Friday roundup

A few minutes ago, I posted on Facebook: "There are only three candidates for president left who aren't an embarrassment to the country, and only two of them have a sliver of hope of getting their party's nomination. Its been a little dismaying to have to field the question, "Which three?"

I'll tell you that my list of three does not include John Kasich, who becomes more of an embarrassment by the day. We knew about his expansion of Medicaid, his justification for it in the form of what he'd get asked about at the pearly gates, and his support for illegal-alien amnesty. Now, he offers as a response to a question about the government forcing Christian providers of wedding services to accept homosexual customers: "Bake a cupcake and move on."

And Chris Christie is dead to me.

And speaking of really stupid responses to questions, check out how Secretary Global-Test answered a question at a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday:

Appearing before the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Kerry made the statement while testifying about the State Department’s budget request for the fiscal year 2017.

During the hearing, Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) asked Kerry for his thoughts on Ibrahim al Qosi, the former Guantanamo detainee who is now a prominent al Qaeda leader, and had staffers hold up a picture of the terrorist for Kerry to see.

“Let me just ask one question,” Kirk said to Kerry. “I want to show you a picture of Ibrahim al Qosi, who was recently released by the administration to the Sudanese, and he appeared on some al Qaeda videos recruiting people for AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula].”

Kirk went on to say, “Now that he’s out, I would hope we would end the policy of issuing terrorists to terrorist nations, and where they can get out.”

Sudan, where al Qosi was released, has a long history of terrorist activity with Sunni jihadist groups and individuals like al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as well as with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Sudanese government has also been internationally accused of committing genocide in Darfur.

Kerry paused for a moment before saying to Kirk, “Well, Senator, he’s not supposed to be doing that. And there are consequences for that, and there will be. But apart from that, the fact is that we’ve got people who’ve been held without charges for 13 years, 14 years in some cases. That’s not American, that’s not how we operate.”

Charles C. W. Cooke at NRO's Corner says we must not accept the too-little-too-late narrative one sees in various places today with regard to how Ted and Marco delivered solid blows agains Squirrel-Hair last night.

A tried and true jihad brand is still very much with us:

n 2016 . . . a resurgent al Qaeda is emerging from the shadows. While ISIS has been soaking up headlines, its older sibling has been launching attacks and grabbing territory too, and U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News they are increasingly concerned the older terror group is poised to build on its achievements. 

"Al Qaeda affiliates are positioned to make gains in 2016," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, warned the House Intelligence Committee Thursday. 

Because of those far-flung affiliates, al Qaeda "remains a serious threat to U.S. interests worldwide," Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress recently.

Charles Krauthammer invites us to take in the sum total of very bad developments occurring on the world stage in this seventh year of the Most Equal Comrade's "foreign policy": the missiles and jets China has installed on that island in the South China Sea, Syria, Ukraine, and Russia's sale of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries to Iran, in blatant violation of UN Security Council prohibitions. and the increasing presence of ISIS in Africa. He could have also mentioned what North Korea has been up to so far this year.