A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Tentative N. Korea deal struck “Negotiators early today announced a tentative agreement on steps to begin dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for a package of energy assistance and other incentives.” (READ MORE)
House initiates anti-war motion ‘House Democrats introduced a war resolution yesterday condemning President Bush's plan to send reinforcement troops to Iraq, but their anti-war supporters say it misses the point because it doesn't simply cut funding for the war.” (READ MORE)
Europe's Muslims find ally in U.S. “The State Department, concerned about a ‘nativist surge’ in Western Europe, has created a position to coordinate efforts to reach out to European Muslims and help them better integrate into society, a senior official said yesterday.” (READ MORE)
Democrats sound off on Bush nominees “Democrats controlling Congress have so far not denied President Bush any of his nominations, but they have used extensive hearings to score political points and send a signal to the administration they will play tough.” (READ MORE)
Spending reforms empower agencies to ignore earmarks “Members of Congress quietly have been calling federal agencies demanding their pet projects still be funded weeks after they swore off pork-barrel spending, the Bush administration says.” (READ MORE)
Tentative Nuclear Deal Struck With North Korea “Envoys from six nations reached a tentative agreement early Tuesday on the first steps toward North Korea's nuclear disarmament, a potential breakthrough in talks that have faltered repeatedly since 2003.” (READ MORE)
McCain, Romney Vying for Support Of Conservatives “As a former Iowa state Republican chairman, head of Iowa Right to Life and political director of Rep. Jim Nussle's losing gubernatorial campaign, Marlys Popma is an experienced political operative as well as an evangelical Christian.” (READ MORE)
Bombs Kill 70 In Iraqi Capital “In Najaf on Monday, thousands of Shiite Muslim worshipers marched and chanted for peace, marking the one-year anniversary of the destruction of a sacred shrine that sent Iraq sliding toward civil war.” (READ MORE)
Journalists Testify That Libby Never Mentioned CIA Officer “Six journalists testified yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, never mentioned an undercover CIA officer to them -- and some said they learned about her identity from other administration sources.” (READ MORE)
Senators Would Elevate Top Manager at Homeland Security “Many members of Congress are frustrated by the Department of Homeland Security's performance as it nears the fourth anniversary of its launch. The department's woes include contracting and budget problems, a sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, turnover in senior ranks and a workforce that gives...” (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Michael J. Totten: The Fiercest Liberal in Lebanon “BEIRUT – I met the wizened Druze warlord and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt during Hezbollah’s ongoing slow-motion putsch to topple Lebanon’s government. No other high-profile “March 14” leader matches Jumblatt’s fierce opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, its Iranian patron, and its Hezbollah proxy militia.” (READ MORE)
Marine Historian: Highs And Lows... “I just returned from a week with the 1st Battalion, 24th Marines in the city of Fallujah. The dramatic, enduring impression I am left with is the mental toughness required (and exhibited) by all of our troops to deal with the emotional highs and lows that occur on a weekly, sometimes daily basis.” (READ MORE)
Acute Politics: The Road To Hell “The DOD has officially announced the deaths of our guys. This is the post I mentioned earlier: written on the 8th and held until the brief came out. I reported this morning for guard duty at 1115. The sergeant of the guard told us that someone had been hurt in Falluja, and taken to the Falluja Surgical Center. Falluja. My thoughts ran wild: is it my guys, or another platoon? Who was in front today? Who was it?” (READ MORE)
Badger 6: Badgers Down: The Fallen “The Department of Defense has released the names here: They all were excellent Soldiers that I was proud to know and humbled to lead. I love them, I miss them, I will never forget them. Memorial Service is today.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Dennis Prager: On Comparing Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial “In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: ‘Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers…’”(READ MORE)
John Boehner: Democrats Take the ‘First Step’ in Cutting-Off Funding for American Troops “What is the Democrats ‘plan for victory exactly’ There is one simple answer: they don’t have one.” (READ MORE)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Truly 'inappropriate' behavior “[A]s the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to ‘damage morale and undermine the military’ while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war.” (READ MORE)
Jeff Emanuel: At what point does decency trump politics? “Last week, Congressman Charlie Norwood, six-term Representative from Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, left Washington - perhaps permanently - and returned home to Augusta for hospice care, and to be with his family in what may be the last days of his life.” (READ MORE)
Jon Sanders: Dixie Chicks, dissent, and "whacked" paranoia “Government did nothing concerning The Dixie Chicks after they ‘spoke out’ against President Bush while they were in concert in London. The singers were free to say whatever they wanted, just as the buying public was free to say whatever they wanted with respect to what the Dixie Chicks said.” (READ MORE)
Cal Thomas: A letter from Mosul “With the House debating this week how much ‘non-binding’ grief to lay on President Bush about Iraq, I e-mailed a soldier friend of mine for his impressions of the increasingly amplified protests.” (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Abortion And Politics “EJ Dionne of the Washington Post has an excellent piece up today on the mixing of abortion and politics. He skewers a few politicians (Romney, Gore, Giuliani, Gephardt) for the evolving positions on the issue; but mostly he skewers us, for not allowing politicians to state the truth about the issue, it's not the most important thing in politics.” (READ MORE)
Victor Davis Hanson: Our Provocateurs “After 9/11, many leftists cited American faults that supposedly accounted for Osama bin Laden's savage attack. The late Susan Sontag, for example, justified the terrorists' suicide bombing: ‘Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?’” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Video: Murtha rips Howard, says Iraqis will rout AQ “the minute we’re gone” “From the mind that brought you an over-the-horizon redeployment to Okinawa comes this latest exercise in magic and wonder, in which a Sunni population threatened with ethnic cleansing chooses to fight the Sunni jihadis in its midst instead of coopting them for battle against the Shiites.” (READ MORE)
Hugh Hewitt: Zawahiri Upset With Democrats “From his latest cave recording: ‘On the tape, Zawahiri also condemns American Democrats ‘as one side of the same coin of tyranny, criminality and failure’ for failing to challenge Bush policies as they said they would in the election.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: A time for war, a time for peace “In a democracy, there are two criteria for deciding whether a nation goes to war. The first is whether or not the war is justified; the second is if the war is wise. The first issue revolves around the conduct of the other state. Have they committed clear, undisputable acts of war against the nation? There are very strict criteria for this. The second is tougher and far more subjective.” (READ MORE)
Robert Mayer: Exporting The Revolution “Throughout most of the Cold War, prevailing wisdom in foreign policy suggested that international relations between governments and the study of comparative politics should remain separate. The leaders of the United States spent most of their time meeting with, negotiating with, and occasionally threatening leaders from the Soviet Union. Whether or not people were being sent off to the gulag or purposely starved made no difference. Those people had no power, whereas the Politburo did.” (READ MORE)
Blue Crab Boulevard: Allies? “The Telegraph reports that extremely lethal sniper rifles manufactured in Austria and sold to Iran have turned up in Iraq. Over 100 of the 800 sold to Iran have turned up, in fact. The Austrian government approved the sale of the weapons over the objections of Britain and the United States.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: Obama and the Assassination Factor “I realize the incendiary nature of this post but frankly, the candidacy of Barak Obama puts us in unchartered waters with regards to several issues. And one of those issues has to be the realization that black leaders in America have been targets of assassins in the past.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Two Vignettes “On Saturday night a friend who spoke from the left side of liberalism asked why we should object to Iran having a bomb. After all, it is only fair that they be allowed to have a bomb because we have them and Israel has them. When I pointed out that no member of the government of Israel or the United States has ever declared their intent to destroy Iran while the destruction of Israel (and the Jews) has been a central tenet of the Iranian government since their 1979 revolution, he responded, ‘aren't those just words?’” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Here’s the Wabbit “I want to be fair to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, especially now that he’s all peacelovedove, and everyone’s getting nervous about the prospect of blowing his Israel-off-the-map-wiping, Holocaust-denying, terrorism-financing, chaos-spreading, U.S. soldier-murdering ass up.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Baghdad bombings, al-Qaeda and the insurgency - The National Intelligence Estimate gets it wrong “A pair of bombs ripped through a predominately Shia market in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 80 and wounding hundreds. While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the likely culprit is al-Qaeda in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Reformed Chicks Blabbing: President of Czech Republic Disses Gore “Boy is this guy going to upset the left, he is dissing their religion. And doesn't he know that anyone who doesn't believe in global warming is an idiot? It's like not believing in evolution or something. ‘Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either.’” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Semantics “On the issue of gay marriage, I must admit to a certain degree of ambivalence. I don’t believe that anyone decides for themselves what they find beautiful in another person - they find beauty where they can, they find it where they must. They are, in other words, as their God has made them. Far be it from me to question God.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Edwards' blogger resigns “’Blogmaster’ Amanda Marcotte has resigned from the Edwards' campaign (the site is currently down). Of course, it's all the right wing's and Catholic activists' fault (a blame-avoidance strategy I highlighted on The O'Reilly Factor tonight before news of Marcotte's resignation broke). Writes Marcotte this evening:” (READ MORE)
Captain Ed: The Last Refuge Is The Scoundrel “Hillary Clinton apparently feels the heat from Barack Obama already. Campaigning in New Hampshire, where her husband won the nickname of Comeback Kid with his second-place finish in 1992 after the first of the bimbo eruptions, she hid behind Bill's, er, skirts to pump up her own candidacy:” (READ MORE)
Uncle Jimbo: Get off the Aussies “We don't have many good friends in the world. The left would have you believe that it's because we are evil imperialists who everyone hates for our attempts to dominate the globe. The truth has a lot more to do with envy, competition and ignorance, but regardless. Perhaps our truest ally is the thunder down under, Australia.” (READ MORE)
Sachi: The Surge Has Failed - the Taliban "Surge" in Afghanistan, That Is “(Scared you, didn't I?) The Fayetteville Observor published a mesmerizing article back in December about a very significant and bloody battle in Afghanistan. It was a battle which the elite media ‘may little note nor long remember;’ but it was tremendously significant... and sends us a signal of how things are really going in the war against the ‘Taliban surge.’” (READ MORE)
Kat in MO: Soldiers Are Us: I Was Published "The point of my comment is that you all seem to think there are two militaries - one in Afghanistan and one in IraqApparently, either the soldiers in Afghanistan are all well educated specimens of the middle class or you think it's okay that they are stupid and poor dying in Afghanistan because you believe that war to be justified." (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
No comments:
Post a Comment