A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Democrats Take Control on Hill “Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was elected America's first female speaker of the House yesterday in a raucous, bipartisan celebration of a historic breakthrough, and hours later she presided over passage of the broadest ethics and lobbying revision since the Watergate era.” (READ MORE)
Bush Making Changes in His Iraq Team “President Bush is overhauling his top diplomatic and military team in Iraq, as the White House scrambles to complete its new war policy package in time for the president to unveil it in a speech to the nation next week, officials said.” (READ MORE)
Bush Warned About Mail-Opening Authority “President Bush signed a little-noticed statement last month asserting the authority to open U.S. mail without judicial warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases, prompting warnings yesterday from Democrats and privacy advocates that the administration is attempting to circumvent legal...” (READ MORE)
Medical teams saving more troops “The killed-in-action rate in the Iraq-Afghanistan wars is half what it was in World War II and a third less than Vietnam and Desert Storm, according to internal Pentagon documents that say battlefield medical teams are doing a better job of stabilizing the wounded and getting them to doctors.” (READ MORE)
U.S. ships hunt for al Qaeda off Somalia “U.S. Navy warships yesterday stepped up patrols off Somalia, boarding fishing boats and oil tankers to search for al Qaeda agents who fled after their Islamist allies were chased into hiding.” (READ MORE)
Joyful Democrats salute Speaker Pelosi “House Democrats unanimously picked Nancy Pelosi yesterday to be their leader and the first female speaker of the House in U.S. history. ‘For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling,’ Mrs. Pelosi told a cheering House chamber yesterday.” (READ MORE)
News From the Front:
Bill Roggio writes Talibanistan Expands further into the NWFP “The Pakistani government's decision to negotiate with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in North and South Waziristan during 2006 has serious consequences for the internal security of Pakistan as well as the international community. Not only do the Taliban use North and South Waziristan to train and launch attacks into Afghanistan, but these bases are used to extend the Taliban's influence in Western Pakistan.” (READ MORE)
Dan Riehl writes US Attacked: National Guard Routed “How utterly disgusting. If this was a diversion, as one scenario suggests, we can only hope that something even more dangerous wasn't smuggled in. And if you need a better example of an alleged super power so hobbled by political correctness and weak political leadership that it can hardly protect itself, let alone wage a war - you may be waiting a long time for better than this.” (READ MORE)
Omar of Iraq the Model writes Secret? What secret!? “Where's the secret in this!? I mean really, with some good common sense and some humble analysis this would have never been a secret nor would it have taken years to figure out. I think this stands as one example of the state information people in the west have about the geopolitics of the middle east. I can feel that ethnic and sectarian lines are perceived to be concrete lines that no one in the middle east would think of crossing to achieve goals.” (READ MORE)
Acute Politics writes A Village Named Karma “The day started at 0630 with a wakeup call and a shivering gasp into the cold air. The heaters in the tents decided that last night was their night off. Brr. Now, the tent is heated by body warmth and the one remaining working heater. I laid curled in my bed for a few minutes, trying to will my body warm. Giving up on that idea, I slid quickly into silk weight thermals and my Nomex jumpsuit, and started getting ready for the mission.” (READ MORE)
Badger 6 writes Iron Gray Sky of Ramadi “I stepped out of the TOC on my way to the shower trailer and found myself shocked at the color of the sky. The sky was an iron gray, the sort of sky that portends looming disaster; the color of sky one sees before a real storm; the color of sky that blots out all direct sunlight.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Kobayashi Maru writes Misrepresenting "Misreprentation": Myth of the Greedy Oil Giants “Despite a temporary detour into free-market worship in many quarters during part of the 1980s and 1990s, an anti-corporate bias pervades the MSM. A virulently anti-corporate bias covers everything Hollywood touches. Together, they have skewed public conventional wisdom towards a view that's essentially Marxist.” (READ MORE)
Oliver North writing at Townhall.com writes More targets “Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, both recently returned from Iraq also support adding more American troops. Unfortunately, they are wrong.” (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg writing at Townhall.com writes The madness of crowds “There has always been something indecent about the revenge a mob takes on a tyrant once it is safe to do so.” (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh writing at Townhall.com writes It's the worldview, stupid “While I don't doubt that many liberals sincerely believe liberalism is "more Christian" than conservatism, they can't explain away the left's abiding discomfort with Christianity.” (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro writing at Townhall.com writes President still waves the conservative flag “George W. Bush approaches the last two years of his presidency bogged down in an unpopular war and drawing fire from his conservative base for enlarging the size of government.” (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico writes Congress and Iraq “One of the things I seldom do is agree with Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post, however today I'll have to say that the blind squirrel of WaPo commentators found a nut. In his latest column he laments the ‘first 100 hours’ legislation that is the hallmark of Nancy Pelosi, a bunch of feel good stuff to show how compassionate the Democrats are. As he noted, ‘Pelosi could toss in a couple of bills supporting motherhood and apple pie while she's at it.’” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit writes Mexican gunmen cross border, rout National Guard “Actually, I don’t know for sure that they were Mexican. All sorts of people steal across the Mexican border who aren’t native to that country. Just ask Mike McCaul. Would ‘the goddamned fence’ have helped here? It couldn’t have hurt.” (READ MORE)
Kim Priestap writing at Wizbang writes Islamist says Britain Should Integrate to Muslim Values “Safraz Manzoor writes in an editorial in the Guardian that Muslims shouldn't integrate into British values, but instead, Britain should integrate into Muslim values. As you can imagine, I disagree completely. I was completely put off by Sarfraz Manzoor's piece for a number of reasons. Take a look:” (READ MORE)
Wretchard writes Parthian Shot 2 “John Keegan has an article in the Telegraph describing plans to use a surge force of 50,000 to inflict damage on Iraqi militias and insurgents. Prior to large scale withdrawal. If Keegan's reportage on the plan is correct, then the "surge" will be the historical equivalent of the Linebacker aerial offensive in Vietnam; probably destined to be as tactically brilliant and as strategically pointless.” (READ MORE)
Blonde Sagacity writes The Anti-War Crowd “As (hopefully) evidenced by the fact that in two years and six months of writing this site I have never deleted a comment or blocked an IP address...I believe whole-heartedly in free speech even when it's speech that makes me cringe. That being said, the fringe left Anti-War crowd stirs a physical visceral reaction that actually makes me feel ill.” (READ MORE)
Rightwing Guy writes The Democratic Miscalculation “I am 100% confident that with the upcoming Congressional and Senatorial sessions and the fact that both houses now are in the hands of the Democrats that the American people will see why they voted the Republicans into office in the first place.”(READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped writes America's Intelligence Failures “Since the invasion of Iraq one of the most persistent memes has been that the Bush administration, primarily in the person Dick Cheney (whose physiognomy ideals suits him to the role), slanted or cooked the Intel to justify the ill advised invasion of Iraq, a nation which is viewed by those who support the meme as having presented no danger to the United States and having minimal involvement in international Islamic terror. This meme has persisted despite the 9/11 Commission report concluding there was, and is, no evidence for it:” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden writes Jamilblog “…My big question: If we were supposed to believe the AP when the AP said the MOI's Khalaf didn't know what he was talking about, why are we supposed to believe Khalaf now that the AP says he does know what he's talking about?” (READ MORE)
John Hinderaker of Power Line writes Daily News Misfires on Scoop “The cover of today's New York Daily News features a grinning President Bush and the headline: ‘I've got mail! And it's yours!’ The story by James Gordon Meek, touted as a ‘Daily News exclusive,’ is titled ‘W pushes envelope on U.S. spying’. It begins:” (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee writes Libs on Jamil “The overwhelming majority of liberal bloggers were dead silent from late November throughout the month of December, and into January in regards to the Jamil Hussein affair, with the rare exception of those who feverishly insisted upon misconstruing what conservative bloggers were attempting to discover about Husseins' dubious track record, and those who hoped these same bloggers would go to Baghdad unescorted and get gunned down.” (READ MORE)
Captain Ed writes The Predictable Problems Of The DNI “The resignation of John Negroponte has produced criticism of his stewardship of American intelligence as DNI from members of Congress that insisted on creating the position. The Los Angeles Times reports that Negroponte has wanted to leave the position for weeks due to the lack of authority over the component intelligence agencies, although that did not keep Negroponte from doing some empire-building as DNI:” (READ MORE)
Dafydd writes John Negroponte Demoted; Good News? “In an unexpected but I think good development today, President Bush announced that Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte will leave his position. He is widely expected to be replaced by VADM John Michael "Mike" McConnell, former Director of the National Security Agency... though that announcement has not yet been made, and the White House cautions it is not a done deal.” (READ MORE)
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