The U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year as government stimulus helped lift consumer spending and home building, fueling an unexpectedly strong advance.

Signaling the end of the worst recession in 70 years, the Commerce Department on Thursday said the economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September period, snapping four down quarters with its fastest growth pace since the third quarter of 2007 and exceeding forecasts for a 3.3 percent rate.

The good new is that the U.S. economy has stopped shrinking, the bad news is that all the growth was driven by emergency government programs like Cash for Clunkers and the $8000.00 first time home buyer tax credit. As Reuters Political Risk bloger James Pethokoukis points out when you strip out Cash for Clunkers 3rd quarter GDP was just 1.6 percent. If you  also strip out the slowing inventory cuts GDP was just 0.6 percent.

The bottom line is this, when you add in the sharp drop in new home sales and the barely there dip in first time jobless claims last week, the economy may be improving but has yet to turn the corner in any meaningful way. These numbers may be enough to make the Obama Administration look good for the next three months, but if they don’t stop these gimmicky programs and do something to spur real investment and create sustainable long term growth we’re headed for a double dip recession that they won’t be able to blame on the Bush Administration.

Related

• Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands – Associated Press
• GDP Up, Dollar Down, Troubles Remain – Larry Kudlow
  

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s emergency testimony to Congress about an illegal assassination program has set off a crisis at the spy agency. The Daily Beast’s Joseph Finder exclusively reports that:

• The secret assassination ‘program’ wasn’t much more than a PowerPoint presentation, a task force and a collection of schemes—it never got off the ground
• Panetta’s three immediate predecessors—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—have spoken to him, and that he now sees that no laws were broken.
• Panetta has frantically tried to rectify his gaffe, but now faces increased Congressional oversight.

CIA Director Leon Panetta stunned Washington earlier this summer by disclosing, in an emergency closed-door briefing to Congress, that for the last eight years, the agency he now runs illegally concealed a secret terrorist-assassination program. The reaction was predictably explosive. The House intelligence-oversight committee launched a major investigation. Here was official confirmation, from the very top, that the CIA in the Bush years had been flagrantly and systematically violating the National Security Act of 1947.

But according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up.

The only question is whether Panetta is an idiot who is unqualified to lead the CIA or a political hack who fabricated a secret, illegal spy program to cover Speaker Pelosi’s backside.

H/T: Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ.

Related

• Panetta Revealed – Commentary

As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring Congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren’t potentially so damaging for national security.

The latest episode comes courtesy of Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In a letter leaked to the press on Wednesday, he claims the agency “misled” Congress about its activities after 9/11. Recall that this all started when Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about aggressive interrogations during her time on Intelligence earlier this decade. CIA Director Leon Panetta in May said the agency didn’t, as policy or practice, “mislead Congress.” Briefing notes from the time showed Mrs. Pelosi was told and didn’t object to waterboarding. The CIA this week felt compelled to issue another denial in response to the Reyes letter.

Mr. Panetta must feel burned. After the Pelosi blow-up, he has tried to repair relations with his own party’s Congressional leaders, and last month he reached out to the Intelligence Committee. On June 24, in a classified hearing, Mr. Panetta produced so-called new information about CIA counterterrorism efforts in the months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We’re told that he informed the Members that the agency had considered, then abandoned, a major covert antiterror program. (Our sources wouldn’t say what it was.) Bush-era CIA officials didn’t tell Congress because it never got off the ground. But this is the “at least one case” Mr. Reyes claims his committee was “lied to” about in the Bush years.

Huh??? What??? Let me see if I understand this right… After the events of 9-11 the CIA considered, then abandoned, a major covert anti-terror program and because they never told Congress they had considered a program that they never actually implemented they’re now  branded as liars???

I’d be rolling on the floor laughing at the sheer idiocy of this if wasn’t so serious… Congressional Democrats are once again undermining national security for political gain. One has to wonder what effect all this political finger pointing is having on the moral of rank and file CIA employees who are doing humanly possible to prevent future attacks on this country.

Related

• CIA chief urged to ‘correct’ record – Washington Times

The last time the CIA and Nancy Pelosi were in the news together, the House Speaker was accusing the agency of lying about its briefings to Congress on the interrogation of al Qaeda detainees. This week, the Speaker’s fellow Democrats are set to block public disclosure of what Ms. Pelosi was really told and when.

Democrats recently marked up the 2010 intelligence bill, and Republican Pete Hoekstra offered an amendment in committee to require the CIA to make public an unclassified version of its records on Congressional briefings. It also would have required the CIA to disclose the information gleaned from those interrogations.

Democrats have spent years demanding a “truth commission” into interrogations, so you’d think such public disclosure would be welcome. Ah, that was when a different guy was in the White House and before Mrs. Pelosi had made her own veracity an issue. Suddenly, she’s all for secrecy. And sure enough, Intelligence Committee Democrats lined up to protect their leader and defeated the Hoekstra amendment on a party line vote. This follows Democratic rejection of a resolution by Utah Republican Rob Bishop to initiate a bipartisan investigation of Mrs. Pelosi’s accusation.

I’d laugh but this isn’t funny. Democrats aren’t interested in the truth or giving we the people access to the facts on interrogations, they’re interested solely in creating controversy for political gain. The longer  they can continue to tar and feather the Bush Administration over interrogations, the economy and anything else they can think of… the longer they can avoid having to accept responsibility for their own actions or inaction’s over the last eight years.

An annual report issued by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) shows that the U.S. government imposed $1.17 trillion in new regulatory costs in 2008. That almost equals the $1.2 trillion generated by individual income taxes, and amounts to $3,849 for every American citizen.

According the 2009 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, the government issued 3,830 new rules last year, and The Federal Register, where such rules are listed, ballooned to a record 79,435 pages.

“The costs of federal regulations too often exceed the benefits, yet these regulations receive little official scrutiny from Congress,” said CEI Vice President Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., who wrote the report.

“The U.S. economy lost value in 2008 for the first time since 1990,” Crews said. “Meanwhile, our federal government imposed a $1.17 trillion ‘hidden tax’ on Americans beyond the $3 trillion officially budgeted” through the regulations.

In addition to noting the number and scope of the regulations, the report also detailed their economic effects by noting that federal regulations gobbled up roughly 10 percent of the country’s economic output last year.

I linked to this a while ago but it’s worth linking to again… In short every presidential administration and every Congress since Ronald Reagan left office has grown government.

When Richard Nixon left office the Federal Register contained just over 29,000 pages. It ballooned to roughly 58,000 pages under Ford, and to nearly 73,000  pages under Carter. Under Ronald Reagan it shrank to roughly 55,000 pages, since then it has grown steadily to over 79,000 pages at the end George W. Bush’s term.

The said reality is those regulations represent a “stealth tax” on everything we do. Complying with federal environmental, health and safety, and economic regulations cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year… Costs that ultimately end up being passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services.

You can read the full report on Competitive Enterprise Institutes’s web site.

The Justice Department said it is nearing completion of an internal probe that is expected to recommend professional sanctions but no criminal prosecution for former department lawyers who authorized harsh Central Intelligence Agency interrogations.

John Yoo and Jay Bybee, Justice Department lawyers in the Bush administration who produced the memos, both responded to a draft version of the department’s report by a Monday deadline.

In a letter to two Democratic senators who have been following the probe — Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Durbin of Illinois — the Justice Department said its Office of Professional Responsibility is examining the lawyers’ responses and will make any necessary revisions before seeking a final review from Attorney General Eric Holder.

I’m no fan of the of the interrogation tactics used but I’m not going to sit here with benefit of hindsight and second guess the decisions of people who had to make difficult choices in the shadows of the September 11th attacks.

Wars are ugly business that all to often call for good men to do horrible things… The unpleasant reality is that, if you aren’t willing do those horrible things in war, you will loose to those who are. It’s sad and scary thing that so many of our elected leaders can’t or won’t accept this reality.

Count me among those who agree with Gregory Kane:

Here’s why I don’t care that al-Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded after Sept. 11, 2001: I remember where I was the day before.

Every American who recalls that day can probably remember where he or she was when those jets hit the World Trade Center. I do too. But I remember where I was on Sept. 10, 2001, at about the same time.

In the lowest level of the World Trade Center, getting off a commuter train from Jersey City, N.J. I had an appointment in midtown-Manhattan and had to take a subway train from the WTC. Had I done that a day later, I’d have arrived at the WTC at just about the time the first or second jet hit.

But what if I had arrived maybe 15 minutes earlier and had some time to kill? What if I’d decided I wanted to go to the top of the WTC and take in the view?

Then I’d have been one of those people who were trapped above the inferno that raged below them, terrified, wondering how or if we could ever escape. I’d have experienced the terror they felt as the WTC Twin Towers collapsed beneath them and sent them to their horrible deaths.

And you sure as heck wouldn’t be reading this column. Yes, I came that close to perhaps being among the WTC casualties of Sept. 11.

So when President Obama declassified Justice Department memos that revealed the waterboarding of Mohammed and Zubaydah, perhaps you can forgive me if the knowledge didn’t exactly leave me prostrate with grief. Nor am I feeling the arguments of those who claim how torture violates our principles and destroys our values.

You know what… Don’t get mad, get even.

(H/T : Melissa Clouthier via Red State.)

Related

• Presidents Don’t Prosecute Their Predecessors, David Shribman, Real Clear Politics
• Dodd: We prosecuted the Nazis so let’s prosecute Bush, Hot Air

President Barack Obama has reinvigorated the critics of George W. Bush’s antiterror policies by opening the door to prosecuting or sanctioning those who crafted interrogation policy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. These critics — including the president — are laboring under numerous misconceptions. Many of them have no experience with or understanding of military or CIA interrogation, the purpose of which is to gain actionable intelligence to safeguard our country. The recently released memos by lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel were written to assist interrogators in that critical mission. The memos cannot be fairly evaluated without that mission in mind.

Military and CIA interrogators are trained to use creative means of deception, and to play on detainee emotions and fears. This can be a nasty business. People unfamiliar with it, therefore, might even view a perfectly legitimate interrogation of a prisoner of war that is in full compliance with the Geneva Conventions as abhorrent by its very nature.

But military interrogation is not akin to a friendly chat across a conference table — nor is it designed to gather evidence in a criminal trial, as an FBI interview might be. There is a fundamental distinction between law enforcement and military interrogations that we ignore at our peril.

Second-guessers can also fail to appreciate the increased importance of interrogation (and human intelligence in general) in the post 9/11 world. We face an enemy that wears no uniform, blends in with civilian populations, and operates in the shadows. This has made eliciting information from captured terrorists vital to the effort of finding other terrorists. As interrogation has become more important, drawing out useful information has become more difficult — because hardened terrorists are often trained to resist traditional U.S. interrogation methods.

I suspect by now Barack Obama regrets opening the can worms opened by the release of the EIT memos, it has turned into a veritable can of snakes and nothing good can come from it.

Related

• 58% Say Release of CIA Memos Endangers National Security – Rasmussen Reports
• Ted Olson: “Torture” probes will never end – Byron York, Washington Examiner
• Security Before Politics – Porter J. Goss, Washington Post
• Past, President and Future – Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama’s victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

Pres. Obama would do well to back-off of the dangerous precedent he set on Tuesday, he has already banned the use of the interrogation techniques in question and declared the CIA personnel who used them will not be charged. Investigating and attempting to criminalize the actions of Bush administration lawyers who advised the CIA will only undermine the ability of this president and his successors to obtain candid advice, as lawyers fear they may in turn by scapegoated by a future administration.

Realted

• Congress Knew About the Interrogations – Wall Street Journal
• Torture Cases Would Face Legal Hurdles- Wall Street Journal
• Top legislators knew of interrogations – Washington Times
• Congress Debates Fresh Investigation Of Interrogations – Washington Post

Senate Republicans rightly stopped the auto industry bail last night and today the Bush Administration decides to use TARP funds to throw a life line to GM and Chrysler.

From FoxBusiness:

Despite the abrupt death last night of bailout legislation in Congress, it seems the Big Three car makers will still get billions of dollars in rescue funds from Washington.

The Treasury Department said Friday it will provide an unspecified amount of money to the cash-strapped industry, Fox Business Senior Washington correspondent Peter Barnes has learned from a source close to the discussions. It was not immediately clear from which funding source Treasury would get the money.

Still, industry experts are deeply skeptical that emergency cash is the answer to the myriad ills plaguing the industry.

“They’ll get the money, but it’s a very dangerous proposition. It’s a very complicated mess,” said David Magee, author of How Toyota Became #1.

In the wake of the failure of a $14 billion bailout bill in the Senate Thursday night, the Treasury Department said Friday it was prepared to step in and prevent a collapse until Congress takes up the issue again. Read the rest…

It’s a sad reality but  Billions in taxpayer dollars aren’t going to save the Big 3… They need to drastically restructure, bankruptcy is the only way for them get that done in the time frame required.

Update: Larry Kudlow posting at the Corner says there’s no deal yet:

Media reports and Wall Street investors are now assuming the Treasury will put up $15 billion in TARP money to keep the Detroit carmakers out of bankruptcy. But my sources tell me that the TARP deal is not done — not by a long shot.

At a minimum, it’s going to take the Treasury several days to walk through the financial numbers and gather all the facts before it takes any action. The Treasury wants to see the cash-flow data and get to the truth about GM and Chrysler. (Ford doesn’t need the money.) And nothing will happen until these numbers are properly crunched. And the Treasury may well want to arrange for a built-in monitor — something that might even look like a car tsar — if any TARP money is dispersed.

Senate sources tell me that any TARP-money allocation might include the very same conditions proposed by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker in legislation that broke down in a marathon session in the Senate list night.

So folks shouldn’t count their TARP eggs before they’re hatched. And nothing is expected to be announced today.

Assuming Kudlow is right this is good news.