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)
Retailers Report a Crisis in All Aisles - Retailers posted the worst November sales in more than 30 years yesterday, as holiday shopping not only failed to lift the economy but showed that the financial crisis is further distressing everyday consumers. (READ MORE)
Next on Obama's Dance Card, Mother Nature - The Obama transition team, moving along smartly to fill Cabinet posts, is planning to trot out nominees as early as next week for three jobs much watched by enviros: the secretaries of energy and the interior and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (READ MORE)
Strategic Command Chief Urges Quick Nuclear Weapons Modernization - The leader of the U.S. Strategic Command said yesterday that "time is not on our side" to modernize the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, particularly as China and Russia upgrade their nuclear warheads and delivery systems. (READ MORE)
Rice Calls on Pakistanis to Act Quickly on Terrorists - RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 4 -- The United States turned up the pressure on Pakistan on Thursday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a visit here, urged the country's leaders to move forcefully against groups linked to the deadly attack last week in the Indian city of Mumbai. (READ MORE)
Lawmakers Still Not Sold on Auto Rescue - The chief executives of Detroit's automakers returned to Capitol Hill yesterday bearing austere business plans and a dose of humility, but they failed to close the deal for as much as $38 billion in federal loans. (READ MORE)
Trading The Talk for The Walk? - Chris Matthews has always admitted that his life dream was to be a senator. But now that the MSNBC host is actively exploring a run in his native Pennsylvania, he has created a thorny dilemma for his network. (READ MORE)
Sadr Movement Seeks Its Way As Others Gain Power in Iraq - BAGHDAD -- The followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr once were powerful enough to do battle against the U.S. military, play kingmaker in choosing Iraq's prime minister and declare themselves the true defenders of the country's Shiite majority. (READ MORE)
Opening at the Fed - With all the media focus on Barack Obama's new Cabinet, little attention is being paid to what is probably the most important job opening in the world. We're referring to the New York Federal Reserve Presidency, which will become vacant when Timothy Geithner moves to Treasury early next year. This job makes Commerce Secretary look like the Maldives finance minister. (READ MORE)
Some Carbon Candor - Liberal interest groups, think tanks, lobbyists, bloggers and other nuisances are inundating the incoming Obama Administration with advice, but James Hansen recently managed to say something interesting. Namely, the famous NASA scientist had the nerve to expose some of the global-warming fantasies widespread among children and politicians. (READ MORE)
Barack's Windfall Reversal - One of Barack Obama's emerging political qualities is how casually he has been dumping the ballast of his campaign promises. The latest lousy policy to go over the side is a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies. Throughout his run for President, Mr. Obama argued the industry deserved special taxation on its "excess" earnings. (READ MORE)
Employers cut 533,000 jobs in November - WASHINGTON (AP) -- Skittish employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, dramatic proof the country is careening deeper into recession. (READ MORE)
State nod helps Clinton raise funds - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is using her nomination as secretary of state to encourage supporters to give her money to pay off her presidential campaign debt, and she can continue to do so legally should she be confirmed. (READ MORE)
Court to weigh question about Obama citizenship - The Supreme Court plans to meet Friday to decide whether to hear a case that could determine whether President-elect Barack Obama ever becomes the nation's president. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
A Soldier's Mind: Blast Injury Database Created By National Guard - The National Guard has created a database to track Soldiers with blast injuries, which will hopefully improve the care they receive, both in the short-term and the long-term. The idea came when Army National Guard Director Lt. General Clyde Vaughn contacted Lt. Col. Maureen Weigl to Camp Victory to investigate how National Guard members who were exposed to blasts from IEDs or mortar fire were being tracked after their injury. During the course of her investigation, Weigel discovered that there was no long-term blast tracking in place. “‘We hadn’t been linking personnel to blast events,’ Weigl, project officer with the Army National Guard office for personnel blast/containment tracker. ‘A lot of Soldiers don’t show symptoms right away.’1” The new database began being put to use in October, in the research and development phase of the project. While it was created by the National Guard, it’s designed to be used by all branches of the military, both active duty and guard or reserve. (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: Unflinching Against Evil - I don't advocate the state-sponsored assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I do, however, believe that the U.S. government has a responsibilty to defend the nation against the abundantly-manifest evil that exists in the world. The Nazis were evil, Soviet totalitarianism was evil, Saddam Hussein was evil, and the Mumbai terrorists were evil. We defeated the former three in two hot wars and a cold one, and I hope that this nation will rise to confront the latest demonstration of evil we saw in the terrorists who massacred the innocents in India. There is evil in the world, and the United States has historically been the world's greatest bulwark against it. When we flinch, civilizations teeter on the brink. America has always been the last best hope of mankind. It's who we are, and what we do. There's no need to apologize for it, and it's criminal negligence to repudiate it. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: The Forever War - Westhawk describes a largely unnoticed but important bureaucratic change in the Department of Defense. The Pentagon has decided that irregular warfare is now co-equal with regular warfare. “After years of internal discussions, Mike Vickers, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, has hammered out a consensus inside the U.S. Defense Department that establishes the Department’s comprehensive policy for irregular warfare. Small Wars Journal has provided a copy of the new irregular warfare directive.” That change has profound implications, as Westhawk observes. One of the most important is that it recognizes the dissolution of the neat boundaries between “war” and “peace”. They are no longer binary, mutually exclusive states. Instead, they are intertwined threads in history; contemporaneous and — for the next decades at least — almost inseparable. (READ MORE)
Atlas: OBAMA BOWS, Will Make Major "Foreign Policy Speech from an Islamic capital" - Egyptian Cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal Calls on President-Elect Obama to Convert to Islam, Threatens: We Have People Who Are Eager For Death - I guess B. Hussein got the memo. This will be the first of many speeches President B. Hussein will make in these, his spiritual capitals where he wishes to express "solidarity". America has no clue who she voted for. Gird your loins folks. America will be unrecognizable after Hussein's first and last term (if we live through it). Looking for the Ideal Spot to Make a Speech NY Times (hat tip rut): “WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s aides say he is considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office. So where should he do it? The list of Islamic world capitals is long, and includes the obvious —Riyadh, Kuwait City, Islamabad — and the not-so-obvious — Male (the Maldives), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Some wise-guys have even suggested Dearborn, Mich., as a possibility.” (READ MORE)
Walid Phares: After Mumbai: Deciphering the Horizons - As the crisis between India and Pakistan is drawing the attention of the international community and the diplomatic efforts of the United States, public opinion has shown an increased interest in the Jihadi agenda in India. In this regard the Counter Terrorism community is focusing on analyzing the long term strategic agenda of the Terror forces involved in the attack. Today's panel discussion in Congress at the invitation of the Counter Terrorism Foundation opened several perspectives in projecting the next stage of the conflict. The minutes of this briefing will be useful to the growing debate about Post Mumbai. Following is a short piece published initially by Fox News.com today, raising some of the issues I discussed at the panel in Congress this morning. (READ MORE)
Pam Meister: Exclusive: The Constitution and the Presidency – Why It Matters - There’s been quite a bit of buzz on the Internet about the validity of Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency – specifically regarding his status as a natural born citizen of the United States. For those of you who have not heard about it, the suspicion is that Obama was not born in the U.S., but in Kenya – which is why he had his birth records sealed by the governor of Hawaii. Another version of this story is that while he may have been born in Hawaii, his adoption by his stepfather and residency in Indonesia resulted in his citizenship there, which he never reversed. (The United States does not recognize dual citizenship if a U.S. citizen voluntarily seeks to become a citizen of another nation.) I’m not here to suggest that there is any kind of proof that Obama is not a natural born citizen – although it is curious that he would continue to allow these rumors to escalate. (READ MORE)
Noah Shachtman: Taliban Backs Off Maximum Craziness - Here in America, we view the Taliban as a bunch of fanatics. And there's plenty of historical evidence for the wild-eyed portrait. But the Taliban are trying to transform themselves into more of a movement of national liberation, Anand Gopal reports. "The insurgents are still fighting to install a version of [Islamic] law in the country. Nonetheless, the famously puritanical guerrillas have moderated some of their most extreme doctrines, at least in principle." And that could make the Taliban tougher to beat. “Last year, for instance, Mullah Omar issued an edict declaring music and parties -- banned in the Taliban's previous incarnation -- permissible. Some Taliban commanders have even started accepting the idea of girls' education.” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Giving Hillary Clinton the Byrd - CNS: The president pro tempore may challenge the constitutionality of a Secretary of State Clinton. Well, he did vote against the appointment of Sen. William Saxbe 35 years ago as attorney general because Saxbe was in the Senate when the attorney general’s pay was raised. Under one interpretation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution, that would disqualify him. The Saxbe solution was to simply rescind the raise. No harm, no foul. CNS News reported Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s staff is exploring whether to oppose Clinton on this grounds. Byrd argued 35 years ago that the Constitution is “so clear that it can’t be waived.” I would argue that the clarity is that you cannot raise the pay and then benefit from that raise. That makes the Saxbe solution valid. (READ MORE)
Quid Nimis: The University Education - I fight a lonely battle here at home, trying to convince a well-educated (Ivy League, magna cum laude) spouse that the American university is a rather poor place to get an education these days. My mother was prescient, but then, she had an inside track. Going to graduate school in the 1960's, she had an insider's view, a mature person's view (she was in her 40's) and a skeptic's view (she was a conservative in the midst of all that radical turmoil). She told me flatly when I was applying to college, "No California." That meant any UC system school, the Pomona colleges, and Stanford (she had gone to Stanford, Whittier, and UCLA.) Little did she know that sending me to an elite private school "back East" was no assurance that I would be spared the ideologically driven, "therapeutic" approach to education that had infected the Californian schools. By the mid-70's, many liberal arts colleges had dispensed with the notion of a core curriculum and a classical education. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Triggerism, Trutherism, and Birtherism - Michelle takes a close look at the conspiracy-theory impulse on the Left, Right, and fringe today in her syndicated column. Whether one thinks that Sarah Palin has to prove her maternity of Trig or that Barack Obama has to produce a witness to his birth in Hawaii or that the 19 al-Qaeda terrorists actually flew commercial jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the real truth is that these conspiracy theories become belief systems based on conjecture and speculation rather than actual facts and evidence: “The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There’s always a convoluted excuse – some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some photographic ‘evidence’ to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels – that will rationalize irrationality. Palin could produce Trig’s umbilical cord and it still wouldn’t be enough.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Whistleblower exposes the Joe the Plumber snoopers’ cover-up - Vanessa Niekamp is the Ohio state employee who first stepped forward to call out the Joe the Plumber snoopers on their official lies. You’ll remember in late October that she publicly contradicted her superior, who falsely claimed that searches on private citizens’ records were routine if those citizens somehow came to public light. Niekamp debunked the b.s. and now she’s revealing more about the snoopers’ attempts to cover their tracks: “The state worker who unwittingly ran an improper child-support check on the man known as Joe the Plumber told lawmakers today that a deputy director later ‘dictated’ how she was supposed to cover it up. Vanessa Niekamp, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ Office of Child Support and a 15-year state employee, said that when Deputy Director Doug Thompson came into her office, ‘He appeared very upset, his neck was bright red, and he was shaking. He closed my door.’” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Second Tier - The president-elect has done a very nice job, by and large, with his senior level appointments - quality folks, mostly centrist, insiders. Keeping Gates at Defense was a master stroke - if he succeeds in Iraq/Afghanistan, it’s because Obama was smart enough to choose him. If he fails, he’s an unfortunate relic of the previous regime, damaged goods - easy to jettison. I also think it was very smart to put Hillary in State, not just politically - friends close/enemies closer - but also because she’s much better regarded after the primary grind than she was before. Even many of those who viscerally distrust her instincts and loathe the tawdriness of the Clinton legacy have to give herself credit for sheer doughtiness. And as I’ve written before, she might make peace in the Middle East just by wearing people down. Peace, yes, fine: Just get her out of my face. Much more interesting will be to see the types of people he selects to fill second and third tier political appointments. (READ MORE)
Patterico's Pontifications: Terrorists Send Message of Chaos and Death, As Some Blame U.S. Policy - The Washington Post reports on the most recent spate of torture and beheadings by the terrorists, providing a sobering reminder of exactly what kind of people we’re dealing with: “Increasingly, bodies show unmistakable signs of torture. Videos of executions are posted on the Internet, as taunts, as warnings. Corpses are dumped on playgrounds, with neatly printed notes beside them. And very often, the heads have been removed.” The article states: “As the war drags on, the violence grows bolder and more grotesque.” The article goes on to describe someone rolling five heads onto the floor of a public building two years ago. But the violence has recently stepped up: “37 people were slain over the weekend, including four children.” An expert comments: “Each method is now more brutal, more extreme than the last. To cut off the heads? That is now what they like. They are going to the edge of what is possible for a human being to do.” (READ MORE)
Dan Collins: Wherein I Am Denominated a Sociopath - In the comments section to a post by Instaputz on my post immediately below. I’ll not link it, because there’s nothing of note to see over there, but really, I think that being lectured by a guy who sits in his own piss all day telling other people that they’re stinky, it’s a bit much. The debate (which in this case would be a euphemism for much flinging of monkey poo), would go something like this. Yes, I’m a terrible person for having laughed. I imagine that you didn’t laugh when George’s fiancee on Seinfeld died from poisoning as a result of licking wedding envelopes. –Yes, but that was a fictional character! Don’t you know the difference? And I’m sure that you’ve never laughed at any Darwin Awards. –Those are given to stupid people! Stupid people deserve what they get! (READ MORE)
McQ: Climate Change: The other shoe - In case you were wondering what all this climate change conference business in Poland was about, they didn’t waste any time getting to the bottom line of the scam: “The U.N. climate change organization has said the world’s poor countries will need $130 billion dollars a year by 2030 to help them adapt to global warming and curb their carbon emissions. The U.N. says rich countries need to increase their payments over the next 20 years to six times the funds available now, which is about $21 billion.” That’s in addition to any funds expended by "rich countries" on the "problem" as well as the cost of cap-and-trade arrangements on the economies of "rich countries". (READ MORE)
The Redhunter: The Cluster Bomb Treaty - They may has well just call it the "Screw the United States Treaty" for what it amounts to. What I want to know is after they're done here if these brave souls will push for a ban on suicide bombers. Call me crazy, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that one. These people suffer from a case of serious moral confusion. It's all so typical. Here we have the mad mullahs of Iran working feverishly to obtain nuclear weapons, and when they get enough of them they'll probably nuke Israe. We have terrorists the world over building heaven knows how many suicide vests and car bombs to kill thousands of innocents. Fidel Castro wannabe Hugo Chavez seeks dictatorial powers, is arming himself to the teeth with Soviet weapons, is tied to the FARC terrorists in Columbia, and is cozying up to Iran. (READ MORE)
R.J. Godlewski: On Fighting Terrorism IV: Why do we still insist on humanizing terrorists? - I am always fascinated whenever I hear stories about my family’s “good old days” and how they shatter our childhood-era misconceptions. You know such stories; I sure that you all have examples of your own. You grow up believing that your family was as saintly as Mother Theresa and then slowly come to find episodes, which sound more like they came from The Simpsons more than reality. I, myself, knew early on that my father was a bit “unconventional” during his youth. After all, you cannot belong to a notorious street gang and not develop a reputation for mischief. However, it was my mother’s side of the family that always seemed to be the one that was stable, law-abiding, and, well, less than colorful. Boy was I wrong. We always knew that my grandfather was a heavy drinker, that he was “poisoned” once by bootleg liquor and grew violent from that day onwards. (READ MORE)
Reformed Chicks Blabbing: Atheists sue over terrorism law - OK, I'm a little conflicted about this story. I totally support the separation of church and state (no such thing as a Christian nation, Jesus said he's kingdom isn't of this world, can't impose Christian morality on unbeliever, blah, blah, blah) but I have to say that I think what this state representative did was pretty cool: “An atheists-rights group is suing the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security because state law requires the agency to stress ‘dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.’ [...] The requirement to credit God for Kentucky's protection was tucked into 2006 homeland security legislation by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a Southern Baptist minister. ‘This is recognition that government alone cannot guarantee the perfect safety of the people of Kentucky,’ Riner said last week.” (READ MORE)
ROFASix: Götterdämmerung - Remember those guys who used to walk around wearing the sandwich boards that said, "Repent, the end of the world is at hand"? It was always hard to take em' too seriously, because you knew that you could take care of yourself and your family, no matter what. But that has changed now. Just look at the questions you have been asking yourself. How do you save what little money you have accumulated when the government has pretty much said they plan to take it away through confiscatory tax policies? Can you hide your money in a jar buried in the yard or under your mattress when they come to take away your 401k and IRA as they have discussed? Who is going to look out for you and your kids as our currency becomes worthless? (READ MORE)
Cassandra: The Internet as a Responsibility-Free Zone - I think we can all agree that reasonably competent adults of average intelligence understand that even if though they may choose not to read the terms of service on sites such as MySpace, those terms continue to exist nonetheless. We cannot simply wish them away, nor can we wish away our own fundamental dishonesty if we, having been asked to agree to something and further, having been asked if we've read it before going on, click "yes" when that is in fact not true. This is what is called, in the rude parlance of personal responsibility, a "conscious decision"; much like choosing not to familiarize yourself with the warnings in your car's owners manual and then complaining about not being warned when you do something the manual expliticly warns you NOT to do. Ms. Drew, as it turns out, used someone else's MySpace account to harass young Megan; making the question of whether she violated the TOS agreement an interesting one. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: An open letter to the world media - Dear World Media, I know you’ve been very busy with much more important things, like Jews fighting Jews in Hebron (you really love when that happens), or Gaza banks closing due to Israel’s refusal to hand money over to Hamas (funny that you keep missing the part where Hamas smuggles millions of dollars in cash through the tunnels), or writing about Israel’s refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza (while ignoring utterly the restrictions the Palestinians have always had in place on journalists, which included kneecapping those who wrote critical pieces about Palestinian leaders), but I thought I would point something out to you that you appear not to notice, except when it kills someone: Hamas has been sending mortars and rockets out of Gaza on a daily basis, deliberately aiming for schoolchildren. That’s right. Every day now, just like before the so-called truce, rockets are falling on southern Israel. (READ MORE)
The Sniper: I Notice The Nazi Didn’t Get Them Jazzed Up - Islamic Rage Toy?A Lego-style Islamic terrorist figurine has sparked outrage among Muslims and others. Outrage among Muslims? I am shocked… shocked I tell you! The controversial toy mini-figure, made by American Will Chapman as part of his BrickArms line, is a masked militant with an assault rifle, grenade launcher and belt of explosives. The character is called "Bandit — Mr. White" and sells for $14. A Lego figurine with a rag on it’s head, an assault rifle, and some grenades has some Islamists feeling a little defense? But why?
“Shocked by the plaything, British Muslim organization the Ramadhan Foundation has branded the figurine ‘absolutely disgusting.’” Absolutely disgusting that we’re not getting a cut. This is a clear cut case of copyright infringement! “Chief executive Mohammed Shafiq said the toy is ‘glorifying terrorism.’” Um, and your belly bomb bearing buddies in Bagdad aren’t? (READ MORE)
Information Dissemination: Hello, It is Nice to Meet You - As you may have heard, the economy has turned south and it is impacting everyone in different ways. My employer is New York State, and as the home of Wall Street, New York has run into a budget problem. One of the very wise actions New York State is taking to compensate for the loss of funding is allowing a number of contracts to expire, including a number of consultant contracts. While my contract runs through the end of next year, many consultants are saying their goodbyes, and I for one am sad to see... well at least a few of them let go. Many of you have asked me over the last year and half who I am. The time has come to introduce myself. Galrahn is an alias for Raymond Pritchett. (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: Georgia and Minnesota have saved America - Thank you Saxby Chambliss. In advance, thank you Norm Coleman. Barack Obama will be forced to govern as a President, despite the media’s desire to turn him into a King. As bad as Election 2008 was for those that value decency, it is now not hopeless. The Democrats have 58, but they will not have 60. The republic is safe. Saxby Chambliss easily won the Georgia runoff by a margin so wide that even Al Gore could not overturn the results. Before getting to Minnesota, it is time to look at the differences between the political parties when controversy strikes. The 1960 Presidential Election between Richard Nixon and JFK was separated by a few dead people in Chicago. (READ MORE)
Wesley Pruden: An impostor in the White House? - The Supreme Court will get a first look Friday at a little bomb with the potential to make a big noise. The operative word is "potential." Almost nobody thinks the justices, who can read election returns as well as the law, will light the fuse. But it's an interesting story, nevertheless, since we have not yet actually elected a president. This may come as news to millions who voted for Barack Obama and John McCain and thought Nov. 4 was the end of it. But Nov. 4 was merely the day we elected the men and women who will meet in 50 state capitals Dec. 15 to actually elect the president. The lawsuit, Donofrio v. Wells, challenges the qualifications of Barack Obama to serve as president of the United States based on whether he is a "natural born citizen" as defined in the Constitution. The court will first decide whether to hear the merits, if any, of the question. (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: Milestone in Baghdad - The barbarism in Mumbai and the economic crisis at home have largely overshadowed an otherwise singular event: the ratification of military and strategic cooperation agreements between Iraq and the United States. They must not pass unnoted. They were certainly noted by Iran, which fought fiercely to undermine the agreements. Tehran understood how a formal U.S.-Iraqi alliance endorsed by a broad Iraqi consensus expressed in a freely elected parliament changes the strategic balance in the region. For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally. If we don't blow it with too hasty a withdrawal from Iraq, we will have turned a chronically destabilizing enemy state at the epicenter of the Arab Middle East into an ally. (READ MORE)
Michael Gerson: In Mumbai This Time - The attacks have come like the steady rhythm of a clock -- 171 dead in Mumbai. Tick. Fifty-two dead in the London bombings. Tock. One hundred ninety-one dead in the Madrid train attacks. Tick. Two hundred two in Bali, and 2,973 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Maybe this is just the risk of living in the modern world. Or maybe it is the tick of a detonator. Days after the Mumbai attacks, the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism claimed that a chemical, biological or nuclear terrorist attack is likely before the end of 2013. "Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," it concluded. People naturally tend to mentally bury such risk. Wrote T.S. Eliot: "It is hard for those who live near a Police Station/To believe in the triumph of violence." (READ MORE)
Phyllis Chesler: Take Them At Their Word Before It’s Too Late. - They hate us and plan to kill us–not only because their terrorist leaders by proxy have brainwashed them but because the Qu’ran commands them to do so. Muslim fanatics are therefore planning and leading attacks on civilians, including other Muslims, on every continent. When challenged, both their Islamist and politically correct Western supporters counter with: America and Israel have invaded Muslim holy lands, killed women and babies, and now, the “militants, gunmen, attackers, freedom fighters, terrorists” are only seeking to take back what belongs to them. But, Muslim fanatics are also demographically populating beachheads deep in the West where they are also demanding that their holidays be recognized in a more paramount way than Christian holidays are. Just yesterday, in England, a Nativity play was cancelled at a primary school because it interfered with the Muslim celebration of Eid. (READ MORE)
Kimberly A. Strassel: Obama's Environmental Test - Two down, one to go. You might think now that Barack Obama has staffed his economic and security teams, the hard choices are over. But he has one more doozy of a decision to make. And the worry is that his picks for that final, crucial team -- those overseeing energy and environmental policy -- will undo any smart moves the president-elect has made so far. It isn't yet clear Team Obama understands that it doesn't have the luxury of making a mistake here. Energy is the engine of, and inextricably linked to, the American economy. Environmental policies and regulations that punish energy markets will only deliver a further economic hit. In the process, this will damage Mr. Obama's own goals. He has picked an economic team that has already successfully discouraged him from proceeding immediately with any tax hikes. Good. But an ill-crafted cap-and-trade program that dramatically escalates energy costs is the same as a giant tax hike. (READ MORE)
Ethan A. Nadelmann: Let's End Drug Prohibition - Today is the 75th anniversary of that blessed day in 1933 when Utah became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the 21st amendment, thereby repealing the 18th amendment. This ended the nation's disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition. Celebrating the end of alcohol prohibition, Dec. 5, 1933. It's already shaping up as a day of celebration, with parties planned, bars prepping for recession-defying rounds of drinks, and newspapers set to publish cocktail recipes concocted especially for the day. But let's hope it also serves as a day of reflection. We should consider why our forebears rejoiced at the relegalization of a powerful drug long associated with bountiful pleasure and pain, and consider too the lessons for our time. The Americans who voted in 1933 to repeal prohibition differed greatly in their reasons for overturning the system. But almost all agreed that the evils of failed suppression far outweighed the evils of alcohol consumption. (READ MORE)
John Walters: Our Drug Policy Is a Success - Whatever challenges await him, President-elect Barack Obama will not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to keeping a lid on the use of illegal drugs. Our policy has been a success -- although that success is one of Washington's best kept secrets. Reported drug use among eighth, 10th and 12th graders has declined for six straight years. Teen use of cocaine, marijuana and inhalants is down significantly, while consumption of methamphetamine and hallucinogens like LSD and Ecstasy has all but collapsed. The number of workplace tests that are positive for cocaine is down sharply, to the lowest levels on record. Even the sudden spike of meth use -- remember the headlines from just a few years ago? -- has yielded to a combination of state and federal regulations controlling meth ingredients. And abroad, crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico have caused the price of cocaine to roughly double in the past two years. (READ MORE)
John Fund: Senator Jeb - The surprise news that Florida GOP Senator Mel Martinez will be retiring in 2010 at age 64 has set off a flurry of speculation about potential successors. The most intriguing name is former Governor Jeb Bush, who is reported by the Miami Herald to be considering a race. He will talk it over with his family over Christmas and make a decision soon after. Mr. Bush told Newsmax.com this week that he doesn't think the 2008 results were a "transformational" election that should prompt Republicans to propose "Democratic lite" ideas because the country is moving left. "This is basically still a center-right country," he said. He thinks Republicans should "organize ourselves in the form of a shadow government" and stand ready to offer "a loftier debate about policy" beyond partisan talking points. As a member of the Senate, Mr. Bush would be well positioned to provide just that kind of input. (READ MORE)
Navtej Dhillon: India's Materialist Middle Class Needs to Wake Up - The terrorists in Mumbai didn't just hit the epicenter of India's economy and culture. They struck the collective psyche of the country's emerging middle class. As millions of newly prosperous Indians watched the carnage unfold, they were reminded that no matter how wealthy their country grows, they cannot escape the regional conflict with Pakistan and domestic sectarian divides. India now confronts two critical, and existential, challenges: how to maintain stability in the face of persistent Pakistani instability; and how to openly address the grievances of its large and marginalized Muslim population without being soft on Islamic extremism. For decades Indian officials had bemoaned their "hyphenation disorder" where the West saw India mostly in terms of its relation to Pakistan and the conflict over Kashmir. But recently India had imagined itself free from the Indo-Pak concept. (READ MORE)
L. Gordon Crovitz: Let's Move Intelligence Out of the 1970s - The attacks last week in Mumbai and the heightened warnings during the holiday season for the New York City transportation system are reminders that terrorist threats remain. At a time when terrorists are fully up to speed -- in Mumbai they used BlackBerrys to communicate -- our efforts to prevent terrorism are still in an analog-era time warp. Despite some intelligence reforms after 9/11, those charged with preventing terrorism in the U.S. are still not confident they have the means to prevent another domestic attack. The Obama team, which credits technology for its electoral win, should focus on getting the executive branch the up-to-date tools it needs to prevent terrorism, while protecting reasonable levels of privacy. In a spectacular example of how Washington's political compromises on intelligence look better on paper than they work in practice: (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