This Is How Tyrants Think and Operate Update, from Andy McCarthy at the Corner:

You just can’t make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law. …. (On December 17) for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol’s property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

McCarthy does not exaggerate. The EO’s exact wording is (bold is mine):

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

President Reagan’s original EO text, modified with Obama’s new deletions, now reads as follows (bold is mine):

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), it is hereby ordered that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in which the United States participates pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 263a, is hereby designated as a public international organization entitled to enjoy the privileges, exemptions and immunities conferred by the International Organizations Immunities Act; except those provided by Section 2(c), the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act. This designation is not intended to abridge in any respect the privileges, exemptions or immunities which such organization may have acquired or may acquire by international agreement or by Congressional action.

So Obama got rid of ALL of Reagan’s exceptions, making INTERPOL a fully privileged entity (i.e., “appropriate” to Obama means “full”). An almost up-to-date list of “Public International Organizations Entitled To Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities” is here.

What compelling, undisclosed, undiscussed, undebated, unexplained need motivated this action?

A key point, followed by a conclusion, at Threatswatch:

Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece. “Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.” In light of what we know and can observe, it is our logical conclusion that President Obama’s Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans’ 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution and beyond the legal reach of our own top law enforcement is a precursor to more damaging moves.

Unless someone has a defensible alternative conclusion, I would say that’s the default. Even if the conclusion is wrong, the move itself is damaging enough.

Update, December 26: At Patriot Room — “INTERPOL the only police authority entity exempt from S&S (search and seizure) under 1945 Act”

Update 2, December 26: From the “imagine that” Dept. —

Though the expression “modern day SS” sounds like a hyperbolic metaphor, an examination of Interpol’s roots shows that it is, in fact, more literally true than that. I was in Europe in 1973 when an expose was published, revealing that many, if not all, of the presidents of Interpol from the late 1930s or early ’40s until at least 1972 were Nazi Gestapo and SS officers. Reinhard (”The Hangman”), Heydrich (also head of Nazi SS Intelligence Service) and Gestapo chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner. By 1942 Interpol was consolidated with the Nazi Central Police, run by the Gestapo. As the Nazis invaded cities throughout Europe, police files from each were seized and evidently integrated into Interpol’s files. In 1972 the sitting Interpol President was Paul Dickopf, former Nazi SS officer (SS #337259). The source on this? The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Simon Wiesenthal is pretty much the most famous of the post-war Nazi hunters, having impressively thorough files. …. Interpol are not the good guys. Nothing good can come from giving them any domain at all in our country.

__________________________________________________________

Polling news at Rasmussen (HT Gateway Pundit):

Obama’s strong approval vs. strong disapproval is 25% v. 46%, yielding a “Presidential Approval Index” of -21%, his worst yet.

Bush 43′s strong disapproval in early January, just before he left office, was 43%.

“For the second straight day, the update shows the highest level of Strong Disapproval yet recorded for this President. That negative rating had never topped 42% before yesterday. However, it has risen dramatically since the Senate found 60 votes to move forward with the proposed health care reform legislation.”

__________________________________________________________

More Globaloney refutation (HT Roger Simon), with a troubling implication (internal links added by me) –

Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth’s ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper (PDF). …. “My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century,” (University of Waterloo professor of physics and astronomy Qing-Bin) Lu said. “Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming.” His conclusions are based on observations that from 1950 up to now, the climate in the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO2 impact. “Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases, has decreased around 2000,” Lu said. “Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate.” In his research, Lu discovers that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002. The cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years, according to his new research observations.

Lu’s Selected Publications (31 listed) and Conference Abstracts (22 listed) page is here.

Here’s the troubling implication:

CFCs were widely used for a while.

The science supported the idea that CFCs were depleting the ozone layer ( Update: See Comment 2 below; even that’s not necessarily clear).

See Comment 2 below; even that’s not necessarily clear). Despite initial industry objections, industry came around, and CFCs were banned.

The foundation of the ability to ban them was based on the supposed credibility of the science.

The man-made/anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmists spent up to two decades creating bogus, not-credible “science,” covering their dishonest tracks, and attempting to intimidate and silence critics in support of what became a political cause (or was one all along) instead of a legitimate scientific pursuit. (Added at 7:45 p.m.) They have NO credibility. Climategate’s body of evidence has destroyed it. It can’t be recovered, at least by the crew that has been involved up to now.

They have NO credibility. Climategate’s body of evidence has destroyed it. It can’t be recovered, at least by the crew that has been involved up to now. When the next valid scientific claim such as the danger of CFCs requiring change in how things are made or done comes along, the skepticism will likely be higher. That’s because the fundamentally dishonest, character-assassinating AGW alarmists — assisted by others who for decades have questioned the validity of any scientific findings solely on the basis that they don’t like the people who funded the work — have seriously poisoned the well of presumptive scientific credibility.

Too-slow reaction to valid concerns may cause harm that otherwise would not have occurred.

As brilliant as Phelim McAleer’s globaloney-debunking work has been, I believe his film’s title (“Not Evil Just Wrong“) understates the globalarmists’ treacherous mind-set and its potentially harmful long-term consequences.