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 lobbies Senate on Immigration - President Bush visited with Senate Republicans behind closed doors yesterday pleading with them to give his immigration plans a second look. (READ MORE)
McCain '08 Bid Losing Steam - Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is showing signs of unraveling, with a continuing slide in the polls, voters' irritation over his support of what they called amnesty for illegal aliens and his decision to pull out of the Iowa straw poll. (READ MORE)
Bali Conference Slams Holocaust Deniers - An unusual conference to affirm the reality of the Holocaust opened yesterday in the world's most populous Muslim nation -- Indonesia -- with a Muslim leader criticizing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for insisting the Nazi killing of 6 million Jew. (READ MORE)
Iran Uses Fronts to Avoid U.N. Sanctions - Iran is using newly created front companies in a bid to frustrate U.S. and United Nations sanctions on its suspect nuclear programs, according to records and information supplied by a leading Iranian exile dissident group. (READ MORE)
Big Boost In Iraqi Forces Is Urged - A senior U.S. military commander said yesterday that Iraq's army must expand its rolls by at least 20,000 more soldiers than Washington had anticipated, to help free U.S. troops from conducting daily patrols, checkpoints and other critical yet dangerous missions. (READ MORE)
The Selling of 'McCain 2.0' - Russ Schriefer spent the first few weeks of 2000 driving around New Hampshire with a digital camera and a singular mission: finding a way to discredit John McCain with voters in the state's upcoming primary. (READ MORE)
Earmark Dispute Bogs Down Homeland Security Bill - The congressional spending season began with a blowup over earmarks in the House yesterday, as the first bill to reach a vote prompted a White House veto threat and scores of amendments from Republicans furious with Democrats' handling of pet-project spending in the measures. (READ MORE)
Allies Cited for Human Trafficking - The State Department yesterday added seven countries, including four Arab allies, to its list of worst offenders in failing to suppress human trafficking and forced labor, which it called "a modern day form of slavery." (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Michael Yon: Death or Glory Part III of IV “The Brits are in for a scorching summer in the deserts of Maysan Province. By the time I left, the sleeping bags weren’t necessary, though nights were cool. The soldiers are living out there on cots under mosquito nets, and their outhouse is a shovel. This past winter, the rains and cold created an opponent in the form of mud. The Iraqi mud—I know it well—is a special kind that sticks to boots and adds about five pounds to each foot.” (READ MORE)
Badger 6: Why I (We) Serve “I spent much of the 1990's associated with the US Army in some manner, active duty, National Guard, and military technician. There was a certain level of unrealtity about it. The Soviet Union was gone. Desert Storm lasted 20 minutes. What was the big Army going to do? There were (and of course still are) the Balkan deployments, but that never affected me. So in 1999, the year I married Mrs. Badger 6, I (we) left a military technician job and the National Guard to go to Law School. The last year of Law School saw the events of September 11, 2001 enter our collective lives.” (READ MORE)
Matt Sanchez: Dinner Chez le Sheik--Reports from Al Anbar “There's a lot going on, but before the mainstream press mangles it, I want to point out that many prominent people in the Al Anbar province have sided with coalition forces and ‘change’ is on the lips of anyone worth listening to.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Nouri Al-Maliki: Our Common Struggle “Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history. In the 1860s, your country fought a great struggle of its own, a civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation signaled the destruction of the terrible institution of slavery, and the rise of a country dedicated, more than any other in the world of nation-states then and hence, to the principle of human liberty.” (READ MORE)
John Fund: Vote-Fraud Demagogues “Appointments to the Federal Election Commission rarely draw attention. But at a confirmation hearing today, there's likely to be some fireworks over Hans von Spakovsky. Mr. von Spakovsky has already amassed an 18-month long, largely uncontroversial record at the FEC as a recess appointment. But that's not likely to stop Senate Democrats from grilling him about his time at the Justice Department during President Bush's first term. The aim will be to portray him as a partisan who mishandled voting rights cases. Exhibit A will be his support for state voter ID laws.” (READ MORE)
Michael Medved: Why TV Addiction Links to Liberalism “Does heavy TV viewing push people toward more liberal opinions? Or is it the impact of pre-existing leftist attitudes that lead viewers to invest more of their lives on television?” (READ MORE)
Caroline B. Glick: Our World: Peres's Big Day “Tomorrow Israel's parliamentarians will convene to elect the next president of Israel. After Shas's council of elders decided last week to throw the party's support behind Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres's candidacy, Peres's election seems to be a foregone conclusion.” (READ MORE)
John Stossel: Property Owners Win One “Opponents of eminent domain finally have something to celebrate. After a public campaign, Target Corp. has decided not to build a store on condemned property in Arlington Heights, Ill.” (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Competition or Monopoly “Are consumers better off with a competitive or monopolistic provision of goods and services? Let's apply that question to a few areas of our lives.” (READ MORE)
George Will: Immigration Legislation Demonization “Harry Reid, the Senate's majority leader and resident Uriah Heep, affected 'umble and syrupy sadness about the Senate's inability to pass the immigration bill that he pulled from the floor last Thursday evening for a transparently meretricious reason. Saying the Senate's time was too precious to expend on what would have been limited debate on a limited number of Republican amendments to the bill, Reid vowed: ‘Everyone that's been home, there are two issues that are foremost in their minds: Number one is the Iraq War and number two are gas prices. We're going to deal with that as soon as we finish with this immigration legislation.'’” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: It Ain't Over 'Til the Alien Wins “As you follow the debate over the Bush-Kennedy immigration bill, keep this cardinal rule in mind: 99.99 percent of the lawmakers who promise you that they'll ensure the deportation of anyone who doesn't follow their new ‘guest-worker’ regulations are either A) lying or B) completely clueless.” (READ MORE)
Paul Weyrich: The Immigration Bill May Rise Again “My longtime friend Richard A. Viguerie issued a press release congratulating grassroots America for killing the Immigration Bill. I hope Richard is right. I fear he is not. In all of the years I have been here I never have known when the establishment really wants something that the establishment cannot obtain it. And the establishment really wants this bill.” (READ MORE)
Stephen Bird: What the press saw at the Brandenburg Gate “On this 20th anniversary of the day Ronald Reagan dared Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘Tear Down this Wall’ while standing at the Brandenburg Gate, one needs only to read a few headlines from the week that followed to capture the angst of some in the Cold War press.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Bernard: The Coffee Talk on Gas Prices That Isn’t “Mothers and fathers beware - if certain members of Congress have their way, you will not be standing in line at Starbucks any more because you’ll be too busy waiting in mile-long lines to get gasoline.” (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: An Inconvenient Truth for Mr. Clinton “Washington resident John Lockwood was wandering through Borders bookstore at 18th and L streets NW, where he couldn't help but notice that a prankster had carefully placed a copy of Al Gore's ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ on the ‘Noteworthy Fiction’ shelf.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Go Down Surrendering “‘Losing hurts more than winning feels good.’ Christopher J. Fettweis of the U.S. Naval War College is clearly on the side that lately, is accustomed to losing, all about the losing and eager to lose more. But if it hurts so bad, not sure what the rush is to lose more. The secret to understanding in Fettweis’ upchuck of an LA Times op-ed piece, ‘Post-Traumatic Iraq Syndrome,’ is that he doesn’t think winning feels good enough to make it worth not losing.” (READ MORE)
Bryan Preston: Fred! pwns DNC blog “If you’re a Fred Head, this ought to get your day started off right. Even if you’re not, it’s pretty funny. The DNC had to close the comment section on their blog post regarding Fred Thompson. In an attempt to bash Thompson, the DNC posted The Fred Thompson ‘Dummies Guide to Diplomacy’. Check out some of these excerpts from comments from DNC blog visitors.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: (Video) The attack on the North Tower, re-created “They deliberately took the markings and windows off the jet so it wouldn’t be harder to watch than it already is. Here’s arguably the darkest half-second in American history, instant by instant, with assorted variables isolated and then recombined so that you can see the full effect. The model of the plane was separated into hundreds of thousands of components so that the computer could give each one its own trajectory after impact.” (READ MORE)
Cassandra: NY TimesWatch: "Real, But Inaccurate" Edition “Ah, history... for those who refuse to learn from it, it must feel like deja vu all over again! James Taranto was paying attention the day the Times unveiled what he called "what may be the greatest headline ever"? ‘Fake but accurate! If this is the New York Times' new standard of journalism, does it apply to all stories, or only the ones that seek to make President Bush look bad?’ Taranto's snarky quip turned out to be dead on, if perhaps not in the way he intended.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: War? What War? “Phew! What a relief. All these years since 9/11, I was under the mistaken impression that we were engaged in a war with al-Qaeda and its many offshoots, imitators, wannabes, and pretenders. But we have all now been happily disabused of such a stupid notion. First, it was the Democrats who declared there is no ‘War on Terror’ by banishing the very term from official documents and correspondence. Fine with me. Out of sight, out of mind, I say. There’s plenty of room here in this whole in the sand I’ve dug to stick my head. More the merrier. And now the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has made it official.” (READ MORE)
Right Truth: There is no such thing as political correctness in the Middle East “I've discussed the ‘intimidation, infiltration and disinformation tactics’ used by Islamic groups and individuals. W.C. wrote an entire book on the subject, The Gathering Storm. Many Americans have not had the bad luck to experience this intimidation. Michael Devolin of the Magic City Morning Star wonders where the funds are coming from that Muslim groups are using to sue people who dare to speak out ... like Dr. Paul Williams, ‘who is being sued by McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario for the mere sin of questioning the level of security maintained at their nuclear reactor facility located on campus.’ Mr. Devolin shares his personal experience with Muslim intimidation and the McMaster University nuclear reactor.” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Proof That The Amnesty Bill Is Wildly Unpopular Or Alternately, News That Obvious To Everyone But Republican Senators “One of the more bizarre claims of the open borders crowd is that the amnesty bill in the Senate is actually popular and that it's only opposed by a small, but vocal minority. Their evidence for this assertion is several polls that show that the majority of the American people are not opposed to a guest worker program or allowing illegal aliens to be legalized in some form or fashion. Although that may be case, after following this issue closely for years, I can tell you that there are two mitigating factors that need to be considered.” (READ MORE)
McQ: Iraq, Democrats and the Netroots “While it is certainly Harry Reid who is taking the brunt of the fallout from the ineffectiveness of the Democratic Congress to end the war in Iraq, he isn’t the only one who made the promises. But he is, at least, acknowledging that in order to gain the power they have, they certainly overpromised: ‘Reid said however that Democrats, saddled with a thin majority in Congress, had raised unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the war, among supporters who powered their takeover of Congress last year. ‘We set the bar too high,’ he said, noting that under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes in the 100 seat chamber to thwart Republican blocking tactics.’” (READ MORE)
Kim Zigfeld: Comes a Humanitarian “If somebody had told you twenty years ago that within five years the mighty USSR would collapse like a house of cards and the cold war would end, you probably would have laughed at them. Suppose they'd then told you that less than a decade after the collapse, the people of Russia would freely elect a proud KGB spy as their second-ever president, and sit idly by whilst he (1) assumed control over the national media, (2) abolished local elections and elections to the upper house of parliament, (3) jailed his leading rival (in Siberia, no less) and quite possibly (4) blew up a couple of apartment buildings full of innocent people to justify war in Chechnya and ordered contract hits on a series of public critics of his regime. Probably, you would have called for the men in white coats, wouldn't you?” (READ MORE)
Paul Mirengoff : A living constitution or a suicide pact? “I've been too busy at work to comment (except for a very early morning appearance on Bill Bennett's radio show) about the Fourth Circuit's decision in the al-Marri case. The case basically holds that a terrorist lawfully in the U.S. cannot be detained without a trial if he never took the ‘battlefield’ against U.S. forces and if he was not sent here by the government of a nation we're at war with. This decision is the latest evidence that our courts can't be trusted to take a serious interest in the war on terror -- a war upon which our national security (and maybe even survival) depends.” (READ MORE)
Fjordman: Why Transnational Multiculturalism is a Totalitarian Ideology “Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre recently participated in a conference with editors and journalists from all over the world on how to ‘report diversity’ in a non-offensive manner, with Arab News from Saudi Arabia as one of the moderators. The Cartoon Jihad the year before had prompted Indonesia and Norway to join forces and promote a Global Inter-Media Dialogue. In June 2007 this was held in Oslo.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: 1920 Revolution Brigades turns on al Qaeda in Diyala “As the U.S. and Iraqi forces gear up to conduct a push into Diyala province, the heart of al Qaeda's stronghold in Iraq, a prominent Sunni insurgent group has turned on the terror group in the city of Buhriz. CNN reported the 1920 Revolution Brigade has battled with al Qaeda in the city and driven them out. The 1920 Revolution Brigade and the U.S. have come to an agreement that the armed groups will stay off the streets in the daylight, while the U.S. Army is coordinating activities, establishing the Sunni insurgents as local police forces and providing equipment such as radios.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Tony Blair's Speech On The Media Of Today “Tony Blair gave a great speech yesterday in which he began with ‘This speech is not a complaint. It is an argument.’ and ‘A free media is a vital part of a free society, you only need to look at where such a free media is absent to know this truth.’ But then proceeds to lay out the huge fundamental change in the media of today, and how it effects everyday life: ‘You have to respond to stories also in real time. Frequently the problem is as much assembling the facts as giving them. Make a mistake and you quickly transfer from drama into crisis. In the 1960s the government would sometimes, on a serious issue, have a Cabinet that would last two days. It would be laughable to think you could do that now without the heavens falling in before lunch on the first day.’” (READ MORE)
Fortress of Solitude: Here come the Government mandates “This will be short, because the idiocy contained in this news story lends itself to nothing more than brief commentary. A local Denver news outlet is reporting that the city Government is preparing to take major steps in fighting the all-consuming Global Warming. The author of the piece, Stuart Steers, decided to begin his report by lying. Here is the opening paragraph:” (READ MORE)
ChickenHawk Express: LCpl Sharratt Passed Polygraph But NCIS Failed to Investigate Backgrounds of "Civilians" – UPDATED “Every day I learn something knew. Some days its good stuff. Some days its trivial stuff. Then there are days like today when I learn something that makes my blood boil and my stomach churn. In Lance Cpl Justin Sharratt's Article 32 Hearing today, the NCIS investigator gave some disturbing testimony. Part of her testimony was disturbing because it highlighted just how biased the media has been in reporting the Haditha incident investigation...” (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Bush Did What Gore Wanted Done “A lot has been written about the war on terror and the Iraq phase and some of the issues involved with Iraq were cited as reasons people elected Democrats back to the majority. People are generally followers and most either lack the education or the ability to review history and to learn from the past. In this particular case Democrats were able to blast the war and talk about bringing the troops home in disgrace (how are they doing on that?). This despite the fact that most Democrats in Congress voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: UPDATED: Al Qaeda Fails Sexual Politics “Dr. David Kilcullen serves as General David Petraeus’ chief adviser on counter-insurgency warfare. A former Australian infantry officer thoroughly versed in the cultural and historical contexts that that shape people’s perceptions and influence their opinions, Kilcullen assesses the cultural implications of Coalition ‘words and deeds’ (political and military operations). He’s a genuine soldier-scholar.” (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