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WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country. Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill? In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost. And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too....

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama had a golden opportunity to become a peacemaker compared to his hawkish predecessor. But he has let that opening evaporate by escalating the war in Afghanistan. Now he is called a "war president" -- a dubious title that former President George W. Bush personally embraced after starting two devastating wars, one in Afghanistan, the other in Iraq. In both cases, the U.S. is touting its exit plans. In Iraq, Obama has declared a victory and plans to pull out many troops next year, though leaving thousands behind to secure the Baghdad government. In Afghanistan, Obama...

President Obama May Not Remember Vietnam Turmoil WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama insists that his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending in 30,000 more troops is not Vietnam all over again. Well, it sure reminds me of the perils and the price of that unwinnable war in Southeast Asia and the political chaos it wreaked at home. In Afghanistan, the designated enemies are remnants of the weakened al-Qaida network and the native Taliban, which has been growing in strength despite the eight-year war started by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 catastrophe....

....What has struck me most about Obama's Afghan enterprise—and his speech did not cause me to alter my view—is how obvious it is that he doesn't really want to do it. He wants to do health care. Obama has tried every delaying trick in the book—waiting for three months after Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops, having meeting after meeting after meeting, sending Gen. Jones to tell McChrystal not to ask for more troops, having his economic team say it will cost too much, framing the venture in terms of "exit strategies" rather than victory, etc. His ambivalence was on...

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have turned the focus of Afghan war planning toward an exit strategy, publicly declaring that the U.S. and its allies can't send additional troops without a plan for getting them out. The shift has unnerved some U.S. and foreign officials, who say that planning a pullout now -- with or without a specific timetable -- encourages the Taliban to wait out foreign forces and exacerbates fears in the region that the U.S. isn't fully committed to their security.

WASHINGTON -- The Nobel Peace crown lies uneasy on President Barack Obama’s head as he ponders the next U.S. move in Afghanistan, with hints and leaks showering down to tell us that he will eventually send thousands more troops there. His decision -- which could be announced soon -- was triggered by the request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal for 40,000 more troops to secure the cities and protect the citizens of Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 U.S. troops there now. Obama has been reviewing the U.S. role in Afghanistan for months, a time-consuming study that has led to accusations...

Barbara Boxer apparently holds meetings on the streets of Oakland, according to her companions, who didn’t want to allow a constituent with a camera to question Senator Ma’am on policy in Afghanistan. Boxer finally responds long enough to insist that Congress will not allow more troops to go into Afghanistan, which then prompts the question of whether we should keep troops there at all if we’re not going to fight to win there. Boxer walks away, even though the constituent calls her “Senator” … repeatedly:

RUSH: It is apparent, ladies and gentlemen, that General John "Swifty" Kerry has taken over Obama foreign policy. You people who thought you were voting for Obama to change foreign policy were wrong. You know, I still can't get over that last sound bite. President Obama, there aren't Bush troops, and there aren't Obama troops. Those are American soldiers, and you've abandoned them, while claiming to these naval people in Jacksonville yesterday you never -- he's embarrassing. Worse than that, it's dangerous. We got John "Swifty" Kerry, who served in Vietnam, by the way, yesterday afternoon at the Council on...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s leadership is being tested on two historic fronts: health care reform and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. By the time he has made decisions on these two titanic issues, we will know whether he has the courage to make tough calls and we will know more about his bottom-line principles. On health care, Obama thought he had learned lessons from 1993 when Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, was put in charge of developing a universal health plan when her husband was president. She flunked partly because she did not touch base with Congress. She didn’t...

No kidding? Obama’s surrender monkey antics are catching: Gordon Brown is using the same forum tomorrow to announce the reduction of Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet from four to three. The West is disarming at a speed that even our enemies are finding disconcerting. So long as West-hating exhibitionists such as Obama and Brown are in charge of our defences we are in real and present danger. It will all be cheered to the echo at the UN, the water-hole at which the world’s most spectacular genocides and tyrants have traditionally assembled to denounce the Western democracies. [snip] Thus, Cuba (16,000...

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

May 13, 2009 | In John Frankenheimer's taut 1964 film, "Seven Days in May," the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appalled at a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, plot a coup d'état to remove the president whom they regard as too soft and naive about the evil of America's enemies. The screenplay by Rod Serling (based on a 1962 novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) is filled with passionate lines that seem right out of today's talk radio -- "intellectual dilettantes" versus patriotism; America's loss of "greatness"; the superiority of military experience to civilian judgment and governance.

Rep. Barbara Lee wants the Obama administration to study ways to end the war in Afghanistan, even though President Obama and his Cabinet were meeting this week with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss how to escalate the battle against the Taliban in that country. The California Democrat, one of the most anti-war and liberal members of the House, offered an amendment Thursday to a war funding bill to request a study by the end of the year from the administration on ways to get out of Afghanistan. She eventually withdrew the amendment, but not before she aired her concerns...

(snip) "To say this complicates the Obama administration's diplomatic outreach is to put it mildly. This administration -- in fairness, not unlike the last few years of the Bush administration -- seems prepared to make an endless series of concessions to Tehran in order to secure a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue. Yet despite these repeated overtures, the Iranians refuse to budge even an inch and instead make announcements of more centrifuges and new missiles. Now they're launching airstrikes in Iraq."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said ahead of a meeting at the White House Thursday that Obama and Republicans ... ... on Capitol Hill have gotten off on the wrong foot. "The first 100 days have not been the best days for bipartisanship," Cantor said during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We've got some very serious issues, and I do think now that we can come together," he said. "We can do better." Cantor added that he wants to tell the president later today that "we want to work with you."

It wasn't really a surprise that President Obama sided with leftist lawyers in his Justice Department and released, over the objections of the intelligence community, four Office of Legal Counsel memos that concluded certain interrogation techniques used in the last several years by CIA officers on certain al Qaeda terrorists were legal. Nor was it a surprise that the presidential statement put out by the White House was a medley of preening self-righteousness and defensive disingenuousness. What was more interesting was the accompanying statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, trying to justify Obama's decision--or at least put...

I have been reading the many different articles today on the NSA's eavesdropping activity. It's appalling, to me, that the occupier of the White House would allow such a practice to continue, especially after campaigning on the promise of: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me!" Now, since being elected, by hiding his Birth Certificate and lying in nearly everything he promised, he proves himself the Socialist and liar that he truly is. 0bama has steadfastly defended President Bush's wiretapping program, and, in fact, 0bama has increased the wiretaps! All the while staking claim to his own brand new...

President Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets -...

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets...

Defense Department officials said the American sea captain held by Somali pirates made a desperate escape attempt but was recaptured, escalating a dramatic Indian Ocean standoff.

In the brief "Closing Arguments" segment on Wednesday's "Nightline," ABC's Terry Moran credulously repeated the White House contention that Barack Obama didn't bow to the King of Saudi Arabia last week at the G-20 summit. As video of the incident played, Moran narrated, "He sees King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Goes in for the hello. There's a hand shake. Obama bends at the waist. But was it a bow?" [Audio available here.] He then recited, "The White House called it a lean, pointing out the King's shorter than the President." Inviting people to respond on his Twitter page, Moran wondered,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major departure from previous policy, the United States will join direct talks between U.N. and European powers and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, the State Department announced Wednesday. The Obama administration has asked the European Union's international policy chief, Javier Solana, to invite Iran to new talks with the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. Washington, which does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, has stayed out of those talks to date. "If Iran accepts, we hope this will be an occasion to seriously engage Iran...

There is a reason we call Muslim mau-mau-ers the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. They will never give up until you give in. Three years after the Mohammed Cartoon conflagration, the grievance-mongers are still trying to extract contrition out of the Danes and others who stood up for the West and for free speech. Unfortunately, the ROPO bullies squeezed conciliatory remarks from Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have tattooed it on his forehead: New NATO chief pledges conciliation with Muslims Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh...

President Obama failed to consult Congress, as promised, before carving out exceptions to the omnibus spending bill he signed into law — breaking his own signing-statement rules two days after issuing them — and raised questions among lawmakers and committees who say the president's objections are unclear at best and a power grab at worst. In at least one case, lawmakers charge, Mr. Obama used his first signing statement, on the catch-all $410 billion spending bill, to go beyond the Bush and Clinton administrations in swatting away Congress' attempt to protect whistleblowers. "Not only is your signing statement contrary to...

Chuck Todd at First Read flags up some fascinating comments from Vice-President Biden on his visit to Nato: “5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being -- getting paid.” Biden goes onto say that the “idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer, except to say that whatever is...

For all of his lavish new spending plans, President Obama is making one major exception: defense.

IN his "first message to the Muslim world" Tuesday, President Obama on Al-Arabiya TV invited the Islamic Republic in Iran to "unclench its fist" and accept his offer of "un conditional talks." A few hours later, after Obama had appeared on the Saudi-owned satellite-TV channel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a crowd of militants that no talks are possible unless the United States met a set of conditions. He demanded a formal apology for unspecified US "crimes" against Iran and the Islamic world. The crucial condition, however, was that America should withdraw its troops from other countries, "taking them back...

according to their sources they will be...1. Ban torture explicitly in US field manual 2. Close Gitmo 3. Review all the detainee cases.

Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to hospital after being mauled by his own 'clinically depressed' pet dog. The 76-year-old statesman was savaged by his white Maltese dog - which suffers from frenzied fits and is being treated with anti-depressants. The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said. The former president, who ruled France for 12 years until 2007, was taken to hospital in Paris where he was treated as an outpatient and sent home, VSD magazine reported. Mrs Chirac said: 'The dog...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Word that President-elect Obama's advisers are working on a proposal to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and ship at least some terror suspects to the U.S. for trial is already generating skepticism. As a candidate, Obama called Guantanamo a "sad chapter in American history," and he has said the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. Under discussion is a plan to release some of them, and prosecute others in criminal courts. But a third group whose cases involve a lot of highly classified information might require the creation of a new court designed...

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him. A year ago, the Arizona senator's team made a crucial strategic decision. McCain would run on his (impressive) personal biography. On policy, he'd hew mostly to conservative orthodoxy, with a few deviations -- most notably, his support for legalization for illegal immigrants. But this strategy wasn't yielding results in the general election. So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and...

I'm with David Frum on this from yesterday: But Obama? McCain’s attack on him is the equivalent of the William McKinley campaign attacking William Jennings Bryan for having kept company with Nathan Bedford Forrest decades after the Civil War. Yes, the old rebel was an unrepentant traitor. Mostly though, he was all washed up. Republicans have been fighting this second American civil war for eleven election cycles now. It’s been a good run! But just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on...

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people. “I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest...

Senator Barack Obama Delivers the Democratic Radio Address This is Senator Barack Obama. This morning, I’d like to talk to you about why America needs to move in a new direction. In recent days, we’ve seen two stark examples of exactly what’s wrong with Washington, and what’s at stake in this election. First, we learned that the federal budget deficit could reach nearly half a trillion dollars next year. Eight years after we had a record surplus, we’re now faced with record deficits. This mortgaging of our children’s future is a direct result of the Bush Administration’s dangerously failed fiscal...

July 31, 2008 Where in the World is Obama's Missing Thesis? Ed Lasky Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it. How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank...

Here's the You Tube link. Change that works for him! It's about time someone put together all the words this hypocrite and his cadre of followers have said regarding Iraq.

Put the fireworks in storage. Cancel the parade. Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time. This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned. We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago. The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded...

OK when do we hold JANE FONDA accountable for shooting her idiot mouth off and causing so many of the worlds biggest problems? Look how many died in Vietnam after we pulled out? She was instrumental in deceiving the US. Her and John Kerry (did you know he was in Vietnam?) who was there for 3 months, got 3 purple hearts, and "committed atrocities" And how about that stupid "China Syndrome" movie that convinced us all how EEEEEEEeeevil nuclear power was? We could have been a lot less dependant on foreign oil, and needed 2 less Gulf Wars (its all...

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

The American people have heard President George W. Bush and his spokespersons say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture. Whether Bush was believed or not is another story -- especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the prison near Baghdad. It’s understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public. Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including “waterboarding”...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter's overtures toward Hamas, saying he would not talk to the Islamist group until it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism. The Illinois senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania which holds the next presidential voting contest on Tuesday, told a group of Jewish leaders he has an "unshakable commitment" to help protect Israel from its "bitter enemies." "That's why I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas," Obama said. "We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent...

FORT WORTH -- Ron Paul supporters fought with local Republican leaders Saturday over control of local conventions and may have won the right to push their agenda at the state GOP convention. Supporters of Paul, a congressman from Surfside who got 4.5 percent of the votes in the presidential primary, tried to overwhelm the senate district-level conventions by sheer numbers. The party regulars, aware that Paul's supporters won a similar campaign in Missouri, brought in extra troops of their own. The two largest conventions in Tarrant County were still nominating their delegates at 9 p.m., and it may be days...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's get to what Republican policies have become. Let's listen to excerpts of Senator McCain's speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles today. Here's number one. MCCAIN: We can't build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact, a league of democracies that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 Democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests. At the heart of this new compact...

A salute is due Adm. William Fallon, who tried to prevent a wider war with Iran. After serving one year as commander of U.S. Central Command, Fallon has resigned, saying he was quitting because his differences with official U.S. policy had become a “distraction.” But there is a widespread perception that he was pushed out by the neo-conservatives among President George W. Bush’s aides, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, because of Fallon’s reluctance to go along with the administration’s hawkish moves toward Iran. Cheney, who took five consecutive draft deferments to stay out of the Vietnam war, does not mind...

Lessons Learned, Kerry Hits Trail for Obama By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 25, 2008; A04 DALLAS, Feb. 24 -- Sen. John F. Kerry is attending to some unfinished business. Four years ago, his bid to topple President Bush fell short, damaged by a series of Texas broadsides that became known as the Swift boat attacks. His demise spawned a term that came to signify a political low blow. Now Kerry has returned to the campaign trail, this time as a spirited foot soldier for Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who aims to succeed where Kerry...

REPORT: Helicopter carrying John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden makes emergency landing in Afghanistan: Developing.

No other message--Drudge has a siren going with the headline that says "Kerry for Obama."

CEDAR RAPDIS - Launching what will be a nationwide campaign across America’s skies to raise awareness and support for Ron Paul’s candidacy for President, the Ron Paul Aircorps will tow a huge “Ron Paul Revolution” campaign banner by helicopter for four hours today over Cedar Rapids. . . The Ron Paul Aircorps represents another facet to the overwhelming grassroots outpouring of support for Ron Paul, the only candidate who represents real hope for America. The Ron Paul Aircorps banner tow will correspond to Paul’s campaign in Iowa. The Ron Paul Aircorps is the brainchild of Ted Anderson, owner and CEO...