suicide bomb.

The outstanding “Book of Honor” by Ted Gup details the lives of… Read More

There is no more solemn duty for an American commander-in-chief than the marshalling of  “every element of our national power” – the phrase Obama himself used on Monday – to protect the people of the United States. In that key respect, Obama failed on Christmas Day, just as President George W. Bush failed on September 11th (though he succeeded in the seven years after that).

Yes, the buck stops in the Oval Office. Obama may have rather smugly given himself a “B+” for his 2009 performance but he gets an F for the events that led to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarding a Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam with a PETN bomb sewn into his underpants.  He said today that a “systemic failure has occurred”. Well, he’s in charge of that system.

The picture we’re getting is more and more alarming by the hour. Here are some key elements to consider:

1. Abdulmutallab’s father… Read More

Well, here’s a shocker. You know all those celebrities on Twitter you follow to get that genuine personal connection and real sense of who they are? Yep, you’re really subscribing to 140-character messages written by some impoverished student desperate to tweet away for $200 a week.

In case you’re interested in applying, here’s the ad in the Media Bistro jobs section:

Ghost Twitterer

Publication or Company – Writer/Producer/Screenwriter

Industry – Internet/Online/New Media

Salary – Hourly

Benefits – Flexible Hours

Job Duration – Part Time

Job Location – Anywhere, USA

Job Requirements – Experienced Twitterer needed with an interest in TV, movies, sports, mysteries, etc. You must have a demonstrated talent at communicating your thoughts and observations in an engaging way, with personality and a sense of humor (but not necessarily snark). This is part-time, during the business day. Please reply with your Twitter name so we can get a sense of your style. Maximum 10… Read More

My Sunday Telegraph column this week is about Barack Obama’s surprisingly – and reassuringly – muscular Nobel speech in Oslo on Thursday:
Perhaps it was the poll registering that a shade under one in five Americans believed he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Or maybe it was the churlish Norwegians who grumbled that he was not taking the time to break grovbrød with King Harald V, or perhaps dress up in traditional folk costume.

It could even be that his growing domestic unpopularity – which he described last week as “painfully clear” (though his spokesman Robert Gibbs described a recent Gallup poll as “meaningless” and “something a six-year-old with a Crayon could do”) – is something of a liberation.

Whatever the reason, it was a different kind of Barack Obama who addressed an array of stony-faced Scandinavians in the marbled auditorium of Oslo’s city hall last week.
Read the whole thing here.

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo will be one of the trickier occasions of Barack Obama’s presidency. A CNN poll has found that just 19 per cent of Americans think that Obama deserves the prize. And Obama’s facing a lot of heat from the Left over his Afghan war troop increase, including an online petition

And the Norwegians, far from being grateful that Obama accepted the prize, are now griping that Obama isn’t spending the whole week there taking part in Scandinavian activities. Most Norwegians believe it was “impolite” of Obama not to lunch with their king, hold a press conference, attend the Nobel concert, dress up as a troll or swim in a fjord. OK, I made up the last two things.

Obama will need all his famed rhetorical skills to persuade an angry Left, sceptical Americans and churlish Norwegians that he is a worthy recipient of the prize. By… Read More