Minor Bit of News: Al-Qaeda Controls More Territory Than Ever Before

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KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: In Appalachia the country is beautiful and the society is broken. The White Ghetto.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Chris Christie's status as 2016 frontrunner is imperiled. Christie's Crucial 24 Hours.

JONAH GOLDBERG: The Left sees income inequality as a disease; the Right sees it as a symptom. Define Income Inquality.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: China believes it's now time for its military to reflect its economic power. Changes in the Pacific: A Return to the 1930s.

ANDREW JOHNSON: The token conservative on the MSNBC's The Cycle is a pushover. Abby Huntsman Fails to Mix It Up on The Cycle.

SLIDESHOW: Polar-Vortex Playtime.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

January 9, 2014

Ahem. Minor Bit of News: Al-Qaeda Controls More Territory Than Ever Before

Yet another foreign-policy triumph of the Obama administration, spotlighted by Peter Bergen:

From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.

Indeed, al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.

And that's not even counting the Taliban's comeback in Afghanistan. That criticism from former defense secretary Robert Gates seems kind of important now, doesn't it?

Gates writes that, unlike Bush, Obama lacked "passion, especially when it came to the two wars."

"I worked for Obama longer than Bush and I never saw his eyes well up," Gates writes. "The only military matter, apart from leaks, about which I ever sensed deep passion on his part was 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" the law prohibiting gays from serving openly in the military that Obama successfully pushed to repeal.

Remember, "Bin Laden is dead and Detroit is alive"? Detroit is bankrupt and al-Qaeda now controls more territory than ever.

The GOP Winners of 2009 Betray Us

Here's what we know: On September 9, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed two of three local access lanes from Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the George Washington Bridge.

The traffic problems have serious consequences:

Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations – including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious – due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough's EMS department.

The woman later died, borough records show.

In at least two of those instances, response time doubled, noted EMS coordinator Paul Favia, who documented those cases in a Sept. 10 letter to Mayor Mark Sokolich, which The Record obtained.

The lane closures continued for four days, until Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye, an appointee of Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, directs bridge managers to reopen the lanes. No explanation is given until September 16, when the Port Authority stated the lane closure was part of a traffic study. For what it's worth, Foye says he was never informed about any traffic study.

When Democrats made the accusation that the closure was political payback for Fort Lee's mayor, Governor Chris Christie dismissed the accusation and initially joked: "I worked the cones. Unbeknownst to anyone, I was working the cones." He added, "Just because [Democratic state legislators] John Wisniewski and Loretta Weinberg are obsessed with this . . . it just shows you they really have nothing to do." Later in the month, he continued his blanket denials, declaring, "I think in the end what it will be shown to be is rank speculation from folks who want to play political games."

Now we know that on August 13, Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, e-mailed David Wildstein, the governor's appointee to the Port Authority, saying, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wildstein responded, "Got it."

Wildstein and one unidentified individual appeared to gloat about the problems the closure was causing in Fort Lee:

In one exchange of text messages on the second day of the lane closures, Wildstein alludes to messages the Fort Lee mayor had left complaining that school buses were having trouble getting through the traffic.

"Is it wrong that I'm smiling," the recipient of the text message responded to Wildstein. The person's identity is not clear because the documents are partially redacted for unknown reasons.

"No," Wildstein wrote in response.

"I feel badly about the kids," the person replied to Wildstein. "I guess."

"They are the children of Buono voters," Wildstein wrote, making a reference to Barbara Buono, the Democratic candidate for governor, who lost to Christie in a landslide in November.

So we can conclude that Bridget Anne Kelly and David Wildstein are reprehensible people, and not terribly bright people, either. (Rick Wilson: "Never write what you can email. Never email what you can text. Never text when you can say. Never say what you can imply.") The question is, were they acting with Christie's explicit approval, tacit approval, or making these big, consequential, vindictive moves without telling him anything? Wednesday night, Chris Christie declared he was just learning of these messages today, that he was misled by his staff, and that everything was done without his knowledge. He declared the mess "unacceptable" and "inappropriate" and said he was "outraged and deeply saddened."

It's not too much to say that if evidence comes to light that Christie's lying here, he's toast for 2016. Heck, he may face impeachment. "The Assembly can bring impeachment charges but the Senate is the court of impeachment in New Jersey, where the charges are tried." Democrats have a majority in both. Using the power of the state government to snarl traffic -- with those EMS consequences, recall -- over a petty political grievance is just too much of a [word stronger than jerk] move. If you have a message, call Western Union. Sure, closing down the lanes caused grief and aggravation for the mayor of Fort Lee, but it also caused grief and aggravation for hundreds or thousands of commuters. It caused grief and aggravation for hundreds or thousands of kids stuck on school buses. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Maybe Christie didn't know they were doing this. But he hired them and put them in these positions. He trusted them with state power and authority over the people, and they abused that authority.

Yes, this is a smaller scandal, with smaller consequences than "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan," or the IRS abuses, or Benghazi, or Fast and Furious, or any one of a dozen other cases of Obama-administration skullduggery. That doesn't mean it isn't bad. Any Republican officeholder has to set the bar higher than "not quite as bad as Obama's most egregious offenses."

The state government is not a crowbar that can be used to clobber one's political rivals and enemies. Of course, a smaller, more limited government is one that is less prone to being abused.

Some Folks Insist That This Is Par for the Course

For a completely different take than mine, here's Mike Murphy:

So, does bridge-and-tunnel-gate really mean anything for Christie's nascent 2016 presidential campaign? The drama itself will soon pass. The story is irresistible to the political press because Christie is the early frontrunner, if there can be such a thing, for the Republican nomination and because the idea of New Jersey's bombastic governor dropping the gridlocking equivalent of a nuclear weapon on a small-time mayor easily fits a lazy narrative about Christie having a vindictive side.

In reality, I've never known a governor without a long list of local opponents, enemies and plain chuckleheads who constantly drive him or her batty. Most governors spend a lot of time tussling with their hometown versions of Seinfeld's accursed Newman, and dreaming of fixing said irritant's political wagon once and for all.

I've also never known a governor with a political staff that did not take immense joy in the political pain and suffering of said opponents. In the rough-and-tumble personality-driven cauldron of New Jersey politics, this sort of battling is particularly ordinary. While in this case the wagon-fixers may have gone overboard, I doubt many people will be that shocked, shocked that hardball is alive and well in New Jersey.

My prediction? The whole thing will blow over. Sure, the media will howl for a week and the mayor of Fort Lee will spend the next two years darkly plotting ways to poison Christie's good name in New Hampshire.

But Christie has already blasted the main chortling staffer in question. The circus will move on.

Working for an Elected Official Doesn't Mean Locking away Your Good Judgment

Was there anybody around Governor Christie who was willing to say shutting down the lanes was a bad idea, and that they shouldn't do it? The documents released so far don't reveal any.

I said earlier the winners of 2009 betrayed us -- thinking of Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia, once a leader with a strong record and bright future, who ended his term with a series of odious stories of accepting gifts from donors -- more than $150,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, the CEO of a nutritional supplement maker -- in addition to the giving the use of the governor's mansion for a campaign donor's corporate event.

There was one reassuring note about this disclosure during the McDonnell administration's parade of scandal:

Top aides to Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) expressed concerns about the governor's participation in a 2011 event at the governor's mansion that marked the launch of a dietary supplement made by a major McDonnell campaign donor, according to newly released e-mails.

"I don't understand this? we are doing an event with them?" McDonnell's communications director Tucker Martin wrote the evening before the event to Mary Shea Sutherland, the chief of staff for first lady Maureen McDonnell, who had organized the luncheon.

A minute later, Martin wrote to Sutherland again.

"Are we sure we can do something like this?" he asked, copying a number of other senior McDonnell aides.

McDonnell's deputy chief of staff Matt Conrad responded to Martin quickly, promising to take the issue to the governor's chief of staff.

"You were exactly right to be suspicious," Conrad, a lawyer, wrote.

Unfortunately, nobody listened to Martin. But at least somebody recognized that the situation smelled to high heaven.

ADDENDUM: Ben Howe has a new documentary coming out this month, entitled, "BANKRUPT: How Cronyism and Corruption Brought Down Detroit." I'm struck by the anecdote of families disinterring their deceased relatives and relocating the graves outside of the city. Not even the dead want to stay in Detroit in its current condition!

The trailer is out now:

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