It looks like the brief power struggle at the highest ranks of the National Rifle Association is over — and Wayne LaPierre is the victor.
In a letter sent to NRA board members Thursday, LaPierre, the organization's chief executive, claimed the board's president, Oliver North — yes, the Oliver North of Iran-Contra Affair fame — was trying to extort him into resigning, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. LaPierre said North told him the NRA's longtime advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, would send a letter to the board through North that would be "bad" for LaPierre. The letter reportedly would contain "destructive allegations" made against LaPierre and the NRA, The Washington Post reports. LaPierre said he refused to comply with the threat.
North sent his own letter to the board in response, writing that his actions were "for the good of the NRA" and that he was forming a crisis committee to examine financial matters inside the organization, the Journal reports. But on Saturday, North announced that he would not serve a second term as board president, though he did maintain that the organization is dealing with a "clear" financial crisis.
The power struggle reportedly stemmed in part from a dispute between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen. The NRA sued the firm earlier this month, claiming Ackerman McQueen refused to provide records justifying its billings. North reportedly was hired by Ackerman McQueen last year to host an NRATV documentary program, which LaPierre said results in "millions of dollars annually" for North. Tim O'Donnell
This is a breaking news story and has been updated throughout.
The second and final presidential debate was supposed to have a section devoted to national security, and perhaps that's what a few unilluminating questions about North Korea and foreign election meddling were intended to be. Or perhaps, as I first assumed given the topical order, that section was cut for time. Either way, this bare minimum of attention to foreign policy is inexcusable for an examination of the two candidates running to be commander-in-chief in a country addicted to perpetual war.
Our Constitution assigns power to initiate military conflict to Congress, and Congress, as a matter of habit, does its best to abdicate that responsibility in favor of unaccountable executive war-making. The Constitution also gives the president authority to prosecute wars already underway. As it happens, we have several.
The war in Afghanistan is our nation's longest ever, now in its 19th year and long since lost to any sort of American "victory." It was given no substantive attention tonight, nor was it discussed in the first debate.
The war in Iraq was also not addressed. That failed regime change project has cost us about $2 trillion, created the power vacuum that led to the rise of the Islamic State, and has a civilian death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Too boring for a debate, perhaps?
Yemen, where the United States is enabling the world's worst humanitarian crisis, was ignored. So too recent (and in some cases ongoing) U.S. military interventions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, and more than two dozen locations in North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
These are literally matters of war and peace, life and death. They are also matters in which one of these men soon will have considerable discretion to leave or stay the course of two decades of inhumane and counterproductive foreign policy. That discretion requires interrogation. It didn't get it tonight. Bonnie Kristian