David Webb

Iran: the Danger of Rouhani

David Webb — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:14:27 +0000

By appeasing the West, Iran’s new president may well divide it. And that would secure Tehran’s nuclear program from dismantlement or attack.

By Michael Hirsh | Updated: June 18, 2013 | 6:00 a.m.

In many ways, the election of Hassan Rouhani to Iran’s presidency is excellent news, coming when there are so many other distractions in the region, especially the civil war in Syria. Rouhani, a moderate on foreign policy, authored the only nuclear suspension pact that Iran ever made with the West, and he has pledged to isolation-weary Iranians that he will address the sanctions that strangle their economy.

But in other ways Rouhani may prove more difficult to deal with than the president he is replacing, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. With his bilious rhetoric about Israel and the Holocaust and often erratic behavior, Ahmadinejad made Iran an easy target around which to rally tougher sanctions. The soft-spoken Rouhani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator, has proved skilled in the past at buying time by appearing reasonable and conciliatory, even as he, like others, has committed himself to moving ahead with uranium enrichment.

Rouhani has been frank in saying that this is his approach: In a speech in 2005, Rouhani detailed how Iran had evaded the U.N. Security Council, playing America’s hardline position off against others of the five veto-bearing permanent members, including China and Russia, along with Germany. He acknowledged exploiting “the intense competition” between Western countries in nuclear negotiations, saying “we can use that competition to our advantage.” At one point Rouhani described the disagreement between the U.S. and Britain over the issue as “beautiful to see.”

Supreme Court invalidate Arizona voter registration law

David Webb — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:30:56 +0000

By Lawrence Hurley | WASHINGTON | Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:55am EDT

(Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona state law that requires people registering to vote in federal elections to show proof of citizenship.

In a 7-2 vote, the court said the voter registration provision of the 2004 state law, known as Proposition 200, was trumped by a federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

The federal law requires prospective voters to provide one of several possible forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or a passport, but no proof of citizenship is needed. Would-be voters simply sign a statement saying they are citizens.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the state law was preempted by language in the federal statute saying that states must “accept and use” a federal registration form.

The Education of Barack Obama

David Webb — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:54:59 +0000

The president contradicts one of his airy inaugural pronouncements.

By JAMES TARANTO | WSJ June 11, 2013

“As for our common defense,” Barack Obama declared in his First Inaugural Address, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. . . . Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

Last Friday the president said this: “I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

Obama was answering a reporter’s question about the National Security Agency’s data-mining programs, some classified details of which were reported last week after an employee of an NSA contractor leaked them. “I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs,” Obama said. “My assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on the privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content, that on net, it was worth us doing. Some other folks may have a different assessment on that.”

One need not be untroubled by the NSA programs, or even supportive of them on balance, to see the contrast between the 2009 Obama and the 2013 one as evidence of progress. It seems there are limits to this president’s ideological stubbornness; he is capable of changing his views when they do not comport with reality.

Conservatives as Defenders of the Media

David Webb — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:50:53 +0000

By AMY CHOZICK | Published: June 9, 2013

The conservative pundit Glenn Beck took the lectern at a conference center on Manhattan’s East Side last Thursday to accept the Freedom of Speech Award for his commentary on TheBlaze television network and his syndicated radio show.

The annual seminar hosted by the trade magazine Talkers is intended to discuss the leading issues affecting talk radio, from advertising to how to break through in a crowded field. But this year, the more than 55 speakers had a particular topic they wanted to discuss: the recent Justice Department investigation into media leaks.

“They’re doing some scary things in our country right now,” Mr. Beck told the crowd. “They were started by Republicans and they’re being furthered by the Democrats.”

…

“The predominant conservative talk on the issue is about your rights being challenged,” said David Webb, host of “The David Webb Show” on Sirius XM’s Patriot channel, which is devoted to conservative talk. “Regardless of your party, you should have the ability to challenge your government without being named as a co-conspirator,” he added.

Left, right radio fume at NSA report

David Webb — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:33:18 +0000

By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 6/6/13 5:50 PM EDT

Radio talkers who were gathered at an industry conference Thursday blasted the National Security Agency’s surveillance program collecting the records of phone calls made by millions of Americans as “disturbing” and “an outrage.”

The disclosure Wednesday, reported by The Guardian, of a highly classified NSA program to obtain records of telephone calls on the Verizon network sparked discussion and concern from many of the radio stars at the Talkers New York 2013 conference.

…

And Sirius XM’s David Webb, who noted he is a Verizon subscriber, said it’s important for radio hosts to bring this issue to the attention of their listeners. The conservative talker added, however, that he and his colleagues can’t just throw it out as red meat to rile up the base. In the end, citizens need to look at the Obama administration and ask whether they can trust the government in light of this surveillance program and the Department of Justice’s seizure of phone records from The Associated Press and tracking of the emails and movements of Fox News’s James Rosen, Webb said.

Left, right radio hosts focus on DOJ

David Webb — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:18:45 +0000

By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 6/5/13 5:56 AM EDT

The First Amendment controversies currently roiling Washington will get major air time at a gathering on Thursday of some of the major radio personalities from across the political spectrum.

A group of about 500 radio broadcasters — including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Thom Hartmann, Michael Smerconish and Andrea Tantaros, to name a few — will spend the Talkers New York 2013 conference debating what’s next for their business — and how to do their jobs in light of the Department of Justice’s recently revealed actions targeting journalists. Several hosts told POLITICO they expect the DOJ to be the hottest topic at this year’s annual conference for those in the talk radio business.

…

And Sirius XM’s David Webb, who will speak to attendees about how to manage a broadcasting career, says he also expects a lot of conversations with his colleagues to revolve around the DOJ and what the department’s actions mean for their profession.

“On the political side, you’ll hear a lot about the AP, about journalists and defending the First Amendment right, which we practice on a daily basis,” said Webb, who hosts a daily call-in conservative show. “And we do that on behalf of not just our listeners, but all Americans, because this is our right, it’s our First Amendment.”

House Ways and Means to Hold Hearing with IRS Victims Next Week

David Webb — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:05:58 +0000

by Elizabeth Sheld | 29 May 2013, 3:21 PM PDT

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the committee will hold a hearing featuring the victims of the IRS’s ideological profiling. The hearing will take place on June 4th at 10am.

Syria fighting rages, more chemical attacks reported

David Webb — Mon, 27 May 2013 23:37:27 +0000

By Erika Solomon | BEIRUT | Mon May 27, 2013 6:23pm EDT

(Reuters) – Heavy fighting raged around the strategic Syrian border town of Qusair and the capital Damascus on Monday and further reports surfaced of chemical weapons attacks by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on rebel areas.

Intensified government offensives are widely seen as a bid to strengthen Assad’s position before a peace conference proposed by the United States and Russia for next month.

In Brussels, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was pushing his European Union colleagues to allow member states to arm the rebels, said the expiry of existing EU sanctions this week meant countries could now choose to send weapons to opposition fighters if they wanted to.

America’s oldest veteran to spend quiet Memorial Day at Texas home

David Webb — Sun, 26 May 2013 15:24:02 +0000

By Joshua Rhett Miller | Published May 26, 2013 | FoxNews.com

For his 107th Memorial Day, Richard Arvine Overton, who saw many of his fellow soldiers fall in the line of duty in World War II and even more die over the following decades, is planning a quiet day at the Texas home he built after returning home from World War II.

He wouldn’t want it any other way.

Overton, who is believed to be the nation’s oldest veteran, told FoxNews.com he’ll likely spend the day on the porch of his East Austin home with a cigar nestled in his right hand, perhaps with a cup of whiskey-stiffened coffee nearby.

Are Treasury and the Fed at Odds Over Big Banks?

David Webb — Sat, 25 May 2013 22:14:39 +0000

Treasury Secretary Lew keeps hands off as Wall Street giants grow larger.

By Michael Hirsh | Updated: May 24, 2013 | 9:37 p.m.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has been cagey about whether he thinks Wall Street’s giant banks are getting dangerously large and out-of-control once again, as many experts believe. But at a hearing on Capitol Hill this week, Lew gave the clearest indication yet that he’s not especially worried and is going to take the light-fingered approach of his predecessor, Tim Geithner—and that he doesn’t appear to agree with recent Federal Reserve proposals to correct the “too big to fail” problem.

Asked at a Senate Banking Committee hearing by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whether Treasury is “still opposed to capping the size of banks,” Lew responded that he did not see a need for additional action beyond implementing the Dodd-Frank regulatory law, which attempts to set orderly procedures for the liquidation of even the largest banks if they get into trouble. “This is not the time to be enacting big changes to Dodd-Frank or to the regulatory system,” Lew said. After Dodd-Frank is implemented, he said, he’ll “take stock.”

That would seem to put Lew at odds with Federal Reserve Governor Dan Tarullo, who in recent months has floated a number of proposals to further shrink the banks, a problem that he says “seems to inexorably call for a set of complementary policy measures” to Dodd-Frank. In a series of speeches, Tarullo has proposed limiting the expansion of big banks by restricting the funding they get from sources other than traditional deposits, and adding liquidity and capital requirements that will make it more expensive and burdensome to be too big.