1. Barack Obama Begins His Retreat From the War on Terror: He wants to close Gitmo, stop enhanced interrogation techniques, and step back from many of the policies that have kept us safe.

2. Newsweek Back Pedals on Bush Use of Executive Power: Now that their guy is coming in to office, Newsweek no longer has a problem with a strong executive.

3. Opposition Grows to Eric Holder’s Appointment: Both in and out of government, Eric Holder has had a habit of giving bad advice and cooperating with a gallery of rogues.

4. The National Rifle Association Gives Holder a Pass: Despite the NRA itself documenting Eric Holder’s aggressive positions against the second amendment, the NRA has bowed to pressure from Democrats to not aggressively oppose Holder.

5. Everyone Makes Sacrifices Except Government: If Barack Obama is serious about his promise to take a pound of flesh from every constituency in the process of restoring balanced budgets and repairing insolvent entitlement programs, why not insist upon a plan to return the overall size of the federal workforce to where it is on January 20, 2009.

6. Obama’s Economic Team vs. Themselves: The ideas in the Obama stimulus package are so controversial that they were once denounced by Obama’s own appointees.

7. The Department of Justice Files a Voter Intimidation Suit — Against Democrats: Republicans always get accused of intimidating voters. Now there is documented evidence and a prosecution too, but it is Democrats implicated.

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1. Barack Obama Begins His Retreat From the War on Terror.

He wants to close Gitmo, stop enhanced interrogation techniques, and step back from many of the policies that have kept us safe.

Barack Obama intends to issue an executive order on perhaps his first day in office to close Gitmo. This is willfully naive on his part.

Many of those who were at Gitmo and returned to their homes were later encountered again trying to kill Americans overseas. Those who stayed have been judged dangerous. Many of them have no place to go as their countries of origins are refusing to take them back. They will come here. Many Democrats in Congress already want them brought here. Rep. James Moran (D-VA) wants to fold the GITMO detainees into the justice system and house them in ordinary federal prisons near American suburbia.

This is just an invitation for not just jail breaks, but massive American casualties. Retreating on enhanced interrogation just compounds an already terrible signal coming from the incoming administration.

2. Newsweek Back Pedals on Bush Use of Executive Power

Now that their guy is coming in to office, Newsweek no longer has a problem with a strong executive.

Newsweek’s Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas take a look at Obama’s promises to roll back the ‘excesses of Executive Power’ that were the hallmark of the Bush administration (at least in the eyes of liberals like the writers at Newsweek). They conclude that Obama might not be able to take us back to September 10, because those ‘excesses’ might just be necessary to keep us safe. Newsweek notes, “The flaw of the Bush-Cheney administration may have been less in what it did than in the way it did it—flaunting executive power, ignoring Congress, showing scorn for anyone who waved the banner of civil liberties. Arguably, there has been an overreaction to the alleged arrogance and heedlessness of Bush and Cheney—especially Cheney, who almost seemed to take a grim satisfaction in his Darth Vader-esque image. ”

In light of Obama’s willingness to back off of GITMO and enhanced interrogation techniques, he might want to be more mindful of his media fan club’s new found nervousness.

3. Opposition Grows to Eric Holder’s Appointment

Both in and out of government, Eric Holder has had a habit of giving bad advice and cooperating with a gallery of rogues.

Holder advised President Clinton to pardon FALN terrorists. Joseph Connor talked to RedState about Eric Holder’s role in expedited clemency for members of the FALN granted by President Bill Clinton in 1999. Joe is the son of Frank Connor who was murdered in 1975 by members of the Puerto Rican Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN). Eric Holder is President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee to be the Attorney General and former Deputy Attorney General in the Bill Clinton Administration. Holder will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this Thursday, January 15 at 9:30 am.

Joe agreed to be interviewed about former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder’s role in those grants of clemency and recent reports from the Los Angeles Times that “As deputy attorney general in 1999, Holder — now attorney general nominee — pressed subordinates to drop objections to clemency for 16 members of violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations.” The FALN has been linked to over 150 bombings and other activities that resulted in the death of at least six people and injuries to many others in a terrorist criminal spree that lasted from 1974 to 1983.

In addition to Holder’s FALN dealings, he played a crucial role in helping Chiquita Bananas get out of a criminal investigation after the government uncovered Chiquita’s dealings with some less than savory people.

Holder himself, using his influence as former deputy attorney general under the Clinton Administration, helped to negotiate Chiquita’s sweeheart deal with the Justice Department in the criminal case against Chiquita. Under this deal, no Chiquita official received any jail time. Indeed, the identity of the key officials involved in the assistance to the paramilitaries were kept under seal and confidential. In the end, Chiquita was fined a mere $25 million which it has been allowed to pay over a 5-year period. This is incredible given the havoc wreaked by Chiquita’s aid to these Colombian death squards.

More on Chiquita and Eric Holder’s role in cooperating with Columbian Death Squads here.

Despite growing opposition to Holder, Orin Hatch is going to vote for him. Hatch, already waning in popularity in Utah, could make himself even more unpopular with his constituents for doing so.

4. The National Rifle Association Gives Holder a Pass

Despite the NRA itself documenting Eric Holder’s aggressive positions against the second amendment, the NRA has bowed to pressure from Democrats to not aggressively oppose Holder.

RedState has learned from both sources within the NRA and the Senate Judiciary Committee that the NRA has bowed to Democratic pressure and will is not going to score a vote on Eric Holder.

The NRA has sent a letter and documented Holder’s anti-gun policies, but does not want to negatively impact the gun ratings of Senators. Harry Reid and Pat Leahy, through intermediaries, told the NRA that a score on Holder would put Democrats in an awkward position of siding against the Obama administration or a core constituency. Instead, the NRA will urge members to call the Senate, but will otherwise do nothing substantive.

In fact, sources in the Senate Judiciary Committee tell RedState that the NRA not only declined to testify against Holder, but also worked behind the scenes to deny Gun Owners of America an invitation to testify.

5. Everyone Makes Sacrifices Except Government

If Barack Obama is serious about his promise to take a pound of flesh from every constituency in the process of restoring balanced budgets and repairing insolvent entitlement programs, why not insist upon a plan to return the overall size of the federal workforce to where it is on January 20, 2009.

Barack Obama promises that before his presidency is up, he’s going to demand ’something from everybody’ to get the nation’s fiscal house in order. But there seems to be one sacred cow that will dodge the knife: government. And while it may not come as a surprise to anybody at all, it’s worth remembering that government still seems to be getting fat — as it does during prosperous and lean times, and during war and peace:

Despite the highest unemployment rate in 15 years, government grew at all levels in 2008, continuing a seemingly unstoppable trend that has withstood recessions, wars, and record budget deficits. Health care and education also added jobs in 2008, continuing their iron-clad growth trends as well.

State, federal, county and local governments employed approximately 22.5 million people in 2008, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. Additionally, 13.4 million people were employed in the healthcare sector, and 3 million worked in education, according to the report.

6. Obama’s Economic Team vs. Themselves

The ideas in the Obama stimulus package are so controversial that they were once denounced by Obama’s own appointees.

There is a whole lot more in the story concerning differences between Obama and his advisers. Peter Orszag, the OMB Director-designate, has left a massive paper trail in which he disagrees with the ideas that have ended up in Obama’s stimulus proposal. This comes on the heels of numerous people pointing out Christine Roemer, co-author of the Obama stimulus plan, has a multitude of published academic research directly contradicting the statements made in her report connected to the stimulus plan.

David Broder, writing in the New York Times, has even more on the subject. “The Romers surveyed the recessions of the previous 50 years to try to reach some conclusions about what works. “Our central conclusion is that monetary policy alone is a sufficiently powerful and flexible tool to end recessions,” they wrote. Automatic spending policies like unemployment insurance have sometimes helped. Discretionary policies, like tax cuts and stimulus plans, have not been of much use. As they put it: “Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, does not appear to have had an important role in generating recoveries.””

7. The Department of Justice Files a Voter Intimidation Suit — Against Democrats

Republicans always get accused of intimidating voters. Now there is documented evidence and a prosecution too, but it is Democrats implicated.

The DoJ has filed suit against the New Black Panther party to stop them from engaging in voter intimidation in the future.

Today, Election Journal confirmed that that one of the named parties is actually a Committee Member of the local Democratic organization and was certified by the local Democratic Party as a poll-worker.

That’s right. The Philadelphia Democratic Party has been implicated in voter intimidation, and the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division has filed suit against it. And the media ignores it. Why? I’ll let you figure that out.