A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Immigrant Measure Survives Challenges - The plan to overhaul the nation's immigration system survived its most serious challenges yesterday, when the Senate defeated amendments to disqualify hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from legalization and to extend visas to hundreds of thousands more relatives of U.S. citizens... (READ MORE)
G-8 Leaders Trade Conflicting Views on Warming - As thousands of protesters clashed with police nearby, President Bush and leaders of other industrial nations traded markedly opposing views here Wednesday on how to combat global warming. (READ MORE)
Pentagon Says Terror Suspect Has Been Moved to Guantanamo - A Somali man who U.S. authorities allege has close ties to al-Qaeda operations in Africa was transferred to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week, Defense Department officials announced yesterday, the third detainee to arrive at the prison in recent weeks. (READ MORE)
Officials Detail Errors in TB Case - Officials of federal agencies that guard public health and the nation's borders yesterday told congressional committees that they made mistakes in their unsuccessful effort to stop an Atlanta lawyer from traveling on two continents with an extremely dangerous form of tuberculosis last month. (READ MORE)
Senate OKs Amnesty For Deportees - The Senate voted yesterday to grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have already been caught and ordered deported but are defying a court order, preserving their path to citizenship as part of the immigration bill. (READ MORE)
'Russia is Not an Enemy' - President Bush yesterday sought to tone down the fiery rhetoric in his weeklong dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a proposed U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe, saying, "Russia is not an enemy." (READ MORE)
Afghanistan Ill-Prepared as Iran Deports Thousands - Nearly 100,000 Afghan migrants have been expelled from Iran over the past month and the total could reach 1 million by next spring, according to Tehran officials who say they are trying to protect the jobs of Iranians. (READ MORE)
White House Surprised at GOP Anger Over Speech - President Bush did not intend to single out his conservative supporters for criticism in a speech on immigration reform last week and was "surprised" that his remarks angered Republicans, White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Acute Politics: I'm Leeeaving, On a C-17... “I'm in Kuwait now, headed home on leave. Travel is a complicated process in Iraq, marked at each stage by some complicated torture designed to remind soldiers that, while they may be going home, they still have no right to expect to be happy or revel in the appearance of comfort. It starts with a helicopter flight. In order to board the helicopter, you must first endure as few as four hours and as much as two nights sitting on the flight line, breathing dirt and hoping the next flight will be yours.” (READ MORE)
Gene E. Blanton: Featured Report from Iraq: COIN, Sheikhs and Eatin’ Goat “The Jump Platoon of 3rd Battalion 6th Marines was supposed to roll at 0800 and head out to the eastern battle space. As I walked up to the now familiar briefing area, LtCol. Jim McGrath - Commanding Officer of 3/6 – asked me if I was “Semper Gumby” – always flexible. There was a change of plans. He was going to be meeting with Sheikh Khamis Abdal Karim at an undisclosed location. According to Captain Timothy Armentrout, the S-2 officer for 3/6, Sheikh Khamis had just returned from Jordan where he had been in exile since 2005. Sheikh Khamis heads up the Abu Fahd tribe, one of the three major tribes including the Albu Issa and the Albu Mahal tribes located in Al Anbar. The three tribes are part of the influencial Dulaimi Confederation, the largest in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
JD Johannes: The Iraqi Police "'Al Qaeda killed his whole family. Fighting Al Qaeda is his life,' the 1st Sergeant told me of Iraqi Police Lieutenant Zyeed. 'Get the National Police out of here. I think this guy is willing to cooperate but won't talk in front of them,' the Captain said. These conversations took place one month and 35 miles apart and capture the state of the Iraqi Police." (READ MORE)
On the Web:
James Bopp, Jr.: There Is Nothing "Wrongheaded" About Romney's Call For Repeal Of McCain-Feingold “The Washington Post's May 26th editorial, Campaign Finance Flip, took presidential candidate Mitt Romney to task for calling for the repeal of McCain-Feingold, which Romney justified in a recent Townhall.com piece, The Fundamental Flaws in the McCain-Feingold Law. The editorial claims a ‘wrongheaded turnabout,’ denies that McCain-Feingold is a product of ‘Washington's back-scratching political class’ that ‘imposes unprecedented restrictions on the political activities of everyday Americans’ and disputes that it forces political spending into ‘secret corners,’ giving more power to ‘hidden special interests.’ The Washington Post is wrong on every count.” (READ MORE)
Dr. Paul Kengor: ‘A Turning Point’ Twenty-Five Years Ago This Week “On Monday, June 7, 1982, President Ronald Reagan arrived in Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, a little over a year since both men survived near-fatal assassination attempts. The two shared not only a commonality of personal experiences but also of political interests - interests that each felt could change the boundaries of the world and the course of history.” (READ MORE)
Ken Blackwell: Jailhouse Stripes for Thoughts? “For those who commit physical crimes against others based on race, religion, or sexual orientation I have no sympathy. But the notion that government can punish thoughts and opinions, even offensive ones, is frightening.” (READ MORE)
Jon Sanders: John Edwards - "Violent, White, Heterosexual, Christian Male"? “In his book No Excuses, Shrum alleges that John Edwards told him, apropos of homosexuals, ‘I'm not comfortable around those people.’ A question: How are Edwards' former colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have reacted to such remarks, if he were still at UNC? How are they reacting?” (READ MORE)
Victor Davis Hanson: The Other D-Day “Sixty-three years ago this week, we landed on the Normandy beaches. As on each anniversary of June 6, 1944, much has been written to commemorate the bravery and competence of the victorious Anglo-American forces.” (READ MORE)
Matt Towery: Thompson Surges Into Second Place “While former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has simply formed an exploratory campaign committee, the mere expectation that he will enter the field of GOP presidential candidates has vaulted him into second place in the polls focused on those Republican contenders.” (READ MORE)
Suzanne Fields: Buy One, Get One Free “Bill Clinton boasted in his first campaign for president that voters could ‘buy one and get one free.’ He should have kept quiet about Hillary. A lot of Americans have never let either Bill or Hillary forget it. An unelected co-president was not what anyone bargained for (and neither did the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution). Now we have another opportunity to ‘buy one and get one free.’” (READ MORE)
William Rusher: Can we afford more low-skilled immigrants? “The cynical coalition of partisan Democrats and greedy businessmen (the latter bringing along a significant number of Republicans, including President Bush) who are backing the immigration ‘reform’ bill have run into a lot more serious opposition than they counted on. As a result, the bill contains some tough provisions that will be quietly repealed within a year or two after it has passed, and the American people have gone back to sleep.” (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro: Democrats fail to exploit GOP woes “A mere six months before the 2008 presidential race enters the starting gate, neither party can boast about its popularity with the voters. The Republican brand is weakened by an unpopular war in Iraq, and recent polls tell us that congressional Democrats are losing the support of liberals and independents who are unhappy over the Democrats' political impotence in a narrowly divided Congress.” (READ MORE)
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Iraq will become Hillary's war “Remember how President Eisenhower let Khrushchev threaten to ‘bury’ the United States without pointing out our huge lead in missiles? As a former general with an illustrious past, he had no worries about his credibility on military issues. But former 2nd Lt. John F. Kennedy had reason to worry that his bona fides as a military leader might be questioned, and he hastened to tell the world that the U.S. had a huge lead in missiles (after winning the election of 1960 campaigning on the ‘missile gap’). The price for JFK's insecurity was, ultimately, the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Khrushchev felt he had to close the gap Kennedy had publicized.” (READ MORE)
Ann Coulter: Bush's America: Roach Motel “Republicans' defense of President Bush's immigration bill is more enraging than their defense of Harriet Miers. Back then, Bush's conservative base was accused of being sexist for opposing an unqualified woman's nomination to the highest court in the land.” (READ MORE)
Jason Mattera: Salon Writer Puts on His Tinfoil Hat “Bill Clinton is the master manipulator - redefining terms, obscuring facts, and equivocating words. Alex Koppelman, at Salon.com, rides on the impeached President’s coattails with his piece, ‘The liberals are speaking, the liberals are speaking,’ though he’s a slim shadow of Bill.” (READ MORE)
Robert D. Novak: A Contender's Worn-Out Welcome “John Edwards is massively unpopular among Democratic party regulars, who neither like nor trust him.” (READ MORE)
WSJ Review & Outlook: Judicial Speech Code “Move over, Roe v. Wade. The latest liberal judicial litmus test is whether the nominee is willing to repudiate the phrase ‘homosexual lifestyle.’ Believe it or not, that's one of the two raps against Leslie Southwick, whose nomination for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.” (READ MORE)
Daniel Henninger: To Be an American “People tend to regard the idea of ‘democratic’ politics with high reverence, when in practice it consists most of the time of the right of any citizen to describe one's opponent as an idiot, or worse. With the illegal immigration debate, this sacred right is being exercised with uncommon vigor. Standing at the center of this democracy of accused dunces, the elected politician serves as the punching bag for all. So it is almost touching, even archaic amid the current political culture, to see the lengths to which these politicians go, as in the current immigration debate, to remain outwardly civil in public.” (READ MORE)
Joel Mowbray: Register's Last Hurrah? “To understand the challenge faced by Al-Hurra, the U.S. taxpayer-financed Arabic TV network, consider the case of Yasser Thabet. For years, Mr. Thabet has been a leading figure in shaping news coverage in the region. Whereas fawning over terrorists would be career suicide in the United States, Mr. Thabet, formerly a broadcast editor at Al-Jazeera, did just that--and promptly landed a top position at a major Arab media outlet. Last summer, Mr. Thabet wrote a loving tribute on his personal Web site to Soha Bechara, a woman who attempted to assassinate a general of the main anti-Hezbollah forces, the South Lebanese Army. Calling her ‘a living symbol of Lebanese resistance,’” (READ MORE)
Robert McFarlane: '68 Redux “Thirty-nine years ago, half way through my second tour in Vietnam, the Tet Offensive was launched by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, who were soundly defeated on the battlefield. Two measures of that battle -- both relevant to the situation in Iraq today -- stand out for me. The first relates to an important lesson U.S. forces had learned after three years of conflict: the vital role of ‘winning hearts and minds’ of the local population. The second concerns the power of the press to affect our ability to sustain violent warfare.” (READ MORE) *Reg Req*
Joseph L. Galloway: No fear! “The Democrats in Congress wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail that there was nothing they could do but cave in and vote to continue funding the war in Iraq. After all, that crafty George W. Bush had maneuvered them into a corner and they didn’t have the votes to override his veto. Horse manure.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Good Morning, Tehran “Iran ‘caught red-handed’ shipping weapons to the Taliban. Part of a concerted campaign. Before you get to the actual information in this report, it is necessary first to avoid tripping over rent-a-quote Richard Clarke. But here’s the interesting part:” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: R.I.P. “Matt Drudge: R.I.P. I didn’t have to read it to know the immigration bill — the Amnesty Bill — was dead. Passed on. No more. Ceased to be. Pushing up daisies. It died because it makes no sense in a time of war to open our borders to just anyone. We should close down our borders and check to see if anyone who even looks foreign has an expired visa.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Bush shocked to find his supporters don’t like having their motives impugned “Go figure, huh? Turns out it was all a big misunderstanding and he didn’t really mean to accuse critics of the bill of scaremongering and not wanting to do what’s right for America when he accused them of scaremongering and not wanting to do what’s right for America. He’s got some tough Iraq funding votes coming up this summer and fall. I guess he figures he needs us after all.” (READ MORE)
Bryan Preston: The JFK plot: Echoes of the future Updated “Daveed Gartenstein-Ross looks at the JFK terror plot: ‘ONE SIGNIFICANT ASPECT of the complaint is what it suggests about the threat of terrorist infiltration through our southern border. Within analytic circles there is a near consensus that America’s northern border poses far more of a threat of terrorist infiltration than the southern border.’” (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Hugh, We Thought We Knew You! “I hate having to struggle so hard not to use the D-word, or even the L-word about a man I respect as much as I respect Hugh Hewitt; and it's equally hard to defend Sen. John McCain (R-AZ, 65%). But I am too honest to let this slide, so here goes -- and let the chips fall off the old block... All day, Hugh has been running a deliberately truncated clip from McCain, in which we hear the senator say the following: ‘We’re not going to erect barriers and fences.’” (READ MORE)
Blue Crab Boulevard: Killing Fields “Peter Rodman and William Shawcross have an op-ed in the New York Times that attempts to point out something that is frankly missing from all the political maneuvering over the Iraq war. It is something that many have pointed out but that the politicians and the major media have been studiously ignoring. How badly will the United States be damaged by a withdrawal in Iraq? The answer: Very badly indeed.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Lindsay Graham Melting In Dark “I've been following the coverage of the immigration bill by Michelle Malkin, who really redefines the term ‘tireless.’ No one else could stay awake through hours of Senate coverage a day and make it seem exciting in the recaps, and people should make sure they're keeping pace with her live-blog posts. Start at the top and keep scrolling. Michelle also picked up this story about a contretemps between Lindsay Graham and Barack Obama, when the latter introduced an amendment that would have capped the points-based entry system. Graham apparently took great exception to this amendment. He berated Obama on the floor of the Senate, and then continued scolding the freshman Senator outside the chamber:” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: The Reasons Why Al-Qaeda Wages War On Us “Here is another of my forays into Lawrence Wrights excellent book on the history of radical Islam, The Looming Tower. First, for those, specifically on the left, who continually state bin Ladens beef with the United States was due to our country having had our troops on "sacred" land, ie Saudi Arabia, Lawrence writes about the Peter Arnett interview in March of 1997 in which we get from the horses mouth what his beef really is. What is even more interesting for those on the left who state we should stop supporting Israel, we should leave Iraq, just give them what they want and they will be happy, bin Laden's words should wake your ass up:” (READ MORE)
Fjordman: Resisting 21st Century Communism “The Greek blogger Phanari has expanded upon my essays about 21st century Communism. According to American writer John Fonte, ‘Transnationalism is the next stage of the multicultural ideology.’ It is implemented at a snail’s pace as a long-term project, to minimize opposition to it. As always, Norway and Sweden are at the forefront of enlightened Socialism. According to Karita Bekkemellem, government Minister from the Norwegian Labor Party, female directors must make up at least 40 percent of all new shareholder-owned companies’ boards of directors:” (READ MORE)
McQ: Joe Klein figures out the leftosphere “Of course he caveats his discovery with a blanket condemnation of ‘right-wing talk shows’ which should come as no surprise. I’ve found it amusing, over the last few months to watch Klein and other writers who’ve started blogs with comments discover a) the blogsophere is the bare knuckle league and b) what it is like to actually be criticized. As you might gather, Klein isn’t a real big fan of ’b’.He uses an example of where he quoted Jane Harman in a piece he did on the Iraq supplemental vote. Harman told him she couldn’t, in good conscience, vote no, especially considering her recent memory of her visit to Iraq flying in with 150 young soldiers headed in to fight.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: The Emerging Paradoxes “One of the themes I write about on this Blog is the tension between our increasingly complex modern world and those cultures that resist entering into modernity. Two of the most complex and nuanced approaches to the conflict inherent in our increasingly globalized world are Tom Barnett and John Robb. Tom Barnett brilliantly espouses the view that increased connectivity will inevitably lead to moderation and increased freedom; globalization demands transparency and economic freedom which ultimately requires personal and political freedom, though the shape of the political system will be uniquely suited to the cultures of the participants. In Barnett's terms, the allure of the Core must inevitably subvert the Gap.” (READ MORE)
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