A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention updated throughout the day…so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
The Birth of Kosovo - When Slovenia declared independence in 1991, Belgrade sent in tanks. When Croatia and Bosnia did the same, the Serbs started wars that left a quarter million dead. So Serbia's resort to violent rhetoric in response to Kosovo's declaration of independence yesterday counts as a kind of Balkan progress. (READ MORE)
National Rock - Creditor, guarantor, owner: The British taxpayer's relationship with Northern Rock evolved yet again when the government announced yesterday that it would nationalize the stricken mortgage lender. The move is the least bad of Whitehall's dwindling set of options. As such, it is an indictment of Gordon Brown's handling of this debacle from the very beginning. (READ MORE)
Independence Is Proclaimed By Kosovo - PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb. 17 -- A new state emerged from the long and bloody unraveling of Yugoslavia when the Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence on Sunday. Its ethnic Albanian leaders promised to embrace Kosovo's embittered Serb minority and forge a multiethnic, democratic nation. (READ MORE)
It's All Uphill From Here - It was 15 degrees outside on a wind-whipped Pennsylvania Avenue as Hillary Clinton, smile firmly fixed in place, made an early-morning stop for a primary she didn't have a prayer of winning. (READ MORE)
Woman Sets Off Suicide Bomb In Shiite Area Of Baghdad - BAGHDAD, Feb. 17 -- A suicide bomber detonated her explosives in a commercial area in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad on Sunday morning, the latest in a string of attacks by female bombers in Iraq. (READ MORE)
In U.S., Much Interest in Pakistani Election but Few Options - Terrorist attacks, civil upheaval and a parliamentary election today that will probably shape the battle against radical extremism have moved Pakistan to the hottest of front burners within the Bush administration. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
THE PATRIOTMAN 1787: Is John McCain Fit to be President? - [W]hen a man offers himself to be the President of the United States, the people should have a right to be certain that that man is who and what he says he is. To know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before they're asked to vote for him. Before they're asked to give an ordinary man the keys to the most extraordinary power on Earth. That's what the Presidency represents and ideally, only a man of unimpeachable character, courage and wisdom should ever sit behind the Oval Office desk. The aim here is to talk to those of you who put the future of the Republic above the success, failure or even the reputation of any individual. It is not to trash John McCain. (READ MORE)
Augean Stables: Mughniyeh Is Finally Killed- And Fisk Attacks Bush - Imad Mughniyeh, one of leading terrorist masterminds of our times, was killed by an unknown party last week. Perhaps by Israel, perhaps America, quite possibly another Arab terrorist group. Predictably, there were those who were not thrilled by the death a man responsible for hundreds of deaths of Westerners. Old friend Robert Fisk took the opportunity to attack- who else - President Bush and compared the United States military to al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: The Democratic Sell-Out - Robert Novak pulls together the politics of the Democratic refusal to call the Senate's bipartisan FISA reform bill to the House floor last week. Instead of taking a vote that Blue Dog Democrats has assured her would pass on that bill, Pelosi tried embarrassing the White House by voting for a 21-day extension to the current reform bill -- and that failed, with some Blue Dogs opposing it along with the Republicans, as well as some hard-Left Representatives that oppose FISA reform outright. Why did Pelosi tube the bill that would have easily passed and therefore extended the protections passed by a Democratic Congress last year? Lots of reasons, and they're all green: (READ MORE)
The Captains Journal: Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda - Admiral Michael Mullen recently made serious and ominous predictions in recent congressional testimony. “Defense Department officials told members of Congress on Wednesday that Al Qaeda was operating from havens in “undergoverned regions” of Pakistan, which they said pose direct threats to Europe, the United States and the Pakistani government itself. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted in written testimony that the next attack on the United States probably would be made by terrorists based in that region.” (READ MORE)
Blue Star Chronicles: Nub the Iraqi Dog Travels 70 Miles to Find His Marine - Major Brian Dennis was serving in Iraq when a local dog took up with him. The dog’s ears had been cut off when it was a pup so Major Dennis named him Nub. Nub came around for months and obviously liked hanging out with the Marines. One day Major Dennis found a deep puncture wound on Nub. It had been inflicted on Nub with a screwdriver. Dennis and the other Marines nursed Nub back to health. No wonder Nubs loves his Marines and was willing to do whatever he had to do to find them when their unit was relocated ….. (READ MORE)
Big Dog: The Old White Party, Now That’s Rich - Frank Rich, one of the idiots at the New York Times, has an opinion piece entitled The Grand Old White Party, where he discusses the GOP and John McCain. He depicts the GOP as a bunch of angry white men who exploit blacks in the south and southern racism in order to hold onto to power. With Rich, everything that happened in history is racially motivated. Rich seems to think that Barack Obama brings a fresh face to politics and that fresh face shows the GOP to be even more tied to its “racist” past than before. (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Do You Feel as Safe? - Nancy Pelosi say's that as of 12:00 this morning you were just as safe as you were at 11:59pm last night (Eastern Standard Time). However, that one minute was a big one. In that minute most of the intelligence collections folks in the US lost a lot of leeway in how they collect intelligence. As I wrote last Monday, some Democrats, namingly Speaker Pelosi are more interested in protecting lawyers and terrorists than they are you. Evidently those Democrats are in the House, since the Senate passed a terrorist surveillence bill by a veto proof majority (68-29) earlier in the week, and sent it to the House. The Speaker refused to allow it to come to the floor, for a vote though. (READ MORE)
Discerning Texan: Danger: You're in a Gun Free Zone - When I got my carry license, it was not so that I could play supercop, or be some kind of cowboy. It was because there are home invaders, street thugs, terrorists, and psychos out there swimming in the "ocean" that is our society. Every now and then a person can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if I am ever unlucky enough to be one of those people, I want to be in a position to change the situation. I hope I never have to pull that trigger, excluding the range. But if I do, it won't be because I want to be some hero; it will be because I value my life and the lives of those close to me. (READ MORE)
Dr. Sanity: A Conspiracy of Silence - Most family therapists are familiar with the "conspiracy of silence" that occurs in families desperate to avoid an unpleasant realty or painful truth. For example, it can be seen in the unwillingness to talk about a catastrophe or death; to pretend even, that the traumatic event never occurred. The movie Ordinary People showed the destructive power of this kind of silence on one member of a family, which eventually split apart the entire family. The conspiracy can descend when there is sexual abuse going on within the family and other members look away and act like everything is normal, ignoring even the most blatant warning signs. The phrase has also been used to describe the indifference of onlookers when some terrible event is happening to others (e.g., Darfur) and they lift no finger to help. (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: Text Messages Don't Stop Crime - A futile effort, to say the least: “In the event of an emergency on North Carolina State University's campus, officials would send out text messages to faculty, students and staff. Getting people to sign up to receive the ‘WolfAlert’ messages is another issue.” The plans being used will do very little to stop the next Virginia Tech or NIU. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Left vs. left - It is fun to watch the intramural battle over Obama’s plagiarism. A speech by Barack Obama sounded a lot like a speech by Deval Patrick, the New York Times and many, many others reported. This has divided the left into 2 camps. The insanely defensive of Obama vs. the insanely offended by Obama. Kick back and enjoy the show. (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: Time for an Attitude Adjustment - “Neither new laws nor more funding is the solution for the current week of riots.” - For the last week or so “youths” have been rioting in Denmark, burning cars, stoning ambulances, torching schools, and engaging in all the other high-spirited activities that the “youths” of Europe have become notorious for in the last few years. The latest Danish intifada started out as an eruption of the autonomer, the young anarchist punks associated with Ungdomshuset. Muslim teenage gangs soon joined in the fun, later justifying it by citing the republication of the Motoons as an offense to their religious sensibilities. The Danish government and average Danish citizens are not willing to put up with all this nonsense, and are now discussing the best ways to deal with it. (READ MORE)
Gribbit: Why Do We Care About Iran’s Nuke Ambitions? - Because there is nothing more dangerous than a psychotic paramilitary gorilla with a new toy. The first thing they will do is use it. Have you ever taken a 5 year old shopping for a toy? Once it is bought that kid can’t wait to get the wrapper off so they can play with it right? That is the same thing with terrorists. Need proof? Well here it is. A couple of weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Che Guevara said… “‘The solutions to the world’s problems lie behind the Iron Curtain,’ stressed Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara who often signed his correspondence with the moniker ‘Stalin II’. ‘If the nuclear missiles had remained we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City,” he boasted. “The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.’” (READ MORE)
Bryan Preston: Hillary’s people are just now learning about the Texas primary rules? - I tossed this story in headlines but then the thought occurred to me that it might be evidence of one of the Hillary campaign’s problems. It might be evidence that one of Hillary’s core tendencies, which is to promote people to power based on gender and personal loyalty as opposed to competence, has come around to bite her. Check this out, from the WaPo: “Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are worried that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her among Hispanic voters there, creating a new obstacle for her in the must-win presidential primary contest.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Taliban strike again in Kandahar - As the death toll in Sunday’s suicide bombing at a dog fight in Kandahar topped 100 Afghanis, the Taliban struck for the second time in two days in the southeastern province. A suicide bomber rammed his car into a Canadian Army convoy passing through the border town of Spin Boldak. The attack killed 37 and wounded more than 30, many of them critically, said Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province. "A white Toyota Corolla car rammed the second vehicle in the (military) convoy as it passed through the bazaar," said Abdul Hakim, a witness to the attack told CTV. "Then there was a huge explosion." (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Tort$$$ Trump Terrorism - Fascinating report from the guy who brought you the tale of nepotism, incompetence and agenda-shoving that was Plamegate. Turns out the Dem Cong weren’t simply interested in gratuitous Bush-bashing last week when they could have been seeing to our national security. They were interested in money. Novak: “A closed-door caucus of House Democrats last Wednesday took a risky political course. By 4 to 1, they instructed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call President Bush’s bluff on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to continue eavesdropping on suspected foreign terrorists.” (READ MORE)
neo-neocon: Whatever happened to those benchmarks? - The Iraqi Parliament has passed some new and potentially significant laws. This particular event should have been the lead article on the front page of every newspaper. It should have been the big subject of all the talk shows. It ought to have been acknowledged by every critic of the surge—you know, the ones who initially said the surge wouldn’t work before it even began. The ones who then said Petraeus was lying about the drop in casualties. The ones who then said that it didn’t mean anything anyway because after all, the Iraqi legislature hadn’t met the proper benchmarks that would indicate political progress and reconciliation. However, here’s how it played on the network news programs. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Money talks - We were fortunate that Al Gore resided in the US when he invented the Internet: Being first kids on the block, our infrastructure built out more rapidly than the rest of the world, which now mostly uses US switches and hubs to pass telecom data from place to place. That lucky historical happenstance means that terrorism-related communications between Master Blaster in Beirut or Islamabad and the mentally deficient splodeydope on the wet end of the stick in Baghdad or Tel Aviv might well pass through New York, Miami or Los Angeles. Juicy pickings for the clever dicks at NSA, and after those towers came down on a bright September morning not so very long ago, the agency’s lawyers argued that communications between Master Blaster and any surviving stateside sympaticos of Mohammed Atta, et al might be worth a sniff as well. (READ MORE)
Reverse Spin: Listen to Grossman - Predictably, the news media primarily is talking about gun control in the wake of the Northern Illinois University tragedy. It only takes a few seconds to realize there is no law that was going to stop the killer. Rather than listen to the MSM’s mindless reflex, people ought to be listening to Lt. Col. David Grossman. Grossman has one of the sharpest minds in America. He is a national recognized expert on the root causes of violence and trains law enforcement on how to deal with crisis situations. Two of Grossman’s observations are relevant here. The first is that colleges need to increase their police presence. (READ MORE)
Soccerdad: What if it were palestine? - Three years ago I mocked a New York Times editorial that demanded that Kosovo show that it deserves its independence. I don’t know that Kosovo has demonstrated its worthiness or not. The Palestinian Authority - whether the Hamas section or the Fatah section - has not shown its worthiness despite the aid that the West continues to lavish upon it. So now that the NYT reports Kosovo declares its independence from Serbia. “The province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, sending tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians streaming through the streets to celebrate what they hoped was the end of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.Kosovo’s bid to be recognized as Europe’s newest country — after a civil war that killed 10,000 people a decade ago and then years of limbo under United Nations rule — was the latest episode in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, 17 years after its dissolution began. It brings to a climax a showdown between the West, which argues that Serbia’s brutal subjugation of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, and the Serbian government and its allies in the Kremlin. They counter that Kosovo’s independence is a reckless breach of international law that will spur other secessionist movements across the world.” I have to wonder: what if it were Palestine? What if it was Mahmoud Abbas who declared independence? (READ MORE)
Midnight Sun: California: Destroying the Sexual Innocence of 5-Year-Olds - 600,000 children of alarmed parents are predicted to leave Californian schools this year. If you don’t see anything wrong with the grand scale destruction of the sexual innocence of young children, pass this post by. “Arnold Schwarzenegger has mandated a new law in California which will force teachers to advocate a homosexual, transsexual and other alternative sexual lifestyles to children from the age of five.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Signs Of Progress On The Illegal Alien Front - Two stories came out over the last week, showing that we are, indeed, making progress on the illegal alien problem. First up, there was this story from the New York Times about how many illegal aliens are fleeing the state. The hook on this story is that legal immigrants are leaving, too -- they are following their illegal relatives. This is a reversal of what had become the standard model -- one alien comes here illegally, starts making some money, and then brings their relatives in after them. In this case, the illegal alien is once again blazing the trail across the border, but this time to the south -- and the legal ones, unwilling to be separated from their illegal kin, are packing up and following. Despite what the New York Times says, this is a GOOD trend. (READ MORE)
Jay Fraser: An Important Public Private Partnership - Last week there was a rash of disturbing conspiracy theory misinformation about an organization called Infragard, a public-private partnership of the FBI and local businesses around the country. Chapter members are primarily involved in critical infrastructure and specifically cyber security in their communities, although other security-oriented companies are also involved. The organization is made up of a range of people from large companies like utility companies, to small companies like my own. Yes, I am a member of Infragard. Meetings are also populated by a number of agents from the local F.B.I. office from the cyber security arena. (READ MORE)
Pete Hegseth: A Friend's View from the Front - I recently received an email from a childhood friend—1LT Nick Denny—who is wrapping up a tour as an infantry executive officer in Baghdad. Nick spent the last nine months "inside the surge" and has witnessed events in Iraq first hand. Nick is one of my best, best friends on the planet, and if I know one thing about him, he tells it like it is. Nick has been skeptical of the American approach in Iraq, as many of us have at one point or another. But now, having nearly completed a tour in Iraq, he is convinced of the need to complete what we've started. (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