[guest post by Dana]

The AP remains confused about the Chattanooga shooter:

Bits and pieces have emerged over the past few days about Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s troubled life. But two significant pieces of the puzzle are missing: Why did he ambush two military sites, killing four Marines and a sailor? And was he propelled to do so by his own demons or at the direction of someone else?

Because a middle-class “clean-cut high school wrestler who graduated from college with an engineering degree and regularly attended a local mosque” couldn’t possibly be anything but depressed.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Outrageous:

Adm. Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Northern Command, which oversees security for military facilities in America, issued a directive Sunday night that calls on centers nationwide to implement modest new security measures while the Defense Department considers more substantive steps to address threats to the facilities, officials said.

The steps don’t authorize recruiters to carry weapons in their centers, something that would require higher-level action. Instead, they direct hundreds of recruiting centers, reserve centers and ROTC facilities to increase surveillance and take basic steps such as closing blinds at the offices, officials said.

They might as well have shouted from the rooftops that our troops are sitting ducks. Oh. Wait.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

In spite of the concerns and objections made by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, President Obama stepped on and over an increasingly irrelevant Congress and presented the Iran deal before the U.N. for a vote. Today, the U.N. gave its approval:

The U.N. Security Council endorsed the landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers and adopted a series of measures leading to the end of U.N. sanctions that have hurt the Iranian economy.

The U.S.-drafted resolution was approved in a unanimous vote also provides a mechanism for U.N. sanctions to “snap back” in place if Iran fails to meet its obligations.

As explained:

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk explained that, while Monday’s vote does make the Iran nuclear deal international law, full implementation of the measures will be delayed for 90 days, to allow for the U.S. Congress’ consideration as promised by the Obama administration.

Falk explained that while Congress cannot block the implementation of the deal, if the legislative body votes against it and has enough votes to override a promised veto from President Obama, it could cause problems.

A U.S. official told CBS News that American law doesn’t “trump” U.N. resolutions, but if Congress were to vote against the measure — and garner enough votes to override a presidential veto — lawmakers could stop U.S. sanctions being lifted, which could prompt Iran to declare the U.S. as non-compliant with the terms of the deal and to back out.

If U.S. lawmakers were to decide after Monday’s vote that they wanted changes to the terms of the agreement, it would essentially be too late, because it would require the Security Council to propose a new resolution — and there would likely be little appetite for such deliberations among the other negotiating partners.

The critical impact of this vote cannot be overstated. Earlier this year Andrew McCarthy warned of what would happen after Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spilled the beans of the deal:

According to Zarif, the deal under negotiation “will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the U.S., but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” He hoped it would “enrich the knowledge” of the 47 senators [whos signed the Cotton Letter] to learn that “according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the agreement.” To do so would be “a material breach of U.S. obligations,” rendering America a global outlaw….

Clearly, Obama and the mullahs figure they can run the following stunt: We do not need another treaty approved by Congress because the United States has already ratified the U.N. charter and thus agreed to honor Security Council resolutions. We do not need new statutes because the Congress, in enacting Iran-sanctions legislation, explicitly gave the president the power to waive those sanctions. All we need is to have the Security Council issue a resolution that codifies Congress’s existing sanctions laws with Obama’s waiver. Other countries involved in the negotiations — including Germany, Russia, and China, which have increasingly lucrative trade with Iran — will then very publicly rely on the completed deal. The U.N. and its army of transnational-progressive bureaucrats and lawyers will deduce from this reliance a level of global consensus that incorporates the agreement into the hocus-pocus corpus of customary law. Maybe they’ll even get Justice Ginsburg to cite it glowingly in a Supreme Court ruling. Voila, we have a binding agreement — without any congressional input — that the United States is powerless to alter under international law.

The U.S. Constitution could not be reached for comment.

–Dana