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 Raps Putin on Democracy - President Bush yesterday escalated the war of words with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the Kremlin's leader has "derailed" democracy and moved his former communist nation away from reforms that once promised freedom for its citizens. (READ MORE)
Illegals Bill Hits Senate Roadblock - The immigration deal foundered yesterday, on the verge of collapse under its own weight just days after it appeared to have a clear path to pass the Senate. (READ MORE)
Libby Gets 30 months, $250,000 Fine - Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in prison on his conviction last month on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the disclosure of the identity (READ MORE)
Though Not on Stage, Bush is at Center of GOP Debate - President Bush took a bruising last night from the Republicans running for their party's 2008 presidential nomination, with the 10 candidates accusing him of losing his principles and failing the country on spending and immigration. (READ MORE)
Foundations Bankrolling Advocates for Aliens - Wealthy philanthropic foundations are helping bankroll the pro-immigration movement, while groups advocating for tighter control of U.S. borders say they take a more grass-roots approach to raising money. (READ MORE)
McCain Sets Self Apart in Debate - Sen. John McCain of Arizona found himself isolated Tuesday night as he staunchly defended controversial immigration legislation against a barrage of criticism from his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, who argued that the bill is deeply flawed... (READ MORE)
Guantanamo Ruling Renews The Debate Over Detainees - The decision by U.S. military judges Monday to dismiss the war crimes charges against two detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has reignited a debate over how to try those accused of terrorism, prompting members of Congress to challenge the Bush administration over a legal system that they say denies... (READ MORE)
House Moves Against Embattled Jefferson - Monday's indictment of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) touched off an ethics battle in the House yesterday, with leaders from both parties moving quickly against Jefferson even as they accused each other of having no real interest in tighter ethics rules. (READ MORE)
Scores Up Since 'No Child' Was Signed - The nation's students have performed significantly better on state reading and math tests since President Bush signed his landmark education initiative into law five years ago, according to a major independent study released yesterday. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
The Online Chaplin: Writer's Block “To answer the question, ‘Yeah, I am OK?’ In fact, I am better than Ok. We are in the bottom of the ninth inning and my team here in Iraq is hitting the ball consistently. I have the had the joy of watching leaders mature and temper their God-given strength with compassion, understanding and charity. We are bringing America a gift when we return. Young soldiers, battle hardened, tough, capable with a deep understanding of self-sacrifice. I am proud to have been a part of it. But, the fact remains I have now been deployed for 561 days. Most of those days have been in combat.” (READ MORE)
Duty in the Desert: June 6, 1944 D-Day. “Starting at around 11 PM on June 5th, approximately 13,000 American parachutists would descend upon the peninsula via hundreds of twin-engined C-47s. The C-47 was a DC-3 aircraft that held 18 parachutists (known as a "stick" to the men). At the low speed of 120 mph, the flight would take them over an hour. The parachutists were weighed down with nearly their body weight in equipment and weapons.” (READ MORE)
Those Wacky Iraqis: On the road again... “After all my years in Southern California I swore I would never commute again but lately it seems like that is what I do. Thanks God the Army lets us use SUVs in Kuwait instead of HMMWVs. My ass could not take that. Sometimes I just take some quick snaps as I am driving. The first one is an intersection of a paved road (Iron Horse) and an unpaved road (Dallas). Each has its own particular type of danger. Iron Horse has nutcase locals in Mitsubishi pick ups transporting sheep and doing about 150 KPH and Dallas has new potholes and ruts every time you traverse it.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Michael Medved: The Great Debate: Hillary vs. Hillary “Contemporary candidates may draw scornful fire for their embarrassing public flip-flops but Hillary Clinton’s outright contradictions on the Iraq War represent a far more shameful and serious problem.” (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: A Second Falklands? “When Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands in April 1982 and ignited the Falklands War with Great Britain, many commentators saw the conflict as something of a quaint historical anomaly, a ‘throwback’ campaign reminiscent of 19th century ‘petty scrapes’ imperial Britain engaged in when the sun never set on its globe-circling empire. The war ended on June 14, 1982, making this month the 25th anniversary of its conclusion. Unfortunately, lingering historical land claims continue to figure in the calculations of contemporary despots.” (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg: Israel is Doomed (Again) “In addition to all the usual clear and increasingly present dangers to Israel's existence, there now looms Iran's steadily developing nuclear program. Iran's president, the incessant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made his policy toward Israel perfectly clear: Wipe it off the map.” (READ MORE)
Ben Shapiro: John Edwards' Bumper-Sticker Liberalism “It was John Edwards, outflanking Obama, who provided the most memorable moment of the evening, summing up nearly six years of liberal thought with a single paragraph.” (READ MORE)
Kathleen Parker: Bush's War and Hillary's Memory “Hillary Clinton's remark during Sunday night's Democratic presidential debate that Iraq is ‘George Bush's war’ may be interpreted as either brilliant strategy or desperate deflection.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Children of Jihad vs. Children of the West “‘What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah!’ That is the charming verse kindergarteners in a Hamas classroom chanted last week during their graduation ceremony. The girls dressed in butterfly costumes. The boys donned camouflage, black masks, green bandanas and toy semi-automatic rifles. The video aired by the Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memritv.org) features the children wielding swords and guns while mimicking paramilitary exercises.” (READ MORE)
Terence Jeffrey: Yes, Immigration Is About Culture “As long as they do not overwhelm us with sheer numbers coming from any single country or foreign-language tradition, new immigrants who share our basic values can over time join us in our love for the particular things that define us as a nation.” (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Compassion Versus Reality “Dr. Thomas Sowell, a distinguished economist and longtime friend and colleague, recently wrote a series of columns under the title ‘A War of Words.’ He pointed out that liberals succeed in duping the public because they are so clever with words that they give the appearance of compassion. Liberals talk about the need for ‘affordable’ housing and health care. They tarnish their enemies with terms such as ‘price-gouging’ and ‘corporate greed.’ Uninformed and unthinking Americans fall easy prey to this demagoguery.” (READ MORE)
Mary Katharine Ham: Hillary Made Me Laugh, End Times Surely Nigh “I've always been skeptical of the idea that the Clinton machine could stomp its way to the Democratic nomination, crushing all comers underfoot like a stylishly pant-suited Godzilla. That is, until the juggernaut made me laugh. Now, I am concerned, indeed.” (READ MORE)
Bill Murchison: The Bumper-Sticker War “There comes a time when you don't want even to parody words such as the Democratic candidates swapped with each other, because the effect is so soul-sapping.” (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: Bush's War -- the CliffsNotes “‘I think it's particularly important to point out this is George Bush's war. He is responsible for this war. He started the war,’ Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., proclaimed during the CNN Democratic debate Sunday night.” (READ MORE)
WSJ Review & Outlook: An Independent Newspaper “‘Don't believe the man who tells you there are two sides to every question. There is only one side to the truth.’ So wrote William Peter Hamilton, one of the first men to hold the job of editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, in the early decades of the last century. For editorial writers worth their pay, those are words to live by, and we hope to be living by them for a long time to come.” (READ MORE)
Homan W. Jenkins Jr.: My Sweet Press Lord “Here's my dream, and it's a not good one. The day comes when a controversialist like Rupert Murdoch bids to buy The Wall Street Journal--and no one cares. That's one of the considerations swirling in a mess that, from any party's perspectives except Mr. Murdoch's, makes the decision faced by the Bancroft family (which controls Dow Jones, our parent company) so vexing. The future of the paper is at risk if we do the deal; it's also at risk if we don't.” (READ MORE)
Floyd Abrams: Be Careful What You Sue For “Pursuing a libel or slander suit has long been a dangerous enterprise. Oscar Wilde sued the father of his young lover Alfred Douglas for having referred to him as a ‘posing Somdomite’ and wound up not only dropping his case but being tried, convicted and jailed for violating England's repressive laws banning homosexual conduct. Alger Hiss sued Wittaker Chambers for slander for accusing Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party with Chambers, and of illegally passing secret government documents to him for transmission to the Soviet Union.” (READ MORE) *Reg Req*
DJ Elliott, CJ Radin and Bill Roggio: The Baghdad Order of Battle and the New York Times “The surge is failing, according to the New York Times. The U.S. has fallen short of securing Baghdad by July, and the Iraq security forces have been hopelessly infiltrated by Shiia militias. The Times’s conclusion is based on a one-page memo. The memo, actually a status update on the situation in Baghdad, was never intended to serve as a full report on the progress of the Baghdad Security Plan. But that didn't stop the New York Times from characterizing the memo as such.” (READ MORE)
Kim Priestap: Harry Reid calls Illegals "Undocumented Americans" “What's the point of making illegals go through a path to citizenship when Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid declares on the floor of the Senate that the 12 million people who are in this country illegally are actually ‘12 million undocumented Americans.’ Americans! Michelle Malkin is right when she says that the concept of American citizenship is now dead. Watch the video yourself; its front and center on Reid's own site.” (READ MORE)
DJ Drummond: Handing Weapons to Our Enemies “One of the strangest phenomenae I have seen in my life, is the way political sorts will swoon for a person at one point, then turn completely against them later. Mood swings worthy of a mental institution have become commonplace in recent years, and never more so than the present ‘Love You/Always Hated You’ hypocrisy of the Right Wing. Writing for Salon magazine, Glenn Greenwald is unfortunately all too aware of the hypocrisy, and worse for the Right, he has documented it in his latest article.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit (Video) Hitchens destroys sniveling anti-war journalist Chris Hedges “I was going to save this for tomorrow morning but it simply can’t wait. You may remember Hedges from Rockford College’s 2003 commencement ceremony, where he launched into a critique of the Iraq war so obnoxious that he was booed off the stage.” (READ MORE)
Dadmanly: Unlawful Combatants “The Associated Press yesterday reported that Army military judge threw out the military commission case against Omar Khadr, a Canadian member of a known terrorist family intricately enmeshed with Al Qaeda: ‘The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw out the Khadr case because he had been classified as an "enemy combatant" by a military panel years earlier — and not as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant."’” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Non-Crime Gets Bogus Sentence “Libby gets 2 1/2 years and $250,000 fine. Kristol is worked up that Bush said its ‘terrible’ but is holding off on the pardon. Doesn’t sound like he’s closed the door, nor has Libby heard the doors slam. Here, once you scroll past a great deal of meandering nonsense, included some speculation on whether I suckled, you’ll find these deep thoughts of a world-weary taker of copious if tedious notes, grateful at longlast, seven years into our national nightmare, to see some justice … so hard when no crimes have been committed.” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Pensions for congressional jailbirds “So Democratic Congressman William “the Refrigerator” Jefferson of New Orleans was indicted. Big deal. Even if he is convicted and sentenced to all 235 years that the 16 counts against him carry, taxpayers will get screwed. Congressman Jefferson will get a $47,000-a-year pension while in prison, despite his criminal activity.” (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: Somali Pirates Take Danish Hostages “We’ve covered stories about Somalia’s pirates in the past, but their murderous depredations are in the news headlines once again. This latest incident piqued my interest because it happens to overlap with news about my favorite Viking country: a Danish freighter has been captured off the coast of Somalia. Here’s the story from yesterday’s Copenhagen Post: ‘The Foreign Ministry has now gotten involved in the case of a Danish freight ship that was captured by pirates late Friday in the Arabian Sea.’” (READ MORE)
Yggdrasil: Freedom of Speech, the Rule of Law, and Democracy "The Western world is threatened. In some places hard-won principles are no longer functioning. And that will not do: freedom of speech, the rule of law and democracy must be preserved. The most important human right is freedom of speech. From freedom of speech flow all the other freedoms.And where does the idea of freedom of speech come from? In the philosophical system it comes from a very specific place. Consider this:” (READ MORE)
Cassandra: NY TimesWatch: Two Americas Edition “As the Blog Princess observed yesterday, each rosy-finger'd dawn brings fresh evidence that The Silky Pony was Left... err... Reich right...and more than right. There are indeed Two Americas! They're just not the ones he describes: ‘John Edwards is right: there are two Americas. One is watching TV or at the Mall, complaining about how utterly helpless they feel about their ability to make a difference in the world. The other is out there, changing history. You decide which one better represents us.’” (READ MORE)
TigerHawk: Arabs killing Arabs in Lebanon: Where's the outrage? “Dr. Sanity makes the unfortunately necessary point that the mainstream media and the world's governments are not nearly as interested in civilian casualties in Lebanon now that only Arabs are doing the killing. Terrorists shoot at the Lebanese Army from behind a wall of civilians, and the Lebanese Army fires big guns into refugee camps that harbor terrorists. Many noncombatants get hurt and die. Where's the outrage? Gone with the Jews.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: Olbermann: There is no Terrorism Threat, Only Politics “Keith Olbermann took time out from making the world safe for Edward R. Murrow impersonators on his show Monday night to offer some interesting thoughts on the connection between bad news about the Bush Administration (and the proximity to elections) and the exposure of terror plots, the issuance of terror alerts, and government advice on how to prepare for a terrorist assault.” (READ MORE)
RedState: June 6: A Day of Prayer and Rededication to Our Troops “Most Americans don’t know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt – the 20th century’s most successful liberal Democrat – unapologetically appealed to faith in God to support our troops on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Hours after they stormed the beaches at Normandy, FDR led the nation in a six-minute prayer on national radio. It’s time to revive the spirit of FDR by making June 6th an annual day of prayer and rededication to our men and women in uniform. Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer is remarkable, not just for its unabashed religiosity, but for what it says about America – the America of today and the America of 1944.” (READ MORE)
The Redhunter: No Reason to Stay In the UN “Nat Hentoff (bio here) asked recently why we were still in the United Nations, and I have no good answer for him. Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to an economic basket case. Other African nations used to buy food from Zimbabwe, now they export food to it so that it's people won't starve. There's no drought or global warming to blame here, for the fault is entirely that of Robert Mugabe. President of the country since 1980, in recent years he has become an ever more brutal dictator. So how does the United Nations reward such behavior? Henhoff explains:” (READ MORE)
Dale Franks: June 6th will always be "D-Day" “It actually started on June 5th. And it almost didn’t start then. The weather had turned bad. A great storm had blown in from the Atlantic. High wind and high seas had forced ships of all kinds back into bays and inlets. Low clouds made it impossible for aircraft to find landmarks. If the weather didn’t break, nothing would happen until at least July. But the weather did break, and so, it began only a day later than planned.” (READ MORE)
McQ: General Betrayus? “Amanda at Think Progress tells us, or at least claims, that General Petraeus is no better than any of the rest of the scalawags that populate the military leadership in Iraq: ‘In April, during the congressional debate over war funding, Gen. David Petraeus pushed back against a withdrawal timeline from Iraq “because we’re only about two months into the surge,” assuring Congress that he would be able to report on progress in September:’” (READ MORE)
Patterico: The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals, in One Minute, on Video “Check out the last minute of this video interview of John Edwards, beginning at 1:00. This encapsulates the difference between conservatives and liberals better than any 10,000-word essay I could write. The interviewer asks Edwards whether various things should be a right or a privilege. (The difference, of course, is that a mere privilege may be conferred, limited, or withdrawn at the whim of government.) His answers are typical of everything that is wrong with the left:” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: D-Day “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: The Kingdom Made Her Slouch “Megan Stack writes a fascinating account of her experiences as a woman in Saudi Arabia, stationed there for the last four years by the Los Angeles Times. If anyone wonders what being a woman in Saudi Arabia means, Stack gives a firsthand account of the demeaning and oppressive existence that all women -- Western or otherwise -- endure in the Kingdom. For Stack, the abaya that Saudi law required her to wear not only symbolized her oppression, but actually seeped into her psyche:” (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Obama Warns of Quiet Riots “B. Hussein Obama was out on the campaign trail and he warned of a “Quiet Riot” brewing among disillusioned black folks in this country and he claims that the Bush administration has done nothing to ‘defuse’ the situation. Obama likens the outcome of this situation to the 1992 riots where black people acted like animals and tore up a city because the judicial system found four cops not guilty in the Rodney King case. Does not matter how people feel about the outcome, breaking the law by rioting and tearing up the city is not the way a civil society addresses issues. Who did these black folks think they were, Muslims?” (READ MORE)
Laughing_Wolf @ Blackfive: D-Day Remembered “Gold, Sword, Omaha... Names that should be known to all, but fewer remember them with each passing year. Fewer still are taught about them. Today, take a moment and remember. Take a moment, and teach. Stand silent for a moment, and remember all those who died this day, so that the light of freedom could shine again, for at least a while, on a continent gone dark.” (READ MORE)
John Donovan: A busy day in history, today is. “June 6th... 1775 NY patriots prevent the Royal Governor from removing weapons from the city - I wonder how many would stand up to the Governor today? 1813 US invasion of Canada halted at Stoney Creek (Ont). Heh. Someday we'll get it right and *beat* them dang Canuckistanians... ;^)” (READ MORE)
A Soldier's Mind: Westboro Baptist Church Member Jailed In Nebraska “I’m a Kansas native and I join most of my fellow Kansans in being totally disgusted with the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church, who go out of their way to protest the funerals of our Fallen Troops, and gleefully sing praises about their deaths. So, when I saw the news about Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, I did a couple “happy dances” myself this morning.” (READ MORE)
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