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)
Plutonium on the Euphrates -- II - We finally know what Israel bombed in the Syrian desert on September 6 last year, and it isn't pretty. After seven months of silence, the Bush Administration confirmed last week that the target was a nuclear reactor being built with the aid of North Korea. (READ MORE)
Rev. Wright's Return - Anyone raised amid the wisdom of mothers knows well the dictum that "some people just talk too much." Meet the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. At the moment, Rev. Wright is out in public saying whatever happens to be on his mind. It is not a coincidence that at least some of what is on Rev. Wright's mind and tongue may be pushing Barack Obama's presidential candidacy into a ditch. (READ MORE)
Photo Finish - The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states can mandate photo identification at the polls without violating the Constitution. The ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is a big deal, and not merely because it continues a welcome trend on the Court of deferring to elected bodies. (READ MORE)
From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo - GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, April 28 -- The Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases appeared Monday at the controversial U.S. detention facility here to argue on behalf of an accused terrorist that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics... (READ MORE)
High Court Upholds Indiana Law On Voter ID - The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states may require voters to present photo identification before casting ballots, opening the way for wider adoption of a measure that Republicans say combats fraud and Democrats say discourages voting among the elderly and the poor. (READ MORE)
For Chinese, a Shift in Mood, From Hospitable to Hostile - BEIJING, April 28 -- At an airport in northeast China, a young security guard recently spotted a foreign airline passenger with shaving cream in his carry-on bag. "No," he said sternly, wagging his finger like a cross schoolteacher. "No, no, no." (READ MORE)
Now Boarding at BWI: Security With Hint of Calm - Soothing blue lights. Light background noise. Brightly dressed employees who have been trained to create a "calmer environment." A hip spa, right? No. This is how top government officials imagine the airport security checkpoint of the future. (READ MORE)
Still More Lamentations From Jeremiah - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs yesterday: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." (READ MORE)
Karzai was warned of assassination plot - President Hamid Karzai was warned of a weekend assassination plot against him, Afghanistan's intelligence chief said today, while admitting that failings by the security services allowed militants to launch the attack. (READ MORE)
Barbour touts moderate McCain - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour yesterday said that he is too conservative to be John McCain's running mate but that the Arizona senator's maverick reputation will help him in an election in which moderates and independents will be more important than in recent years. (READ MORE)
Truckers take fuel fight to D.C. - Struggling truckers staged a soggy protest on Capitol Hill yesterday to draw attention to the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel. The truckers blared their horns and held up signs in cab windows protesting high diesel prices saying, "Enough is enough." But they might as well have been protesting the global economics of the declining dollar. (READ MORE)
Female soldiers step up to fill combat roles - Capt. Yolanda Lee, a stoic D.C. native stationed at the D.C. Armory with the National Guard, is not easily given to tears. In fact, this 32-year-old officer had sworn a subordinate to secrecy after she uncharacteristically broke down with emotion after losing "one of my soldiers" during a roadside bombing in Iraq. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Thomas Sowell: An Old Newness - Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits -- one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach. Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner's 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000. (READ MORE)
Dennis Prager: PBS, Bill Moyers and the Rev. Wright - When Air America, the left-wing talk radio network, began, I predicted that it would not succeed. One of the main reasons I gave was that liberals already had their views expressed in the mainstream news media -- the major networks, PBS and NPR (National Public Radio), and just about every major city newspaper. Therefore, the need liberals have for liberal talk radio is nowhere near the need conservatives have for conservative talk radio. To its credit, The New York Times -- through its public editor -- has acknowledged that the Times is liberal; and anyone intellectually honest understands this is true regarding virtually all of the news media. (READ MORE)
Bill Murchison: The Proxy Presidential Campaign - Politics is crazier even than we sometimes think. Half the time, it seems, instead of addressing issues of great solemnity with the attention they deserve -- foreign foes, energy supplies, government overspending -- we talk endlessly about ... would you believe Jeremiah Wright? What on earth? The Barnum & Bailey of the black church as center ring attraction in the presidential campaign? Not lastingly so, perhaps. These fads pass. And yet over the last few days of April, Barack Obama's pastor went around the country -- from the Bill Moyers show to Dallas to Washington, D.C. -- calling into question the state of American race relations, not to mention the suitability for the presidency of the half-black, half-white candidate offering change we can believe in. (READ MORE)
George Will: The Gift That Keeps on Giving - WASHINGTON -- Because John McCain and other legislators worry that they are easily corrupted, there are legal limits to the monetary contributions that anyone can make to political candidates. There are, however, no limits to the rhetorical contributions that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can make to McCain's campaign. Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question arises: Can persons opposed to Barack Obama's candidacy justly make use of Wright's invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The answer is: Certainly, because Wright's paranoias tell us something -- exactly what remains to be explored -- about his 20-year parishioner. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: The Rev. Wright Just Can't Help Himself - When it comes to the connection between Barack Obama and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright -- or to John McCain's various positions on whether criticizing Obama for his relationship with Wright is fair game -- my head is spinning. At first, the Obama defenders said Jeremiah Wright doesn't speak for Obama. Not only have Obama's ill-wishers taken Wright's statements out of context but they have unfairly imputed those statements to Obama. Next, we witnessed the beginning of the Jeremiah Wright rehabilitation tour. He appeared on Bill Moyers' show, endeavoring to present himself as a calm, reasonable person whose statements had been twisted against him. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: Will the Right Sit It Out? - If John McCain wins the presidency, his comeback -- after the bankrupt debacle his campaign had become in the summer of 2007 with his backing of the amnesty bill -- will be the stuff of legend. And as nominee, he is entitled to conduct his own campaign and be cut slack by a party whose brand name is now Enron. That said, McCain seems to have decided to win by love-bombing the Big Media and putting miles between himself and the base. Consider his "Forgotten Places" tour of last week. It began in Selma, Ala., where McCain went to Edmund Pettis Bridge to hail John Lewis and the marchers night-sticked and hosed down by the Alabama State Troopers on the Montgomery march for voting rights. (READ MORE)
Chuck Norris: Border Fence Fiasco - This past week, Customs and Border Protection officials reported that two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff approved a $20 million virtual fence along a 28-mile stretch in Arizona (called Project 28), the fence was scrapped as impractical and ineffective. Is anyone really shocked by this security fence fiasco? Another government solution bites the dust. While border patrols and homeland security have made some headway, our nation's boundaries, ports and airports remain largely open runways for illegal and terrorist transport. For example, Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico just sent out his "Newsletter Update" (April 21, 2008) reminding us about another type of illegal crossing: those from the United States to Mexico! (READ MORE)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison: Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake - The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." When Congress passed legislation to greatly expand America's commitment to biofuels, it intended to create energy independence and protect the environment. But the results have been quite different. America remains equally dependent on foreign sources of energy, and new evidence suggests that ethanol is causing great harm to the environment. In recent weeks, the correlation between government biofuel mandates and rapidly rising food prices has become undeniable. (READ MORE)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Incoherence on Deterrence - In response to questions about the Iranian nuclear threat, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has recently adopted a dramatic stance. She has taken to talking about how, if she were President, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacks our friends in the region with nuclear weapons. When asked during her most recent debate with Barak Obama in Philadelphia whether an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would result in an American nuclear attack on Iran, Senator Clinton responded: “Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States.” (READ MORE)
Jim Addison: Newspaper circulation continues to tank - The Audit Bureau of Circulation has released circulation figures on the nation's top twenty newspapers, and the overall news isn't good. ABC is an independent organization which measures paid circulation of participating newspapers and magazines. They are necessary to verify to advertisers that the numbers being quoted are accurate. The Associated Press list of all twenty newspapers' performances over the last year shows the top two publications, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, with very slight gains over the previous year. The rest are slipping. (READ MORE)
McQ: Gas tax rumble an very important indicator - The argument between the presidential candidates over whether to suspend the federal gas tax in a time of high fuel prices provides a window into their thoughts about the role, size and purpose of government. Or said another way, who or what they have the most concern for. John McCain wants to suspend it, at least for the summer, to give consumers, nation wide, a break by lessening the price at the pump, where consumers are most directly impacted. The amount may not be huge, and the impact per family may not be that large, but what it indicates, at least to me, is an understanding that government must serve the people, that government must sacrifice and that it must tighten its belt before it asks citizens to tighten theirs. (READ MORE)
Jon Henke: The Value of the Extended Democratic Primary - Congressional Quarterly says some Republicans believe the drawn-out Democratic primary campaign is going to hurt Democrats in the general election... “When the returns from Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary rolled in last week, they cast a ray of hope into, of all places, the doleful offices of the people plotting this year's Republican congressional campaign. [...] Their calculation is that, if the Clinton vs. Obama contest drags on for months more, with each senator working to damage the other in search of an advantage, both will end up bloodied and bruised no matter which one is awarded the nomination.” I think this is a seriously misguided calculation. (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Among the Gun-Toters - Barcepundit channels Brit shock at the tranquility of bloodthirsty, armed-to-the-teeth American society. Not only are they surprised to find how civil, restrained and sober we are in our public conduct compared to old Blighty. I think I’ve already mentioned that a Brit I know who dwells among us colonials says visiting friends also like the way we jingoistically fly American flags all over the place. Unabashed expressions of national pride being rare over there, and the unequivocal statement of whose turf upon which they stand being heartwarming and charming. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Gas tax follies continue - Truckers rolled into Washington DC to protest the price of a fill-up, while Barack Obama continued to oppose both Hillary Clinton and John McCain on a gas-tax “holiday”. Obama’s opposition to the gas-tax holiday has allowed Hillary to argue that Obama is an out-of-touch elitist who doesn’t understand the needs of the common American. Yet her own plan would merely replace that tax with another, more onerous tax, neither of which addresses the root problem of high gas prices (via Memeorandum): (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Obamacare previewed - Speedy health care: 42% of Canadians in Ontario can now get an MRI in only 3 ½ months. And for 72%, a CT scan can be taken within 2 months. Knee replacements used to take 63 weeks. Now, thanks to fast action by Ontario’s government, the wait is down to 44 weeks (10 months). Well, for 73% of the people. This report by the Ontario government is online now. In its introduction, it stated: (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Good lord: Hillary requests $2.3 billion in earmarks - That Woodstock museum isn’t going to just pay for itself, pal. “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for 2009, almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator this year…Clinton’s huge earmark requests have some speculating that the former first lady is preparing for a soft landing should she lose the Democratic primary to Obama and refocus her energy on winning a third Senate term…” This would have been a sweet talking point during the general election; too bad she had to go and tank on us in the primary. (READ MORE)
Dr. iRack: The Big O - In 2003-2004, when he was the Division commander for the 4th ID in Iraq, Ray Odierno was widely criticized for for being overly kinetic and not understanding COIN. The now classic critique of Odierno is the one provided in Tom Ricks’ Fiasco, but even before Ricks piled on, Dexter Filkins wrote a brilliant and scathing piece for the NYT Magazine critiquing the culture of “lethality” that Odierno encouraged during the first year of the war. When Petraeus was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, he reportedly made the Filkins piece required reading for all officers as a case study in how not to conduct COIN. (READ MORE)
Winds of Change: The Emergence of Intolerant Islam - In numerous talks I gave at research centres and universities in Europe and North America, I tried to introduce my audience to what I call “Turkish-Egyptian Islam” which, until the nineteen forties, stood as a unique example of tolerance and flexibility. Muslims have known extremely tolerant societies but always outside the Arabian Peninsula, in countries like Egypt, Syria, Andalusia and the Arab Maghreb. Under the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslims enjoyed more protection than any other minority living anywhere else in the world at the time. Christians of the Levant and Jews in these countries lived in conditions very similar to the ones in which the Muslim subjects of the empire were living. Even when they were persecuted by certain rulers, like Al-Hakem bi Amr Allah, it was part of a general policy that made no distinction between non-Muslims and Muslims. (READ MORE)
Westhawk: Al Kibar show how bad proliferation has become - Last week’s revelation by the U.S. government about the nature of the destroyed nuclear reactor at al-Kibar, Syria showed how bad the nuclear proliferation problem has become. (See this story from the New York Times for the U.S. government’s video presentation. And see this transcript of a briefing delivered by senior U.S. government intelligence officials.) The IAEA expressed outrage that it was cut out of doing its job by the Israeli and U.S. governments. But after the IAEA’s abject failures in Iraq (before 1991), North Korea, and now Iran, even arms control advocates have lost hope in the agency’s relevancy. The nuclear non-proliferation system has collapsed. But what will replace it remains unknown. (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: Barack Obama, Meet Chris Wallace - Barack Obama seems to be very difficult to dislike. Instead of treating Fox News like enemy combatants, he decided to go on and give a lengthy interview with Chris Wallace. Yes, this is the same Chris Wallace that turned Bill Clinton into a finger waving crybaby. While I have consistently stated that I am voting for John McCain, I have tried to cover debates and appearance as a dispassionate observer. Barack Obama has had some terrible performances as of late, with his worst being in the Pennsylvania debate. It is with this detached focus that I evaluate his performance being interviewed by Chris Wallace. Obama simply shined. There is no way around it. As bad as he has been lately, he was that good in this interview. (READ MORE)
Jay Fraser: Unmarked Border – Dangerous Border? - In the context of border security and the continuing debate over the “wall” (physical or virtual), the following story raises an interesting contrast in the ways in which the U.S. and Mexico protect their national sovereignty. In fact, the dichotomy is striking. Recently, a California based ecologist inadvertently crossed the boundary between Mexico and the U.S. near El Centro California. How did that happen? There is no fence, and only widely spaced cement markers delineating the unmarked border. While there is no question that the mistaken identity of the ecologist and a fugitive drug runner who had been crisscrossing the border to elude capture played a role in the incident, his first person account is nothing if its not frightening, and certainly shows how the Mexican government protects its borders from encroachment. (READ MORE)
TigerHawk: Quieting William Gray - Noted hurricane forecaster William Gray says that Colorado State University cut its support for the publicity of Gray's forecasts because of his famous skepticism about anthropogenic global warming dogma. CSU denies the charge, and says the problem is that the media relations around Gray's forecasts have become so demanding that it does not have the resources to promote them any more. Rank speculation based on watching university bureaucracies muddle through over the years: The truth is somewhere in the middle. Reading between the lines of the story, it looks like it might be a gambit to keep Gray's younger colleague and partner from jumping ship to another university. (READ MORE)
Mark Steyn: MRS GRIEVANCE - Michelle, ma belle: these are words that go together well. She looks fabulous, like a presidential spouse out of some dream movie - glossy hair, triple strand of pearls, vaguely retro suits that subtly remind you she'd be the most glamorous First Lady since Jackie Kennedy. Michelle, "fear", "cynicism", "corporate America", "downright mean": these are words that go together more problematically. Mrs Obama is most famous for declaring, a propos her husband's candidacy, that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country". Just a throwaway line reflecting no more than the narcissism and self-absorption required to mount a presidential campaign in the 21st century? (READ MORE)
Smooth Stone: First Time: UN Hears from Jewish Refugees of Arab Lands - UN Watch Testifies Before UN Human Rights Council on Forgotten Refugees The history of Palestinian refugees deserves international attention. So does the history of one million Jewish refugees from the Arab-Israel conflict. Yet the United Nations has devoted countless resolutions and debates to only one side of this story, completely ignoring the other. For the first time ever in the UN Human Rights Council, at its recently concluded session, the suffering of Jewish refugees from Arab lands was also placed on the international agenda. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Congress adopted a historic resolution recognizing that all victims of the conflict must be treated equally. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: A Question For An Enterprising Reporter To Ask Barack Obama - Courtesy of Ace, Jeremiah Wright said the following yesterday, "I do not in any way disagree with James Cone. Jim is a personal friend of mine." Now here's Kathy Shaidle (read her while you still can, before the liberal tolerance Nazis in Canada have her thrown under the jail for disagreeing with them) on what James Cone believes, “If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. ‘Black theology,’ says Cone, ‘refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.’” (READ MORE)
Rhymes with Right: Brooklyn Shocker! - Are the authorities in New York City aware that a religious group is unlawfully abducting citizens from public streets and holding them hostage for engaging in legal activity? And would anyone care to guess the “peaceful religion” engaged in this activity? “Don’t snap a photo of the Masjid At-Taqwa in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn unless you want to be hauled away by a group of angry Muslims in Islamic attire to the basement of the facility where a group of twenty ‘security guards’ in karate suits will interrogate you. This might sound preposterous. But it happened on Saturday, April 24, at 3:00 in the afternoon.” (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: A Thomas Eagleton moment? - In his widely lauded Philadelphia speech, Barack Obama declared of Reverend Jeremiah Wright: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." It wasn't quiite up to George McGovern's expression of "1,000 percent" support for Thomas Eagleton as his running mate after revelations of his shock therapy, but it left Obama and Wright closely joined. Something about the revelation of Eagleton's shock therapy made his ultimate dumping by McGovern inevitable. Something about Wright's frank racism, among other things, now calls for some further response by Obama. It's too late for Barack Obama to have his own Sister Souljah moment with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. After Wright's performances before the NAACP in Detroit and before the National Press Club in Washington, however, it may be time for Obama's own Thomas Eagleton moment. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: The Jeremiah Code - Dan Brown has made oodles of money twisting the tenets of Christianity (in general) and the Catholic church (in particular) into something nearly unrecognizable the better to cudgel it for being so twisted. That sells a lot of books to folks holding a generalized loathing, dread and ignorance on the topic of godbothering christers (among others), even if it does depend upon some rather creative re-writing of history. I suppose a fellah has to make a living somehow, and it beats selling crack to school kids. Which somehow brings to mind the aptly named Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Barack Obama’s Chicago church, and a man whose serial jeremiads on the real and imagined sins of white and middle class America came so awkwardly to light six weeks ago. (READ MORE)
Neal Boortz: DAMNED EVIL RICH PEOPLE - Don't liberals just love to holler about "tax cuts for the rich?" It doesn't matter what the facts are – people just love to hear that stuff. In a country awash with achievement envy (a/k/a "wealth envy") people just love to hear that those who have accomplished more than they are going to be hammered for daring to excel. Well ... not to burst your bubble, but a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that the tax burden has been increasing on the evil rich faster than their incomes have been going up. Here's a quickie look at the figures since 1986. (READ MORE)
See-dubya: United Nations angry at BBC - Who to root against? One is an anti-semitic, state-subsidized, bloated, corrupt friend of despots and thugs and enemy of the West, and the other… Hmm. No,that won’t work, will it? Let me start again. The United Nations doesn’t like being investigated, and it doesn’t think a free press exposing its shortcomings is helpful for World Peace. Recently the BBC actually stirred itself to look into corruption by U.N. peacekeeping troops in Congo. Apparently they were speculating in local gold, detaining residents unlawfully (just like Gitmo? No, unlawfully) and according to the BBC (but denied by the UN) assisting gunrunners who were arming the rebel militias. Which gives the UN the blue-helmet blues: (READ MORE)
Tom Bowler: Maliki's political fortunes rise - The mainstream press is reluctantly coming around to a new reality on Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's decision to disarm the Shiite militias. A month ago operations against the Mahdi Army were said to be botched, succeeding only in boosting Iran's influence in the region. A supposed Iran-brokered cease fire between the Iraqi security forces and the Mahdi Army was described in press reports as a huge setback for Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. “The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Iranian General In Iraq Determines Fate of the War? - Yeah, I know, it’s McLatchy (and even worse, it’s Strobel), but given that lump o’ salt that comes with anything regarding Iraq from this source, give this a taste. The ill-informed, historical revisionists such as McLatchy and Strobel have now come to recognize that, “Yes, Iranian forces are actually in Iraq, they are killing Americans, and they are preventing the creation of a stable Iraq; preventing the withdrawal of US forces.” Of course, as usual, Strobel prefers to insert DNC talking points into a “news” article (such as the incorrect claim that the Bush Administration has sought to back a secular govt in Iraq), but the fact remains that we have a decidedly anti-Bush/anti-Iraq War source recognizing (albeit without admitting the recognition) that Iran is now the biggest stumbling block towards peace in Iraq. (READ MORE)
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