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Another Sign Of Insurgency's Failure Today's Washington Post notes a significant event in the foreign-based "insurgency" that has killed hundreds of Iraqis as well as American troops in Iraq. The terrorists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi found themselves faced off against native Iraqi forces after killing a local tribal chief while the Marines watched from the sidelines. Most significantly, the Iraqis who had had enough of the Zarqawi insurgency were Sunnis: For four days this month, U.S. Marines were onlookers at just the kind of fight they had hoped to see: a battle between suspected followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a...

There's No Oil Shortage May 3, 2005 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT Let me dig out that story here and then go back to the phonecalls. It's in The Economist, which is a British publication, magazine, pretty high repute, and the title of the story, "A Bottomless Beer Mug: Why the World is not Running Out of Oil." Let me just read to you an excerpt. "Peter O'Dell of Rotterdam's Erasmus University points out that since 1971, over 1500 billion barrels of oil have been added to our worldwide reserves. Over the same 35-year period, under 800 billion barrels were consumed. One can...

Homegrown IT outsourcing options sprout up across rural America. News Story by Julia King MARCH 28, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Aelera Corp. CEO Dustin Crane traveled to China, India and Armenia in a quest to buy or start up an offshore IT services company. After six months of searching, he returned to the U.S. and set up operations in the coastal city of Savannah and the smaller town of Fitzgerald, Ga., population 8,758. McKesson Corp. CIO Cheryl T. Smith estimates that the $8 billion pharmaceutical distributor is saving $10 million annually in salary costs—a percentage of which is reinvested in IT...

Logistically Speaking: Whose supply chain is it, anyway?  Written by: Dave Blanchard Hope is not a strategy, but don’t tell that to the FMCSA – the agency is hoping the Hours of Service are written into law, without any revisions The Federal government is supposed to work for us, even though in practice it appears to be the other way around. Sometimes it seems as though government agencies are most proficient at avoiding work, which certainly describes the long-and-winding road leading to a revised Hours of Service (HOS) regulation. Way back in 1995, during President Clinton's first term, Congress...

Chile's Hot Pensions by L. Jacobo Rodríguez is assistant director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute and author of "Chile's Private Pension System at 18: Its Current State and Future Challenges," published by the Cato Institute. Chile's private system of individual retirement accounts, adopted in 1981, is based on three important pillars: freedom of choice, private-sector management, and property rights in the retirement accounts. In its 18 years, that system has been an enormous success: more than 95 percent of Chilean workers have joined the system; the pension funds have accumulated over $33 billion in...

About Those Un-Armored Humvees This press conference by Major General Stephen Speakes and several other officers, which took place on Wednesday, is worth reading in its entirety. The purpose of the press conference was to address the issue of "un-armored" vehicles that was raised by a National Guardsman in a question directed to Donald Rumsfeld a week or so ago. The overall impression I get is that the Army is responding appropriately to the risks posed by improvised explosive devices, and there is basically no story here. The facts regarding the Guardsman's own unit also appear to be quite different...

Like most battleground states, Wisconsin is showing signs of a large voter fraud effort. We have very permissive voting laws and last election (Gore by 5000) was very likely lost due to the abuses. We have an unusual opportunity to limit the voter fraud because Milwaukee city must get its ballots from Milwaukee County. Due to a pension scandal earlier that inflamed the entire county, we now have a Republican County Executive, Scott Walker. The city of Milwauke has requested 938,000 ballots. This is TWICE the total population over 18 years of age! As county executive, Scott Walker is denying...

Today on WYLL (1160 AM) in Chicago, John O'Neill was being interviewed with LT. COL Patterson by Scott Thomas. He brought up that during the debate Kerry said "I understand what the president is talking about, because I know what it means to lose people in combat. And the question, is it worth the cost, reminds me of my own thinking when I came back from fighting in that war." O'Neil noted that John Kerry did not have this experience.

Just got back from shopping. When entering the electronics deparement at Target I realized that approximately 20 television sets were displaying some kind of trailer from Michael Moore's odious movie. On September 11th! Remember Moore's caring comment that the terrorists flew into the wrong buildings - the victims were Gore voters? I complained to the manager (nice teen ager from Russia -- she didn't know what day it is (clue September 11th) and who Michael Moore is. She encouraged me to call 'guest services' and said she 'would look at the electronics department'.

Several have mentioned the false report from the AP that there were boo's when President Bush asked for prayers for President Clinton before his surgery. This event was the first big rally in Wisconsin after the convention. I was there. The report was totally false, there were no boos. Powerline blog has done legwork to locate contact emails and has framed the issue at this link. Just a couple of sentences to these emails will require AP to reconsider the efficacy of publishing lies rather than straight reporting. POWERLINE BLOG WRITES:::::::::: Waiting for Mr. Hays Over the weekend, we wrote...

An attack against Iran will be much easier now since we can force them into a two front war, attacking from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe this has been the strategy all along. We've done a pretty good job of surrounding potential trouble makers. Pakistan has the US on one side and India on the other. Iran has the US on two fronts. And Syria has the US and Israel on two fronts. Not a bad strategic maneuver. My rejoinder: This has been the Bush strategy all along, and not just as regards Islamist terrorism. The same strategy is at...

I sent this letter to WLS radio in Chicago in response to an afternoon broadcast. I was alarmed during your newscast this afternoon when you said that Mr. Berger’s absconding with and losing classified documents was a misdemeanor. Years ago I was a classified document custodian in the army and recall vividly my concern that I might lose or mishandle documents. My understanding was that this breach under Uniformed Code of Military Justice would lead to my breaking big rocks into little rocks at the Federal Military Prison for several years. I distinctly recall hearing warning stories during my basic...

I sent this to a Chicago radio journalist who reported that Sandy Berger might be subject to a "fine" for the "Misdemeanor" of losing accountability of classified documents. I did a rapid search and found the applicable paragraphs of USC Title 18. We may need this. I was alarmed during your newscast this afternoon when you said that Mr. Berger’s absconding with and losing classified documents was a misdemeanor. Years ago I was a classified document custodian in the army and recall vividly my concern that I might lose or mishandle documents. My understanding was that this breach under Uniformed...

INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS: Ronald Reagan's CIA Legacy June 11, 2004: Since his death on June 5th, former President Ronald Reagan has received a lot of accolades for winning the Cold War. However, one of his most critical decisions in winning the Cold War was not really commented on. It was made very early in Reagan’s first term, when William F. Casey was nominated to serve as Director of Central Intelligence. Casey, who had not really operated in the intelligence community since leaving the OSS after World War II, seemed to be a political choice. However, he quickly set about changing things...

Clarke claims responsibility Ex-counterterrorism czar approved post-9-11 flights for bin Laden family By Alexander Bolton Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush’s chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In an interview with The Hill yesterday, Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.” Most of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN> Jordan's Queen Joins Thousands in Protest   Apr 29, 11:36 PM (ET) By FADI KHALIL (AP) Queen Rania of Jordan holds the hand of a student during a march in Amman, Jordan, which ended at...Full Image AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Jordan's Queen Rania joined thousands of Jordanians in a mass street protest Thursday against a failed plot by an al-Qaida-linked terror cell to launch attacks in the capital, Amman, that officials say would have killed tens of thousands. The queen, wearing a white and orange shirt and blue jeans, held hands with students...