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Published December 25, 2014

Dec. 25, 2014: President Barack Obama, with first lady Michelle Obama, points toward a child in the audience as he greets troops and their families on Christmas Day.(AP)

President Obama paid tribute to the military saying the sacrifices of the American troops have allowed for a more peaceful, prosperous world to come out of the ashes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Obama marked the end of Afghan combat at a Marine Corps base in Hawaii Christmas Day. Obama still remarked about the challenges American troops face in hotspots such as Iraq and West Africa.

"Because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country," Obama said to applause from Marines and their families. "We are safer. It's not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again."

The US is preparing to pull most of its combat troops out of Afghanistan by years end after invading the country to strike against Al Qaeda as retribution for the horror of Sept. 11. The U.S. and NATO plan to leave 13,500 troops in Afghanistan for training and battlefield support.

The U.S. is shifting to a supporting role after the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Civilian casualties this year are on track to hit 10,000, and some 5,000 Afghan forces were also killed in 2014, a figure that has escalated as the country took on a greater role in its own security. Insurgents have seized territory across the country, raising fears that Islamic militants will successfully exploit the security vacuum formed as the U.S. pulls out.

Roughly 2,200 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan over the last 13 years in a war that cost the U.S. $1 trillion, plus another $100 billion for reconstruction. A celebratory cheer of "hooah" rang out from the hundreds of troops here when Obama affirmed that the combat mission was finally ending.

"We still have some very difficult missions around the world including in Iraq," Obama said. But, he added, "the world is better, it's safer, it's more peaceful, it's more prosperous and our homeland protected because of you."

Obamas visit to the Marines came in the middle of his holiday trip in Hawaii after a tumultuous year in Washington.

Go here to see the original:
Obama touts end of combat mission in Afghanistan

By Brian Hughes

Washington Examiner

President Obama pledged that Afghanistan will no longer be a source of terrorist attacks again, a week before the U.S. is set to end its combat mission in the Middle Eastern nation.

Weve been in continuous war now for over 13 years. Next week we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan, Obama told troops in Hawaii late Thursday, celebrating Christmas.

Because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country, he said. "We are safer. Its not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again.

Though the American combat mission in Afghanistan is nearly completed, at least some troops are scheduled to stay in the nation until the end of 2016.

Read the original:
Obama: Afghanistan won't be source of terrorist attacks again

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In a thoughtful recent post, conservative political theorist Peter Lawler comments on my review of Damon Roots new book on the conservative-libertarian debate over judicial review. Lawler argues that libertarians overemphasize the role of judicial review protecting individual rights against state infringement, that the Founders assigned a much lesser role to judicial review, and that many of the rights libertarians (and liberals) seek to protect through judicial review cannot be squared with originalism. There are some problems with his analysis on all three issues.

I. The role of Judicial Review in Protecting Individual Rights

On the question of the effectiveness of judicial review, few serious libertarian commentators imagine that the judicial intervention alone is enough to protect the individual rights. Rather, they recognize that the road to victory for constitutional reform movements usually involves a combination of litigation and conventional political action. That has been a successful winning formula for the civil rights movement, womens rights advocates, gun rights supporters, and most recently same-sex marriage advocates. It has also underpinned the recent progress made by property rights advocates. The Institute for Justices efforts to revive public use constraints on eminent domain has involved just such a combination. While it has not so far achieved anything like complete victory, it has managed to secure important gains.

As evidence against the utility of judicial intervention, Lawler claims that the Courts record on race has generally been terrible and cites this as proof that it is ridiculous to rely all that much on the Court to protect our rights. The Courts record on racial discrimination has indeed often been poor relative to the ideal outcome. But the more relevant question is how good its record has been relative to the political branches of government. The case for strong judicial review is not that the courts are particularly good, but that, in protecting some types of important rights, they routinely do better than the available alternatives. By that standard, the Courts record on racial issues since the enactment of the Reconstruction Amendments is actually far better than many imagine. During the Jim Crow era, for example, the Court issued a number of important decisions striking down forms of racial discrimination that had prevailed in the political process. For example, it invalidated peonage laws and laws mandating residential segregation.

Although its record during that period was far from perfect, it was, overall, much better than that of Congress, the presidency, and many state legislatures. More recently, courts have been more willing than legislators to curtail racial preferences in government contracting and college admissions. Supporters of affirmative action understandably view these decisions as a negative, but conservative opponents including Lawler surely do not.

II. Originalism, the Founders, and the Role of the Judiciary.

Lawler doubts that judicial review was ever meant to be much more than an auxiliary precaution that would be rarely used, citing the Federalist Papers in support. While the Founders probably did not intend judicial review to be the primary method for protecting individual rights, they did emphasize its importance as a tool for enforcing constitutional limitations on government power. As Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist 78:

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

[emphasis added].

In addition judicial review may have a greater role to play in protecting rights today, than might have been supposed in the 1780s. In a world where the size and scope of government is vastly greater than it was 225 years ago, it is far more difficult for voters with limited knowledge and attention spans to police all the many different possible ways in which government threatens liberty.

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Volokh Conspiracy: Libertarianism, conservatism, and judicial review