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)
Top Iraqi Officials Growing Restless - Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a senior Shiite politician often mentioned as a potential prime minister, tendered his resignation last week in a move that reflects deepening frustration inside the Iraqi government with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. (READ MORE)
Gatekeepers of Hillaryland - The seasoned Hill aide knew what she was getting into when she agreed to become Hillary Clinton's chief of staff. The woman was quite prepared for all eyes to be on the biggest celebrity arriving in Congress, the first lady of the United States... (READ MORE)
New U.S. Passport Rules Postponed for at Least Six Months - The Bush administration yesterday postponed for at least six months a new security rule that Americans show a passport when crossing U.S. borders by land or by sea, requiring instead that citizens present an identity card and proof of citizenship upon entry for the first time, beginning Jan. 31. (READ MORE)
Antiwar Democrats Are Less Critical As Clinton Takes A New Tack on Iraq - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) drew only modest boos at a gathering of liberal activists yesterday, a sign of how well her changing position on Iraq is playing in the antiwar wing of her party. (READ MORE)
Human Rights Hoax - The U.N.'s new Human Rights Council marked its first birthday Tuesday in Geneva by voting to withdraw monitors from Cuba and Belarus, while enacting rules that will make it more difficult to launch investigations of rights violations in other countries. We knew this outfit would be embarrassing, but it keeps surpassing expectations. (READ MORE) *Reg Req*
Liberals Seek to Take Back Health Care and Education - After hearing from the leading Democratic candidates this week, liberal voters say they want a president who will give every American health care, limit outsourcing and make it easier for poor children and minorities to get a good education. (READ MORE)
Teetering Hedge Funds Shake Housing Market - The impending collapse of big New York hedge funds that invested in risky subprime loans that went into default raised worries yesterday about a widening credit crunch for home buyers and yet another blow to the foundering housing market. (READ MORE)
Labor Group, Hispanics Hit Senate Bill - Labor and Hispanic groups yesterday told senators to scrap their immigration bill and go back to the drawing board, saying that the proposal now before the Senate has become too harsh on illegal aliens and a poor deal for U.S. workers. (READ MORE)
House Accuses Iran of Genocide - The House yesterday overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding the U.N. Security Council press genocide charges against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for threatening the destruction of Israel. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Badger 6: The Reality of Counterinsurgency OPS “AS things progress here in Iraq and as the situation changes there become new things to criticize and critique. Some of that of course is perfectly appropriate, however some of the criticism also demonstrates the fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of counterinsurgency operations. In war, generally the goal is not to kill everybody on the opposing side. Rather the goal is to make the losses too painful for the other side to continue to absorb and otherwise make them feel that resistance is a futile effort.” (READ MORE)
Mohammed: War of The Shrines “Attacking the Askari shrine for the second time emphasizes how those who ordered the attacks have been betting their money on this tactic to spark civil war in Iraq. Civil war would kill any hope for the rise of a stable democracy and is also the best option to stop the change project in the region by associating it with the ugly image of civil war. Such war would not only destroy Iraqis' hopes in stability and prosperity, it would also bury every aspiration in the region for pluralism and reform—the Iraqi example could be used then as call for accepting dictatorship or going back to the Salafi origins as an easy alternative for a change that leads to civil war.” (READ MORE)
Michael Yon: Operation Arrowhead Ripper: Day One “The first day of operation Arrowhead Ripper was intense. The Army is giving full access to the battlefield, and while on base full access to the TOC (HQ) which means I see the raw truth on the ground, and as it feeds through the TOC. They are hiding nothing. Or if they are, it’s in plain view. (Special operations notwithstanding.) A reporter can see as much as he or she can stand.” (READ MORE)
Sgt J.P. Borda: Getting back into Military Blogging “I guess it's time I got back into military blogging now that I'm over here. It's been a few years since I've milblogged, but it will definitely help me communicate with people back home, especially my family (Hi Mom). And it might even make for more interesting reading. I mean, I guess writing about my enormous muscles and good looks can get boring after awhile? I know I know, that's crazy talk. But seriously, I can't even remember how to milblog.” (READ MORE)
Those Wacky Iraqis: "He just need a good a$$ kicking." “I am trying to imagine the world outcry in the MSM if an Iranian Diplomat had been set upon and beaten in public in Washington, D.C. In today's Kuwaiti Times they describe just such an attack in Theran upon a Kuwaiti diplomat. The dude was just walking down the street when a group of the Iranian Neoislamofascist government sponsored thugs set upon him and whupped him good.” (READ MORE)
MasterGunner: Selfish Service... “In my various tours spent deployed to different regions of the world, I have had the privilege of working alongside officers and NCOs from all over the world. I've made many close friends, and learned more than I ever could have without the experience. Over coffee and cigarettes (or under different circumstances, over beers and cigarettes), the discussion invariably leads to the subjects of Leadership and Service. While the lessons of Leadership remain constants throughout the world, the view of Service varies wildly depending on who you speak to and where they hail from.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Prime Minister Tony Blair: 'Like a Feral Beast' “The purpose of the series of speeches I have given over the past year has been deliberately reflective: to get beyond the immediate headlines or issues of the day and contemplate, in a broader perspective, the effect of a changing world on the issues of the future; and this speech, which is on the challenge of the changing nature of communication on politics and the media, is from the same perspective. I need to say some preliminaries at the outset. This is not my response to the latest whacking from bits of the media. It is not a whinge about how unfair it all is.” (READ MORE)
Victor Davis Hanson: More Middle East Madness “For years, Palestinian Authority-sanctioned gangs shot and tortured dissidents, glorified suicide bombing against Israel and in general thwarted any hopes of various ‘peace processes.’” (READ MORE)
Ann Coulter: Duke and Marmaduke “Second-rate liberals who went to mediocre schools and married mediocre women are burning with jealousy from their nondescript, mediocre jobs. So they use their government jobs to attack their betters and sneer about the players' ‘daddies.’” (READ MORE)
Matt Towery: What If Most GOP Contenders Skipped Iowa And New Hampshire? “With no offense to my friends in those two states, I'm compelled to report that some Republican presidential candidates are toying with the idea of skipping the historic first two contests in the race for the GOP nomination.” (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Hillary Praises WWII Win, Plans Iraq's Defeat “At the liberal Take Back America conference, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y) praised American GI’s for liberating Europe after World War II, but vowed to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, regardless of the political outcome in the Middle East.” (READ MORE)
Marc Rotterman: Bush and Rove squandered the Reagan/Gingrich Majority “The ‘Center Right’ Republican majority forged by Reagan and Gingrich has been squandered by Rove's realignment pipe dream that was based on the premise of big government for the sake of power.” (READ MORE)
Fred Thompson: Good News about CAIR “I've talked before about the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- most recently because it filed that lawsuit against Americans who reported suspicious behavior by Muslims on a U.S. Airways flight.” (READ MORE)
Suzanne Fields: Searching for Identity “More than 700 nude bicyclists pedaled from Hyde Park to Wellington Arch the other day to protest global warming and excessive emissions from automobiles. Their message was better ‘nude power’ than ‘nuke power.’” (READ MORE)
George Will: Teachers Union Turmoil “Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded. Recent days have provided two illustrations of this tendency, both of them pertaining to labor unions, whose decades of declining membership testify to their waning power to persuade workers that unions add more value to workers' lives than they subtract.” (READ MORE)
Cal Thomas: Bloomberg's Bolt “New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was never really a Republican; neither was he really a Democrat, the political party he previously left. From DINO (Democrat in name only), he became a RINO (Republican in name only) and now I guess one might call him, what, an UNO (unaffiliated in name only)?” (READ MORE)
Brent Bozell III: Bloomberg, Leader of the Ban “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announcing he's leaving the Republican Party is a little like Madonna announcing she's leaving the Catholic Church. Was he ever really a paragon of the GOP?” (READ MORE)
Emmett Tyrrell: Liberals and Conservatives for Libby “I find myself in unusual company, and I am always so careful about the company I keep. Nonetheless, here I am arguing on the same side as Washington Post columnist and ritualistic liberal Richard Cohen and Christopher Hitchens.” (READ MORE)
WSJ Review & Outlook: Bloomberg's Politics “Michael Bloomberg says he isn't running for President, and maybe we should believe him. But his recent preoccupation with the state of national politics, combined with his announcement Tuesday in California that he is leaving the Republican Party to become an independent, keeps the speculation on a low boil, which is probably where the New York City mayor wants it.” (READ MORE)
Daniel Henninger: Is the Media a 'Feral Beast'? “In America, presidents end speeches with, ‘God bless you.’ In the U.K. last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair ended a big speech with: ‘I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters.’ Mr. Blair's subject was the media. Rubbished it was.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Under Pressure, Egypt Offers Peace Conference “Egypt has decided to grasp an opportunity to play peacemaker in the wake of the Hamas coup in Gaza. Under pressure from the US, it wants to demonstrate its moderate bona fides and attempt to use this moment as an opportunity to bolster the more moderate and secular faction in the West Bank. So far, the invitees to Egypt's conference sound enthusiastic: ‘The Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, has invited the Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian leaders to a summit next week, Palestinian officials have said.’” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: AP Analysis: War is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?) “Hard-hitting analysis by the AP’s senior Saddam apologist, Charles J. Hanley: ‘BAGHDAD — In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.’ The AP echoes itself on Iraq, with some warmed-over anecdotes and information cast to present the U.. and Iraqi effort in as negative a light a possible, downplay any progress, and avoid any meaningful insight on where we are in Iraq today.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: New Taliban commander was released in prisoner swap for reporter “It’s not like they knew he was an important figure. He’s merely the brother of the former commander, Mullah Dadullah, who spent the last several years waging jihad and sawing off heads on film for the entertainment of the faithful. Now this guy’s replaced him. If he looks familiar, that’s because he was the one handing out the diplomas at that mujahid suicide bomber graduation ceremony.” (READ MORE)
Kim Priestap: Ohio Governor Speaks at CAIR Event “I lived in Ohio my entire life until my husband and I bought a business in Northern Michigan in January and moved there in March. Today I learned that my former governor, Democrat Ted Strickland, who was elected in November 2006, spoke at a CAIR banquet. The Ohio press doesn't think this is a big deal, so they aren't reporting it. The only place actually reporting it, aside from conservative blogs, is CAIR itself:” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Our Caesar, who art in heaven... “Moving from Manchester, I've had to readjust my listening habits. Boston talk radio has really declined in the last few years, but it was still pretty listenable, and far more blog-friendly. Local talk is far less political, and considerably more involved in community events. But they still do plenty of politics.” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Political incest “The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington combed through congressional election records and found 96 of the 435 House members ‘to financially benefit their family members.’ The list includes Democratic Congressman Alan Mollohan of West Virginia. But of course. He took over the congressional seat from dear old Dad.” (READ MORE)
McQ: Once more into the breach - Global Warming and the Sun (update) “R. Timothy Patterson, a professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University has an extremely interesting article out in the National Post in which he discusses, you guessed it, the role of the sun in the earth’s climate change. But a couple of points first: ‘Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change…’” (READ MORE)
Richard S. Lowry: Finally, Good News From Iraq! “Nearly every day we hear of another horrific explosion in Iraq and watch the horrible aftermath on our televisions. On June 13th we heard that the revered Golden Mosque in Samara had been bombed, again. It was only a little over a year ago that the Askari Mosque was destroyed on February 22, 2006 by Al Qaeda bombers. The two remaining minarets were destroyed in the second attack. Al-Askari is now all but rubble. But this latest attack has provided Americans with an unintended insight. For those of us who are carefully monitoring the events in Iraq on a daily basis, the Iraqi reaction in the aftermath of this second bombing has provided the first tangible indication that the surge is working.” (READ MORE)
Yggdrasil: Freedom of Speech “Freedom of speech is the essence of democracy. The reality today is that freedom of speech is threatened in the West, threatened as never before. Politicians are being harassed; people fear for their lives; satirists fight a lonely battle for their cause — and that cause is freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech democracy does not function. You cannot have one without the other, but its not an easy freedom to protect, since it always provokes — that’s the whole idea with freedom of speech.” (READ MORE)
A Soldier's Mind: The Battle For “Hearts And Minds”… The Role Media Plays “Back in 2005, the 2nd in command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a letter to the top leader of the insurgency in Iraq telling him that over half of the battle in the War is taking place in a different kind of battlefield. That battlefield he spoke of is the media. He went on to say this, ‘… We are in a media battle, in a race for the hearts and minds of our umma (people).’ How very telling that comment is. Back then we really had no clue how telling and how very true that comment would become.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: The Battle of Iraq – 2007 “Four days after the announcement of major offensive combat operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and its allies, the picture becomes clearer on the size and scope of the operation. In today's press briefing, Rear Admiral Mark noted that the ongoing operation is a corps directed and coordinated offensive operation. This is the largest offensive operation since the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom ended in the spring of 2003. The corps level operation is being conducted in three zones in the Baghdad Belts -- Diyala/southern Salahadin, northern Babil province, and eastern Anbar province --- as well as inside Baghdad proper, where clearing operations continue in Sadr City and the Rashid district.” (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: Did benighted Brits knight Rushdie? “Is it possible that the powers-that-be in Great Britain didn't know what they were doing when they sought to honor Salman Rushdie with knighthood? It is not only possible, it seems likely. At NRO's Corner, Stanley Kurtz has been following the stories suggesting the Brits had something completely different than a ‘cartoon statement’ in mind. Kurtz reports: ‘Apparently, the committee that recommended Salman Rushdie for a knighthood had no idea that Rushdie's selection would be taken as an insult by vast sections of the Muslim world.’” (READ MORE)
The Redhunter: "Journey Into Islam" “Tony Blankley today hits on an important aspect of our current War on Jihadism and the current state of Islam: Writing in the Washington Times, Blankley describes his debate with his friend, Professor Akbar Ahmed. Dr Ahmed is "former Pakistani High Commissioner to Britain and member of the faculties of Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, current chair of Islamic Studies at American University." He is further described by Blankley as a moderate, and coming from Tony such a description has a lot of credibility.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: Did the FBI Allow Osama to Escape the US after 9/11? “There has been no greater boon to historians and others seeking the truth of government actions than the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI and Intel agencies hate it. Bureaucrats despise it – mostly because it piles on lots of extra paperwork duties. And Administrations from LBJ’s White House to the present have been embarrassed by what researchers – professional and amateur – have been able to bring to light. The latest FOIA bombshell comes to us via Judicial Watch. You may recall these folks from the Clinton scandals, specifically their assistance to Paula Jones. At that time, the left accused them of being a right wing smear machine funded by Richard Mellon Scaife.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: A Brief Primer on Psychotherapy and its Current Application in the Middle East “Psychoanalysis is the original "talking cure" from which all other Psychotherapies emerged. As the discipline evolved and our understanding of the functional organization of the mind grew, the limits of possible change and a number of limitations to the treatment became obvious. Originally, Psychoanalysis was directed toward symptom relief. Psychological symptoms develop when a person's usual psychological defenses fail. Thus, the early Psychoanalysts spent a great deal of time delineating the various defenses and establishing a hierarchy of defenses (from most pathological, like psychotic projection, to healthiest, like sublimation and humor.)” (READ MORE)
Screw Loose Change: Architects and Idiots for 9/11 Truth “One of the characteristics of conspiracy theorists is they are able to hold two contrary or more viewpoints on the same subject, at the same time without noticing any problem with their logic. One example of this is how Loose Change manages to suggest that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile, an A-3 Skywarrior, and shoulder launched anti-tank weapon, all in the same movie. It is sort of a quantum mechanics of kookery, where any argument can occupy multiple points in space without any sort of connection between them.” (READ MORE)
Stop the ACLU: Prepare for the lies about Bush “banning” embryonic stem cell research “Bush has banned ESCR just like he has banned my daughter from attending the local posh private school or like I’ve been banned from going to the movies. Just because something is not paid for by the federal government, doesn’t mean it’s banned, but that’s what the ESCR zealots would have you believe. Anyway, why would the federal government be funding what is now a fairy tale when other stem cell treatments and therapies are available and have been more clinically successful than the up-to-now complete failure that is ESCR?” (READ MORE)
Andi: Career Crashers “I've been super busy with a myriad of projects lately and the dust-bunnies have been having a party around here, but I've been wanting to address the announcement by Secretary Gates that General Peter Pace would not be renominated for another term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One might argue that things in Iraq went downhill after General Tommy Franks retired, or, a more apt description might be to say that the terrorists adopted new, more brutal tactics and the nature of warfare was radically altered.” (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: The Troops Should Support Congress by Sending Them Home "They may not know anything about war or the military (or much else for that matter), but give congress credit. They are second to none when it comes to spouting nonsensical gibberish. For those on the anti-war left, their gibberish might be an exception to this rule, only because venomous malicious gibberish is more pernicious than uninformed insincere pandering gibberish. The latest bout of this idiocy comes in the form of those who want to support the troops by bringing them home." (READ MORE)
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