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Monday, 08 March 2010 Kandahar, Afghanistan Yesterday, an American involved in the war effort handed me a document. It was an email from a Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. His unit is in combat seven days a week. To be clear, I did not get the email from the officer and I have never met him. The email is about the abysmal, unsafe conditions which some of our most dedicated troops are living in, at a remote base run by the Spanish military in Afghanistan. All deletions [xxx] are by me. I have the entire email....

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran said Sunday it has launched a new production line of highly accurate, short range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country's already imposing arsenal. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size. The minister said the missile can be launched from the surface but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines. The world is already concerned about Iran's military capabilities, especially the implications of its nuclear program. The U.S....

<p>The International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, recently published a paper ("Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy") that attempts to distill preliminary lessons from the financial crisis. The paper contains much that is useful and worthy of further consideration—but it also suggests that central banks should aim for higher inflation during normal times, say 4%.</p>

On the verge of a procedural fight over health care, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican's presidential nominee in 2008, said Sunday that he plans to introduce legislation that would prevent Congress from changing Medicare through a process that only requires a simple majority in the Senate. “Social Security cannot be considered in reconciliation,' McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press," referring to a rule established in the 1970s by veteran Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). "We should do the same thing with Medicare. (Sen.) Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and I will be introducing legislation: Entitlements should not be part of a...

Three House Democrats are now pushing legislation that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating carbon emissions—a decision the agency announced in December -- without express permission from the Congress. Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would amend the Clean Air Act to exclude regulations based on global warming effects, while Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) has a bill that would keep the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases at all unless approved by Congress. In April 2009 the EPA proposed an “endangerment finding” for greenhouse...

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and record numbers of families are losing their homes to foreclosure, but have no fear, Barack Obama just told us how to make it through these trying times. At a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, Obama gave the American people a lecture on weathering the financial storm: "When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college." Excuse us? Does Obama really believe families...

Citing American patriots such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, Judge Roy Moore lit a fire in the hearts of tea partiers tonight – inspiring four impassioned standing ovations with his reading of a "bill of particulars" against President Obama . Moore, WND columnist, author of "So Help Me God" and candidate for governor in Alabama, began by quoting Thomas Paine "These are the times that try men's souls," he told a packed banquet room at the first national tea-party convention in Nashville. "Once again we live in a trying time, not just trying to the...

ALERT: Far left liberal Pelosi ignored America and unleashed her new strategy for passing ObamaCare. Declare War on the GOP and Force ObamaCare on America. Pelosi said, "We (Liberal Democrats) will go through the gate," "If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own…” (GOOD?)[snip] Dick Morris has learned top Democrats will go to the House with a two-part Pelsoi deal and...

Barack Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America (OFA), formerly Obama For America, is recruiting in our high schools to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda” – that is, his agenda of socialism for the United States of America.Chuck, a reader of my website AtlasShrugs.com, has a daughter in the eleventh grade in a public high school, Perry Local in Massillon, Ohio. The teacher in her government class passed out a propaganda recruiting paper –...

President Barack Obama on Friday engaged in a rare face-to-face showdown with Republican critics and testily accused them of trying to block his policies while urging them to "join with me" in creating jobs.The contentious 82-minute session showed the depth of the political divide that separates Democrats who control the U.S. Congress and Republicans who feel their ideas on the economy and healthcare are ignored. That Obama agreed to not only address his opponents but take their questions live on cable television was a sign of how he is trying to dig out of his deepest political rut since taking...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Oklahoma chapter is calling on Sen. James Inhofe, R.-Okla., to meet with Muslim leaders to discuss his statement during a congressional hearing in favor of using religion and ethnicity as factors in profiling airline passengers. "It is disturbing to hear a member of the United States Senate suggest that entire religious and ethnic groups should automatically be considered terror suspects," said CAIR-OK Executive Director Razi Hashmi. "Our nation's leaders have a duty not to exacerbate the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in American society." Inhofe's spokesman has not replied to a WND request for comment. But advocates...

Pilot Felix Baumgartner will announce today at 9 a.m. EST his intention to expand the boundaries of aerospace exploration by attempting to become the first person ever to break the speed of sound with the human body. Baumgartner hopes to ascend in a capsule lifted by a helium balloon to the upper reaches of the stratosphere to at least 120,000 feet and, protected by a full-pressure “space suit,” launch a freefall jump that could exceed Mach 1.0 – more than 690 miles per hour – before parachuting to Earth. If successful, the Red Bull Stratos mission hopes to establish four...

Health Care: Will the administration seize the moment of Scott Brown's victory to work out real solutions, or will it follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the cliff? Or is it just about government control? Before Sen.-elect Brown became the Scott heard 'round the world, House Speaker Pelosi was asked what his victory in the bluest of blue states would mean. "Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she replied in a bit of an understatement. The dynamic has changed, yet the Democrats, as the country song goes, apparently don't know when to hold them...

President Obama came to Massachusetts today in a last-minute effort to preserve his party's filibuster proof majority in the Senate. He did so at a rally on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston that featured the Massachusettls political establishment. Scott Brown countered with a rally in Worcester that featured Massachusetts sports legends Curt Schillling and Doug Flutie. I didn't watch the dueling rallies, but ( this report by Politico) leaves the impression that Brown may well have won the duel and that if Martha Coakley needed a big day, she probably came up short. Politico's account has Scott Brown...

Today is the official publication date of ,a href="http://www.amazon.com/Courting-Disaster-America-Barack-Inviting/dp/1596986034/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263816533&sr=8-1&tag=powlin-20">(ourting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack) by Marc Thiessen. Thiessen has unusual credentials to address the subject of his book. As White House speechwriter for George Bush, Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was assigned the task of writing (Bush's September 2006 speech) explaining the CIA's interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few public figures in a position to address the subject publicly know more about these CIA...

Who will get kickback on health care bills? (video)

Last week, new research from Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, began to penetrate the media fog. Pinto has documented that as far back as 1993, Fannie and Freddie were buying risky subprime and Alt-A loans, but routinely misrepresenting them as prime. Let me drive this point home. Without Fannie and Freddie’s certification of millions of bad loans as safe, other banks both domestic and foreign wouldn’t have bought them. More importantly, world financial markets wouldn’t have relied on those packaged loans as collateral and collapsed when they went bad. Fannie and...

CARY, N.C. -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he considers himself among the top Republican prospects for the 2012 presidential election, adding that he believes there will be plenty of GOP options for voters to consider. "I think I'm probably on a list of seven or eight possible candidates at this stage," Gingrich said. "We have a lot of people around the country who would like to have somebody who represents a commitment to replace the current failed programs and to develop a set of solutions that are practical and workable." Gingrich listed several current and former goverors...

I wrote about some of the revelations incidental to the government's prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for NRO in ("Coming Clean About CAIR.") CAIR and other prominent Muslim organizations were named as (unindicted co-conspirators) of the Holy Land Foundation at the criminal trials that ultimately result in the (HLF's conviction) of supporting terrorism as a Hamas front. Though exposed at the two Holy Land Foundation trials, CAIR et al. continue to operate as partners of the United States government. At (PJTV), Bill Whittle updates the story in an in-depth interview with an anonymous former FBI Special Agent in ("The...

On Monday December 28, three days after Umar Farouk -Abdulmutallab tried to bring down Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, President Barack Obama stepped up to a podium in Honolulu, to make his first statement about the attacks. “This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist,” he said. But Abdulmutallab was not an isolated extremist. He had been dispatched by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to kill Americans after having spent four months training with them in Yemen. He told this to his...

<p>INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY -- Chile was formally invited to OECD's club of developed countries on Dec. 15 — a great affirmation for a once-poor nation that pulled itself up by trusting markets. One thing that stands out here is free trade.</p>

Two officials said Thursday night they have been subpoenaed to answer questions next week before a federal grand jury about a high-profile Arizona sheriff who gained attention for aggressively cracking down on illegal immigration.In statements read by a county spokesman, Maricopa County Manager David Smith and Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson said they met with a federal prosecutor to discuss the case and will testify Wednesday. Wilson said the general subject of the inquiry was abuses by Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office. Neither Wilson nor Smith offered specifics, said county spokesman Richard de Uriarte, who spoke with the two officials...

Congress lacks the authority to force healthcare coverage on people and businessesThe current healthcare bills pending in the Senate and the House are unconstitutional, because Congress lacks the authority to mandate insurance coverage for individuals or private businesses. If a bill passes that mandates individual coverage or requires private employers to provide coverage, Liberty Counsel will file suit challenging the constitutionality of the bill. Liberty University, the largest and fastest-growing Christian university in the world, with over 50,000 students, will be one of the plaintiffs in such a suit. Other plaintiffs include individuals, private nonprofit and for-profit businesses and organizations,...

E-mail exchanges show that Tim Geithner's New York Federal Reserve bank told AIG not to disclose payouts it made during the height of the financial crisis. From the (New York Times:) The e-mail exchange between the bailed-out insurance giant and its regulator portray a strange reversal of roles, with A.I.G. staff arguing for the disclosure of certain details on payments for credit-default swaps to major banks, only to be discouraged by officials at, or representing, the Federal Reserve. In a draft of one regulatory filing, A.I.G. stated that it had paid banks — including Goldman Sachs Group, Merrill Lynch, Societe...

President Barack Obama is prodding House and Senate Democrats to get him a final health care bill as soon as possible, encouraging them to bypass the usual negotiations between the two chambers in the interest of speed. Obama delivered the message at an Oval Office meeting Tuesday evening with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his No. 2, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., joined in by phone.

Last month we reported on new videos obtained by the (Christian Action Network) which showed terrorist training at the Jamaat al-Fuqra/Muslims of America headquarters compound in Hancock, NY. In the past few days we were contacted by a law enforcement source about a plot by members of the same Jamaat al-Fuqra compound in Hancock to engage in a massive tax return fraud plot using contacts obtained through mosques in New York and using the money to send to their sheikh, terrorist leader Mubarak Gilani, in Pakistan. Al-Fuqra recruits heavily in prisons, and many male members of the group are convicted...

In his breakthrough 1973 smash, Charlie Rich crooned memorably: "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." But he also expressed his gratitude that behind closed doors his gal made him glad that he's a man. In other words, he gave us a pretty good idea what was going on behind closed doors. Andrew Malcolm reports that the Democrats are going (behind closed doors) to cobble together the final Obamacare bill that they intend to ram through Congress without needless procedural detours. Today C-SPAN's Brian Lamb wrote a letter to the leaders of Congress asking them to allow cameras...

Orrin Hatch, Ken Blackwell, and Ken Klukowski have penned an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where they detail the unconstitutionality of health care reform: Their reasoning with regard to the legality of the individual mandate is devastatingly clear and logical: First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not...

January 1, 2010 - WASHINGTON, D.C - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) made the following statement about President Obama’s nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration (TSA): "Erroll Southers has not been forthcoming about whether he'll give union bosses control of our airport security, which is one of the most important decisions he'll make as head of the TSA. Mr. Southers' unwillingness to form a position on collective bargaining seriously calls into question his judgment, because it weakens security and has already been rejected by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and by every...

Of all the post mortems that have followed the attempted Christmas bombing of the Delta airliner, the weakest in my view is the (criticism) of Senator Jim DeMint for having placed a legislative hold on Erroll Southers, the nominee for head of the Transportation Security Agency. Other things being equal, it's better that the TSA have a head, rather than an acting head. But it's more important that the person in charge of the TSA be a good choice for the job. That's why Sen. DeMint has done a service by placing a hold on Southers. The basis for the...

That's what voters say, according to today's (Rasmussen survey:)Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure. There's this, too: Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22%...

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, anticipating a $21 billion state budget deficit, plans to ask President Barack Obama to ease mandates and minimums on social programs to save as much as $8 billion. The Republican governor plans to seek the relief, according to a California official who asked not to be identified because details haven’t been resolved. Instead of seeking one-time stimulus money or a bailout, the most-populous U.S. state wants the federal government to reduce mandates and waive rules stipulating expenditures on programs such as indigent health care, the official said. California is among states most affected by the economic...

In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At (Icecap) Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity: It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data...

Five years ago, a particularly gruesome image made its way to our television screens from the war in Iraq. Four U.S. civilian contractors working in Fallujah were ambushed and killed by al Qaeda. Their bodies were burned, then dragged through the streets. Two of the charred bodies were hung from the Euphrates Bridge and left dangling. This barbaric act left an impression that our military did not forget: In a special operation earlier this year, Navy SEALs captured the mastermind of that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed. But after he was taken into custody in September, Abed claimed he was punched...

IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday. The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds. Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their value, and markets always watch any such comments closely for signs of any...

Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), the final Democratic holdout on health care, was prepared to announce to his caucus Saturday morning that he would support the Senate reform bill, clearing the way for final passage by Christmas. "We're there," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), as he headed into a special meeting to announce the deal. Democratic leaders spent days trying to hammer out a deal with Nelson, and worked late Friday night with Nelson on abortion coverage language that had proved the major stumbling block. But Nelson also secured other favors for his home state. Asked if he was prepared to...

<p>Andrew Bolt gets to the heart of the conference with a look at one of the lesser known figures. Bolt writes: "Nothing is real in Copenhagen - not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the 'solution.'" Quoting (a report) from the Australian, Bolt provides a good example of "how fake it all is."</p>

New military rules of engagement ostensibly to protect Afghan civilians are putting the lives of U.S. forces in jeopardy, claim Army and Marine sources, as the Taliban learns the game plan based the rules' imposed limits. The rules of engagement, or ROEs, apply to all coalition forces of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their enactment is in response to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's complaints over mounting civilian deaths apparently occurring in firefights.Despite the fact that the newly arrived U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, imposed the more restrictive ROEs to minimize the killing of innocent...

One of the things that political pros often overestimate is how well known politicians are. Nancy Pelosi is one of the most visible elected politicians in the country and the first woman ever to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Rasmussen Reports recently asked voters their opinion of “Nancy Pelosi” and the responses were mixed. Forty-six percent (46%) offered a favorable opinion and 50% an unfavorable view. Just half the nation’s voters voiced a strong opinion about Pelosi—14% Very Favorable and 36% Very Unfavorable. However, in a separate survey conducted the same night, Rasmussen Reports asked voters their...

<p>If you want to get away with lying, cheating, stealing, and even sexually predatory behavior towards children, all you have to do is be a Progressive Democrat.</p> <p>Hat tip to Media Matters for providing us with four excellent examples to prove our point.</p>

This is startling. Progressives arrogantly grant themselves a monopoly on tolerance and respect for dissent. That is why moments like the one just released on Big Government are a devastating display of Progressive hypocrisy. Progressives, like many other movements, cannot live up to their own rules. If Progressives don’t like your line of questioning, they try to shut you down and call the police.

The Founding Fathers created a Republic, but 60 Senators are poised to take it away. With the pending disaster of the passage in the Senate of a bill nationalizing one sixth of the U.S. economy and our entire healthcare system at a cost of over $2.5 trillion, we are faced with a crucial question: are the Republican senators using every means at their disposal to stop this looming, tyrannical abuse of power? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be “no.” The Senate, unlike the House of Representatives, has parliamentary rules and procedures that give the minority the ability to stall legislation....

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told CNSNews.com she would leave it up to the “constitutional lawyers” to explain exactly where Congress gets the constitutional authority to force Americans to buy health insurance, the central mandate in both the Senate and House health care bills. Landrieu, in her second term as a U.S. senator, responded to a question from CNSNews.com at a press conference about the effect health care reform would have on small businesses. Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) joined Landrieu at the press conference. CNSNews.com asked Landrieu: “You mentioned that there will be no employer mandate [in...

An interview of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducted by reporters from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University in Phoenix Monday night ended prematurely due to disruptive protests. Arpaio, has faced criticism among the media and charges of racial profiling during his illegal immigration sweeps. Arpaio was chosen by ASU because he is “powerful, popular and controversial” said Cronkite dean Christopher Callahan, who pointed out that interrupting the protests eliminated the effectiveness of the three journalists’ questions. “The scenario is you don’t want public scrutiny of this man,” Callahan told the protestors. “You don’t want reporters...

Brushing aside tradition, the Obama administration is pushing for federal authority to regulate the nation's subway and light commuter rail systems following last summer's subway crash in Washington, D.C., that left nine people dead. Next week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will formally ask Congress to give his department authority to regulate and oversee those rail systems, a move that some Republicans on Capitol Hill worry is another alarming example of an ever-expanding federal government. "In this case, it sounds good, safety and enforcement over transit systems, but it may not be that effective," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told Fox News....

Yet again the Thursday network evening newscasts on NBC, ABC, and CBS failed to cover the (Climate Gate Scandal) However, ABC World News did manage to devote a two minute story to the release of singer Susan Boyle’s first album. On Thursday afternoon, ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper (reported the controversy on his blog:) “President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, faced a barrage of questions yesterday from Republican Members of Congress about a series of hacked emails at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit that climate change skeptics have seized upon as evidence that the whole...

The global revolt keeps building against carbon cap and trade, not that you'd know it from the U.S. media. First the U.S. Senate postpones its bill, next countries meeting in Copenhagen this month can't agree on emissions cuts, then emails among climate scientists reveal rigged peer-review, and now comes a political uprising in Australia that may doom a carbon tax down under. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a sweeping cap-and-trade bill the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, and for two years his climate alarmism has gone almost unchallenged. The conservative Liberal Party, which embraced a cap-and-tax scheme before...

SYDNEY – Australia's plans for an emissions trading system to combat global warming were scuttled Wednesday in Parliament, handing a defeat to a government that had hoped to set an example at international climate change talks next week. The Senate, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government does not hold a majority, rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air. The 41-33 vote followed a tumultuous debate in which the conservative main opposition party at first agreed...

Gulbadin Hekmatyar, the Emir of Hizb-e-Islami in Afghanistan, has called for the formation of an interim government acceptable to all sides in the country, noting that the "defeat of the United States in Afghanistan is near." The Hizb-e-Islami is one of the key non-Taliban militant organizations in Afghanistan. In a message released on the eve of Eid-ul-Adha (the Muslim festival of sacrifice), the fugitive militant commander said: "Since the [defeat of the] Soviet Union, one more sun of victory is about to rise in Afghanistan and the defeat of America is near; having sensed its defeat, it [America] is now...

On one level, the vote to ban minarets in Switzerland is a triviality. The constitutional amendment does not ban mosques, it does not pull down the country’s four existing minarets, nor does touch the practice of Islam in Switzerland or bear on the many issues concerning Swiss Muslims. In all likelihood, the political establishment in Bern, which abominates the amendment, will find some way to overturn it. But on another level, the 57.5 to 42.5 percent vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of those Swiss...