A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Bush rips 'political' war-funding bill - President Bush yesterday accused Democrats of playing politics with an emergency war funding bill and called congressional leaders to the White House next week to discuss the impasse, but Democrats immediately snubbed the invitation. (READ MORE)
Waiting is the hardest part for troops in limbo in Iraq - As heavy rain turned the paths of their Baghdad base to inch-thick mud yesterday, soldiers of the Stryker Brigade waited for the bad news. (READ MORE)
U.S. reverses N. Korea policy - The Bush administration, reversing a six-year-old North Korea policy based on deep mistrust, said it will now rely on Pyongyang's "good faith" to ensure that funds released yesterday from a Macao bank are not misused. (READ MORE)
Romney backs Bush on war - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney yesterday fired the opening shot in what has become the presidential campaign's unofficial "defense week," tying himself to President Bush by praising the war on Islamic terrorism and calling for big increases… (READ MORE)
PBS shelves film on moderate Muslims - A 52-minute documentary film exploring the struggles of moderate American Muslims at the hands of their radical brethren has also become a showcase for the struggles between right and left in the news media. (READ MORE)
U.N. official ducks query on wasted funds - A U.N. conference opened on a note of discord yesterday when the director of a U.N. division responsible for "good governance" refused to discuss charges leveled at his agency of mismanagement, intimidation of staff and wasted money. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Omar: Fierce fighting in central Baghdad. “Ok, let's go over what happened yesterday and today; last thing first. And please forgive me for the lack of chronological order, some information were received or corrected during the preparation of the post. Unlike yesterday today began with an acute escalation in central Baghdad, particularly in al-Fadh and Sheik Omar districts where an American helicopter was hit around 9:30 this morning with ground fire and crashed near an old cemetery in the area, the Baghdad reporter of al-Arabiya first mentioned. There are also conflicting reports that another helicopter got hit but survived the attack.” (READ MORE)
Afghanistan JAG: Humanitarian Mission in Downtown Kabul “A few days ago I posted a story about our humanitarian mission preparation on Easter. We delivered those clothes and that food today. Before I go any further, I want to thank everyone involved in sending clothing donations and helping pay to have them shipped here. There will be more missions to come, and I promise to post many pictures so you can see the fruits of your kindness.” (READ MORE)
Acute Politics: Easter Eggs “Last Sunday was Easter, and so we went on an easter egg hunt. Eggs come in many shapes and sizes here, and almost all of them are deadly. We find them, sometimes we paint them, and rarely- we collect them. One type of bomb that we commonly find is the ‘speed bump’.” (READ MORE)
Outside the Wire: Iraq Travel Guide “After reading Michael Yon's RUBS about various locations, I thought I would offer my version of the Iraq travel guide for people who are not network TV celebrities. This Guide follows my current travels through Iraq.” (READ MORE)
LTC Richard Phillips: Week 12--Khowst Province "This week I was thinking about our neighborhood, Khowst Province and Khowst City. Around here, paved roads are the exception rather than the rule. There’s a lot of money flowing in to Afghanistan, and lots of improvements are evident, but there is still a lot of work to be done. This picture of the road outside the FOB is typical; a dirt road, but with construction and improvement evident." (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Michael Medved: Biblical Liberation from Liberalism “With the arrival of the eight day Passover Festival on Monday night, I was preparing some material for our family-reunion Seder meal (Diane and I will be together with all three of our children, plus my visiting father from Jerusalem) when I stumbled across one of the most important of all verses in the Hebrew Scriptures.” (READ MORE)
Brent Bozell III: GOP vs. Pelosi's Daffy Diplomacy “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's make-believe secretary of state routine in Syria has been painted by the press as a sign of emboldened Democrats taking on Team Bush's neocon bumblers. Chris Matthews echoed his colleagues' sentiments when he joyously declared Pelosi would ‘open the doors to peace.’” (READ MORE)
Jonah Goldberg: Conservatives, don't ignore McCain “By positioning himself to the hawkish right of the Bush administration, McCain might be able to make the election a referendum on the future of Iraq, rather than a referendum on the last four years.” (READ MORE)
Ben Shapiro: Hollywood Makes Paranoia Mainstream “Rosie O'Donnell is unqualified to speak on anything other than weight problems and lesbianism. Nonetheless, she has seen fit to use girl-talk television show ‘The View’ to promote her insane views about the events of 9/11.” (READ MORE)
Tony Blankley: Iran's Nuke Program Advances “On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cheerfully announced in a televised speech that Iran has now joined the club of countries with ‘industrial-level’ nuclear enrichment -- confirming that Iran has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges.” (READ MORE)
Mike S. Adams: Al Sharpton: Nappy Headed Race Ho? “As you can see from the title of this column, I’m not too crazy about Al Sharpton. I don’t like Don Imus either!” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: The Culture of Bitches, Hos, and Niggas “But let's take a breath now and look around. Is the Sharpton & Jackson Circus truly committed to cleaning up cultural pollution that demeans women and perpetuates racial epithets? Have you seen the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart this week? The No. 1 rap track is by a new sensation who goes by the name of ‘Mims.’ The ‘song’ is ‘This Is Why I'm Hot.’” (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: Survivor Iran: The Hostage Show “When Iran released 15 British sailors and marines held hostage last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the release an ‘Easter gift to the British people.’ The British Ministry of Defense's decision to allow the hostages to sell their stories to the media made Ahmadinejad's ‘gift’ an unwanted gift that keeps on giving.” (READ MORE)
William Rusher: One more try, or quit? “President Bush's impending veto of the Democratic bill ordering American combat forces out of Iraq by September 2008, and his demand for the funding of our soldiers without such strings attached, will put the question squarely before the American people: Is this country going to make one final effort (the ‘surge’) to achieve a reasonable success in Iraq, or is it going to put its tail between its legs and leave, abandoning that embattled country to its fate?” (READ MORE)
Congressman Thomas Price: Democratic Iraq bill is overweight and dangerous “It began as a bill to support our troops - the President’s request for additional funding to strengthen operations overseas. However, the Iraq troop funding bill passed by the House and Senate and headed for a veto by President Bush has become a bundle of special interest pork and a dangerous plan to undermine our military leaders.” (READ MORE)
WSJ Opinion Journal: McCain's Finest Hour “Leadership sometimes means bucking public opinion. - These columns have had more than one disagreement with John McCain over the years, especially on issues that typically win the Arizona Republican accolades from the rest of the media: campaign-finance reform, global warming, detainee interrogations and tax cuts. Yet now that he is under attack from his erstwhile media ‘base’ for refusing to repudiate the war in Iraq, we think he deserves some covering fire. The word for what he's demonstrating is character.” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Alas, Poor Yorick “Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. The post of UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide will be upgraded to a full-time position, Secretary General Ban said in a message marking the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. ‘The UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention will also be boosted, the Secretary-General said, adding that Africa has taken its own steps as well, such as the proposed Pact on Security, Stability and Development for the Great Lakes Region, which contains measures on genocide prevention and punishment.’” (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Congress Elects Itself President “Congress is getting frisky. Flush with their success in anointing themselves Commanders in Chief of the armed forces (via the supplementary funding bill for the troops) and chiefs of foreign policy (applauding as Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Haight-Ashbury, 95%, negotiates a separate peace at any price with Bashar Assad), Democratic and a few Republican legislators now want the rest of the cake. They plan to pass a bill establishing a new heirarchy of national security and intelligence priorities for the United States.” (READ MORE)
Blue Crab Boulevard: Making Mistakes, Part 2 “Ouch. Yesterday, the Opinion Journal blasted the decision by Democratic presidential hopefuls to pull out of a debate that was set to run on Fox News. Today, the Chicago Tribune, not exactly a hotbed of rabid conservative thought, reams them yet again. And they come to the same conclusion that I did:” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: The Empty Suit Parade “Katie Couric's ascension to Dan Rather's seat promised a change in mood, if not an improvement in substance over the man who continues to insist that the Bill Burkett memos were genuine. It turns out that Couric also produces memos and articles that lack genuineness, as a plagiarism scandal exposed her as ghost-written on her own ‘notebook’:” (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: tbogg: Imus wannabe “’Nappy-headed ho's’ had been overused, so he went with the next best thing. Sure, tbogg's a hypocritical racist, but making a racist attack on a conservative black woman is perfectly acceptable behavior for liberals. Anticipate other liberal bloggers coming to his defense by sundown.” (READ MORE)
Dadmanly: Thoughts on Syria “Cliff May, writing at NRO, highlights a plea from Farid Ghadry, head of the Reform Party of Syria (RPS), who claims that Speaker Pelosi's visit with Syrian President Assad has harmed the Syrian dissident movement. May observes: ‘But the elite media appear to be uninterested in that aspect of the story. Nor are they intrigued by Farid's charge that Assad ‘has built four different bases in Syria that we know of to train terrorists to send them to Iraq.’” (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: Getting Up With Fleas “Remember the days when socialists and progressives championed human rights for all oppressed people? Remember when you could count on the Left to oppose totalitarian thugs? Of course, the only thugs that were beyond the progressive pale were those who received at least tacit support from the United States. Castro has had a free pass since the first day his cigar smoke filled the presidential palace in Havana. Daniel Ortega still remains a darling of the Left.” (READ MORE)
Indian Chris: Illegal Alien Rapes An 11-Year-Old Girl “But, hell Washington. Don’t actually try to get serious about the border problems. I mean, it’s not like it’s your job to protect us or anything. No. Your job is to talk and bluster (same thing I know), give yourselves pay raises, attack the other side and waste our money on things like ‘fact finding missions’.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: (Video) Saudi newscaster unloads on Wahhabist patriarchy “MEMRI casts a wide net but clips of Muslim women going off on the benighted Islamist morons they have to live under are its hallmark. This time it’s Buthayna Nasser, a Saudi newscaster, doing her best Wafa Sultan impression while a Saudi cleric squirms.” (READ MORE)
Vinnie: Doing The Job American Media Won't Do “Italian television doesn't shrink from showing the barbarity of our enemies. 'Rome - An Italian television channel aired footage on Tuesday of the beheading of a driver for an Italian journalist, who was held for about two weeks by Afghanistan's Taliban until Kabul negotiated his release.' We do the same thing. Not to disgust, not to titillate, and certainly not to get our jollies. We do it to get the truth about our enemies out there to a generally complacent populace.” (READ MORE)
Kobayashi Maru: Tax-Financed Media Bias “As I was saying about public broadcasting just this morning... Now this: ‘Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.’” (READ MORE)
Kat in MO: Crime, Small Wars and Broken Windows Theory “Reading an article Tuesday, I noted some comments that reminded me of a post I wrote in 2005 (right before Kilcullen wrote 28 Articles) that was, if not dead on, at least intuitive to the plan that was developed and is being implemented by Gen. Petraeus starting in January.” (READ MORE)
Major Pain: No need to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Tuesday there was no need to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country. ‘We see no need for a withdrawal timetable. We are working as fast as we can,’” (READ MORE)
See-Dubya: Never a Lawyer Around When You Need One (UPDATE) “On April 17th, Army Spc. Mario Lozano will be tried in absentia for the murder of an Italian secret service agent in Baghdad. Spc. Lozano manned the machine gun on Route Irish the night pro-insurgent reporter Giuliana Sgrena was released, and the car carrying Sgrena failed to stop when Army searchlights and lasers turned on it. Fearing it was a car bomb, Spc. Lozano fired at the car and killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian hero who had just helped to spring Sgrena from her terrorist captors.” (READ MORE)
William Teach: Someone Explain Republic To The Moonbats “Seven candidates for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination will take part tonight in a live ‘virtual town hall’ forum about the Iraq war, in what is being billed as the largest and most ambitious experiment yet in harnessing the power of Internet technology to reshape participatory democracy.” (READ MORE)
Reformed Chicks Blabbing: Civility Offsets “This is a great idea and I hope it catches on because it allows you to be as nasty as you want and as long as you pay, you don't have to feel bad about it. Thank you, Al Gore and other environmentalists for giving Scott Ott such a great idea: A draft proposal circulating in the so-called blogosphere would allow family-friendly blogs to sell ‘civility offsets’.” (READ MORE)
Rhymes with Right: Scandal! Report Editted To Reflect The Truth! “Horrors! Between a draft version of a report and the final version, editorial changes were made that reflect the truth on the subject matter -- and The New York Times smells a scandal. ‘A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.’” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: The Value and Danger of Anxiety: Part II “There are a few hard won realizations that the human race has learned and re-learned many times. One in particular is that men who desire power and accumulate power, tend to continually strive to enhance their power and rarely give it up voluntarily. That is why even leaders who begin with the best of intentions often see their rule curdle into totalitarianism. (see Mugabe, Robert, for a current example.)” (READ MORE)
Cassandra: Military Families Angry Over Congressional Inaction “McQ, a Vietnam vet himself, does a great job of highlighting the growing disgust of America's military veterans towards an arrogant and feckless Congress that has lost touch with the men and women who guarantee their freedoms: ‘I'm not so sure that the Dems are that concerned with it, but if statements from the VFW and American Legion are any indication, they shouldn't waste much time worrying about currying those votes. That is if they continue to push the present bill calling for withdrawal timelines.’” (READ MORE)
Blonde Sagacity: Judge Denies Abdullah al-Muhajir a Dismissal “Abdullah al-Muhajir, who you know as Jose Padilla (that MSM declining to use Muslim names thing again), was denied a dismissal of terror charges in a Florida court. Abdullah made the same ‘I was tortured by the US military’ claim that has become the MO of all detainees.” (READ MORE)
Cool, Calm & Collected: He's Holding Them Now... “Vickie, (the mother) told me this, and it made me think, it made me cry, it made me proud, and it comforted me: ‘Mel, I know Jim would have been such a good daddy... I am sure he is holding my little guys right now.’ I think she's right. He's probably teaching them ‘boy stuff’.” (READ MORE)
Augean Stables: As Flattering as it is Self-Destructive: David Brooks on Arab Narratives
“David Brooks has an interesting column on the impact (among other factors) of the Carter-Walt-Mearsheimer attack on the Israel Lobby on Arab elites. ‘Speaker after speaker triumphantly cited the work of Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter as proof that even Americans were coming to admit that the Israel lobby controls their government.’” (READ MORE)
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