Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, August 2007

1. Scandals. From my standpoint out here in flyaway country, the reason that Republicans lost their majority in congress last year was due to three primary reasons: They went native (big government, big spending), democrats were able to tie a series of scandals firmly around their collective necks, and immigration. The result was a “twofer” for the leftists. Not only did conservatives stay home in droves, but the independents and moderates voted for a bunch of democrats who ran as conservatives. The democrat playbook on this is an old one, p articularly the portion about orchestrating a series of long known Republican scandals in the drive-by media while that same media buries every single democrat scandal as quickly as is humanly possible. What do we expect for this election cycle? I can guarantee more of the same – p articularly the incessant scandal-mongering by democrats. The 300+ congressional investigations (or fishing expeditions) are intended for two primary reasons: First and foremost, to uncover any information that can be turned into a slam dunk Bush administration scandal for the 2008 election cycle; and second, to tie up the Bush administration in responding to congressional demands for paper to the point that they cannot get anything done. Congressional democrats who ran as conservatives and are governing as hard core leftists are going to have a difficult time – p articularly in house elections – hiding behind their votes and records. Senate democrats who lied their way into office will be a bit more difficult to dislodge, as they are not up for reelection for another five years. But the House, in my estimation is certainly in play next year. The major tool leftists, democrats, and their cheerleading lackeys in the drive-by media have to play next year is scandal-mongering against congressional and presidential Republicans. We as conservatives must be prepared for this gambit and not only respond in kind, but figure out how to raise the ante on both the leftists and the media itself, and finally to get the truth out there in a more creative manner. A suitably devastating response would be to turn the scandal-mongers into laughing stocks. But we must be ready, for it will come, for it will come just as certainly as the sun will rise in the morning. Take a look at what they have done on the presidential level over the last 16 years: The indictment of Cap Weinberger by Lawrence Walsh on the Friday before the general election in November 1992 was just the small push needed to shut down Bush 41 momentum and elect Bill Clinton in a three-way race. The DWI charge released a week or so before the general election was almost sufficient to defeat President Bush in 2000. It was sufficient to turn him into the first presidential winner with fewer votes than the loser. And in 2004, CBS News was forced to release the fraudulent letter about Bush’s Air National Guard service early rather than the weekend before the election. There will be similar dirty tricks – similar scandal-mongering released just before the elections next year against Republicans at every level. This is what the left does, for they have nothing else and cannot honestly or honorable stand up and say who they are and what they are going to do while in office. It is also what Clinton Inc. is all about. Hillary will have her war room up and operating, as it has been for over a year. It will be funded by Groege Soros, and as much foreign money – p articularly ChiCom - as they can launder into the system. We must be prepared for it. We must strike first. We must turn them into laughing stocks. We must be prepared for the Good Fight.

2. Iran. Our friends in the Islamic Republic have been feeling quite frisky over the last couple of months, as it appears their plans for regional power appear to be working out to the desirable conclusions. But the Iranians are fragile – and just a brittle as the old Commissars of the Soviet Union were. A push in the right place, or a series of pushes, will destroy the regime and push it into oblivion. The Bush administration is looking into one such push, as they consider designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Guards is one of the organizations that reach outside the borders of Iran with training, weapons, support, and money for terrorists worldwide. It is essentially the not-so-covert arm of the Iranian government and ruling Mullahs, the vehicle used to project terrorism outside Iranian borders worldwide. When designated as a terrorist organization, this will allow western nations to legally go after the money the Mullahs have stolen from their countrymen and hidden away worldwide. There are tens to hundreds of billions of dollars outstanding. When this money goes away, so does a substantial portion of their power to project terrorism worldwide and exercise power over the people of Iran. We then st art going to work against Iranian forces and assets in the Persian Gulf, most p articularly the oil platforms which produce the majority of their salable oil. St art picking off these platforms, shut them in, turn off production, hold them for the people of Iran, and the Mullahs will not have a lot of recourse. US forces have also st arted capturing Iranian troops and intelligence officers inside Iraq with greater regularity. There are a growing number of demonstrations in Iran itself, now countered by a p articularly brutal crackdown by the Mullahs and their goon squads. A lot of people in Iran are being killed. There is a future for Iran. I don’t think it is the future that the Mullahs are expecting. One blogger noted that the Mullahs in Iran are emulating Mohammed about as closely as possible – living the life of luxury, debauchery, and decadence, taking very good care of their families, while mouthing all the right pious statements. Sooner or later this house of cards is going to collapse around them.

3. Next? As we complete the task inside Iraq, the Pentagon and Bush administration are st arting to consider what is next. The blogosphere has suggested a couple likely targets. The first would be Iran itself, as described in Item 2 above. Another good first choice would be to go after Syria first, cutting them off from Iran and leaving Iran isolated. There are a lot of good reasons for targeting Syria. They are hiding Saddam’s WMD. They are providing aid and comfort to Baathist dead-enders who are fighting in the insurgency. They are providing aid and comfort to Al Qaida. They are the money conduit between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They are still stirring up trouble in Lebanon. There are more reasons, but this is a decent st art. Like Iran, Syria is an economic basket case, and gets most of the money used to run its government via agreements with Iran. Without a nationwide pool of free oil and nationalized oil production infrastructure, Baathist (essentially fascist), socialist, and Islamist governments are singularly incapable of creating a stable, growing economy. And the citizens of Syria are st arting to notice, as the demonstrations and riots are beginning. Like Iran, we may just need to give Syria a little push to bring on the popular revolt.

4. Seattle. One of the difficulties and strengths of a free country is that there are few, if any limitations on the movement of its citizens. We end up with young Muslim men casing various potential targets for terrorist action, being photographed and reported by the vigilant citizenry, and questioned by authorities. Once such event took place in Seattle over the last few weeks as a pair of young Middle Eastern-looking men (yes I DO profile, and strongly support profiling these vermin) had been seen riding the ferry system in the Seattle area, taking photos, and acting suspicious. The ferry system in Seattle is an important transportation node that also goes quite close to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard – which is a home port for some of our nuclear missile submarines, “boomers.” Some passengers were uncomfortable with the actions of this pair and reported them to crewmembers on the ferries. A crewmember took a photo and turned it over to the FBI who is now searching for the pair. The FBI went to the local paper, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and asked them to run the photo, as these two were “persons of interest.” The PI refused to run the photo, citing privacy concerns. All Hell broke loose, with the story and photo making near instantaneous rounds on the blogosphere. Michelle Malkin’s site was one of the most vocal places this story was located. Editors at the PI did their best “can’t we all get along” routine defending their decision. They even opened a Haiku competition on the subject, why, I don’t know. With this story, we once again come face to face with a major city newspaper that neither supports public safety or the ability to win the war we have now fighting. They don’t want us to win. They want to coddle the enemy. They believe the Constitution is a suicide pact. And they don’t mind submitting to Islamist demands. We can only hope that the marketplace will respond accordingly and their business goes to reporting vehicles more interested in actually winning this fight. I expect it will.

1. Belugas. A funny thing happened on the way to the listing of Cook Inlet Belugas as an endangered species last week when hundreds of belugas unexpectedly showed up off villages in northwest Alaska. These were not the same belugas show up on a regular basis off those villages. When the regular whales show up, some are hunted and killed by local native whale hunters. The locals have a reasonably good handle on how many whales there are out there, when they show up, and how many they can take yearly without harming the overall numbers. Imagine their surprise when hundreds of new whales unexpectedly show up. Well, the natives did what all humans do when an unexpected bounty from the sea appears – they killed over 70 of them and harvested the meat and blubber and celebrated the bounty. Contrast this story with the ongoing yammering over the disappearance of Cook Inlet Belugas and environmentalist demands for a listing of them as endangered. The fact of the matter is that nobody – nobody has a clue about what is going on in the North Pacific. Even people who have been observing the animals for hundreds of years, hunting them and harvesting them get surprised every now and then. To think that humanity can do anything other than react to the changes imposed by the natural cycles and changes in the oceans is the height of hubris. We know for instance that there is a 50-70 year long cycle of changes in the North Pacific that is referred to as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. During that cycle, the water warms in some places, cools in other places, and food for the larger animals moves around in reaction to that cycle of changes. To date, we have not even observed the changes long enough to figure out what they are at the macro level, predict them, ch art them, to have a clue about the subtle nuances of reaction to the changes. When the food moves from place to place in response to the changes in the oceans itself, the animals that eat that food also move around – animals including stellar sea lions (endangered), otters (protected) belugas (thick as flies), salmon of all species (endangered in the Pacific Northwest due to overfishing and lack of property rights), and several other species of whales. Who is kidding whom here? Perhaps the belugas that showed up off the Northwest Alaskan coastline are missing Cook Inlet Belugas out on holiday, on a road trip, or spring break, cruising to find the babes. Listing these animals as endangered in Cook Inlet while they are abundant elsewhere in the state will be regulatory fraud based on the very worst junk science, fraudulently applied all in order to take away yet another sizeable chunk of our property rights in this p art of Alaska. It is time to repeal the Endangered Species Act and return the entire mess back to the many states to deal with. ADN, Mon.

2. Hillary’s Papers. In preparation for the upcoming presidential campaign, archivists at the Clinton Library announced that over two million pieces of paper out of Hillary Clinton’s infestation of the White House will not be available to the general public until 2008, following the election campaign. The excuse given by these taxpayer supported coverup artists is that the papers must be catalogued before they are to be released to the general public. The papers in question include notes, memos, diaries, appointment calendars, etc. of her time in the WH as First lady. There have been papers released to date, but thousands of the potentially most damning papers have been withheld from those releases. Expect the Clintonoids and their willing allies in the drive-by media to demand any and all papers from Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and all other opponents in the upcoming campaign for use by their opposition researchers while hiding her stuff behind the archivists at the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor in Little Rock. LA Times, Tues.

3. FISA. We now know why congressional democrats caved in to President Bush so quickly on the modification to the FISA Law passed just prior to their summer break. An unnamed federal judge sitting on the FISA court created new law last spring by shutting down 75% of all surveillance efforts on international phone calls by suspected terrorists. This unnamed judge wrote an opinion that forced the NSA and FBI to get warrants on all international calls passing through switching centers here in the US – even though the callers were both international. The net result was to cut our ability to monitor international terrorist phone traffic to one qu arter of its previous level. This is yet another example of why the judiciary has no business in the conduct of a war. It only took the democrat congress four months to fix a new and known issue with intelligence collection, and they were dragged kicking and screaming to do even that. What an embarrassment. Once the law was passed, the NYT wrote an article that claimed the modifications to the law were poorly written, rushed through the system, and gave the President significantly more power than they intended to give him. Democrat reaction was to instantly turn it into a campaign issue for the upcoming campaign. By week’s end, it appeared that the NYT had been as usual incorrect in their attempted scaremongering. We still have missed actionable intelligence from known terrorists making international calls for over a third of a year because a single federal judge wouldn’t let the intelligence people touch it without a warrant because the phone traffic touched a switching device here in the US. President Bush has been too deferential with the judiciary on this, as has congress. Hopefully the next president will not be. CQ, Sun.

4. Shell. Yet another setback for Shell Oil’s exploration efforts in the Beaufort Sea this summer was handed down by the Ninth Circus last week, when a three judge panel extended an injunction against their drilling and exploration activities. The case is not expected to be resolved until December, adding a full year to the project, and costing Shell, who has a fleet of ships ready in Alaskan and Canadian ports to p articipate in the exploration project a very large sum of money. The case is instructive of the problem we have in resource development here in Alaska these days. On the one hand, we have a major oil company, one with a history of decent care of the environment that had jumped through every single regulatory hoop waved at them by green-infested federal agencies. They jumped through the hoops, did all the paperwork, made the investment in men, equipment, planning and analysis time and are ready to go right now. On the other hand, we have the most leftist circuit of the federal courts system sitting in San Francisco, responding to local and environmentalist claims of possibilities – possible damage to the whales, possible damage to the shoreline, possible damage to the culture, possible damage to everything but the kitchen sink – in an area that is the largest producing oil field in the US, complete with several artificial islands constructed offshore for oil pads, wells, and production equipment. And the idiot judges believe that there are enough concerns so that they whack a year out of Shell’s scheduled exploration plans. For what? We have oil and natural gas up here. We know were it is. We want to drill it and produce it and sell it. We want to p articipate in solving the energy shortfall problem in the US. But we are not being allowed to do it by the federal judiciary that has turned into an advocacy vehicle for environmentalist arm waving. This has to stop, and it is up to the congressional delegation to do something about it – which is one of the reasons that local democrats, the local drive-by media has been scandal-mongering so strongly against them over the last year. One additional thing of interest: Given that the p arties bringing the suit include the North Slope Borough, which profits handsomely from the fortuitous location of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in the middle of it, perhaps it is time for the Alaska Legislature to turn off the money spigot to those communities and boroughs that are actively fighting oil and gas exploration, mining, and other job creating, money making activities while suckling off the public teat and demanding ever more money for this, that and some other thing from the Alaska legislature.

1. Warming. An interesting event happened on the way to Global Warming Armageddon last week as the keepers of temperature data at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center quietly fixed a bug in their temperature data and analysis. The bug was uncovered by a Canadian scientist that discovered a sharp rise in temperatures reported at a number of US stations in 2000. He thought the temperature rise at one station was due to two newly installed air conditioners exhausting hot air onto the sensor suite, but the temperature rise also showed up in winter data. It turns out that there was a Y2K bug in the analysis software that did not take proper account of the time of day the temperature readings were being taken – meaning there is a time of day correction in NASA’s algorithms. Goddard quietly fixed the bug, re-ran the data analysis, and posted the new numbers, which completely undercut Goreist claims that we are living in a time of runaway Global Warming. As it turns out, the hottest years in recorded history in the US were not the period of the late 1990s – early 2000 at all. It turns out that five of the ten hottest years last century were in the 1930s, with 1934 being the hottest. The late 1990s to present turn out to be average to slightly cooler than normal, and show no upwards trend. If anything there is slight cooling trend in recent years. The news was quickly picked up by the various blogs including PowerLine, Big Lizards, and the Strata Sphere. Flopping Aces even went so far as to post a number of photos of temperature sensors at questionable locations in the middle of concrete pads, next to air conditioning vents, on asphalt streets – all urban locations guaranteed to drive recorded temperatures up. Take a look at their August Archives to see the photos and descriptions. Press action on this was typical, with NASA Goddard, home of Chief Global Warming Alarmist James Hansen, making the change without any press release or press conference. The drive-by media ignored the story, as it is in direct conflict with their current end of the world Global Warming reporting. Hansen’s supporters counterattacked by noting that the US only accounted for 2% of the surface of the e arth, and that a small correction over here does not necessarily mean that Global Warming is not taking place worldwide. Skeptics fired back noting that the US data was the very best, most accurate, and most complete, and that when the changes made in past data percolate through the worldwide analysis, they ought to have some overall impact. This entire event coincided with Newsweek running an over-the-top front page article slamming Global Warming skeptics as people who are in the pockets of Big Oil, industrial giants, and are having their comments purchased by the Big Corporations. Newsweek didn’t mention that the Global Warming alarmists working for the feds do not get funding unless their conclusions are in line with those of the current alarmists. Apparently one side can purchase their results without question while the other side cannot. The rest of this year and the next are shaping up as wonderful theater as the Global Warming hose of cards tumbles down before our very eyes. We will hope that the skeptics can kill this thing off before congress does something really, really stupid – something like say a carbon tax.

2. NSA Leak. The Bush administration appears to be actively pursuing an FBI investigation into who leaked details of the NSA surveillance program to the NY Times several years ago, bringing the existence of the program to Al Qaida and the general public. The FBI last week served a warrant on a former Justice Dep artment lawyer, a Clinton holdover, who worked in the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, Thomas Tamm. Tamm has quite a track record as Clarice Feldman of NRO and AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere have been tracking down. It appears that Tamm worked for a leftist judicial activist group in the 1990s; was a MD prosecutor; has ties with at least two FISA judges – Reggie Walton and Royce Lamberth via his prosecutorial time in MD; and finally donated to the DNC right about the time that the NSA leak story hit the NYT in 2004. The FBI appears to be well down the investigatory trail with this and it may be that some lawyers with ties to democrat campaigns and leftist interest groups are standing directly in the crosshairs. Strata pointed out that this investigation and the House Impeachment inquiry with the NSA program as one of its points of illegality are on a collision course later this year. Ought to be a most entertaining collision. We may very well get to see who sitting on the Federal Bench and who works in the judicial system has been working with embedded leftists in the federal bureaucracy – Clintonoid holdovers – to undermine the war effort over the last seven years. They may no longer be able to hide. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people. I hear the weather at Leavenworth is lovely this time of year.

3. Spitzer. NY Governor Elliot Spitzer (D) has a little problem brewing – one that may lead to his removal from office. It seems that he finally got caught doing one too many dirty tricks during an election campaign. PowerLine Friday posted that Spitzer, who had run on an anti-corruption, populist platform was caught up in a Nixonian corruption scheme of his own making. Two of his most trusted aides (not named Haldeman and Erlichman) had used state troopers to falsely accuse his most powerful Republican opponent, State Senate President Joseph Bruno of misusing state transportation resources. Spitzer of course has denied all knowledge of the scheme, but the investigation continues. Spitzer thrust himself into the governorship via heavy-handed investigations and prosecutions of brokerages, investment houses, and other businesses during his time in as the NY State Attorney General. Spitzer is currently raising money for his reelection campaign in 2010, having already raised over $10 million from precisely the sorts of businesses and well connected insiders and unions that every self-respecting populist would be aghast at supporting. Politics in NY are going to be pretty interesting as this investigation and coverup sorts itself out.

4. Bears. Our problem here in Anchorage with bears continues unabated this summer. Last week’s fishwrapper (Anchorage Daily News) ran an extensive story about a black bear that had to be removed from East Anchorage. The story also noted that the Anchorage police shot a brown bear in Mountain View last July. It was pretty friendly article with extensive quotes from the Alaska Dep artment of Fish & Game (ADG&G) biologists that have stood by over the years and watched the current problem get worse. I have always thought that when this gets bad enough, the locals are going to st art taking things into their own hands. And they have, with reports of at least two bears being shot and their bodies dumped neat Bird Creek, a popular stocked fishing stream 20 miles east of Anchorage. Bird Creek currently has up to nine brown bears working a heavily used portion of the creek, an area that no bears were ever seen until last year. I still think that someone is going to get hurt over all of this. Perhaps we will see some legislative action taken that will allow any Alaskan to shoot a bear that is a threat to their property, their family or their person. Currently state law only allows shooting a bear when it is an immediate threat. After shooting, for whatever reason, ADF&G requires the shooter to skin the bear, and deliver the skin including claws and the skull to ADF&G for processing. Recently, ADF&G has been citing people who kill in their own self defense for hunting out of season, writing a $500 ticket, and confiscating their firearms. We are on a collision course between the bear-friendly biologists working for the state and the people who are losing property and safety to an over abundance of marauding predators. I don’t think either the bears or the biologists are going to win.

1. Stevens. The feds served a warrant and searched the home of Senator Ted Stevens (R, AK) in Girdwood (30 miles east of Anchorage) last week. The search was conducted by IRS and FBI agents in connection with the wider investigation into the Veco corruption case. Locals believe the feds were searching for evidence that Veco had done renovation work on the home without being paid for it as quid pro quo for Stevens’ assistance in legislation over the years. It will be an interesting case to make, as Veco’s goals of more oil exploration and production are precisely those of Stevens over the last 40 years in the Senate. The leftist media up here have been having a field day with the prospect of turning over a senate seat to one of their favorite designated democrats. Republicans are hunkering down pondering the potential outcome of the investigation. We have a self-identified ethics and clean government gadfly, active in local politics, former federal prosecutor Wev Shea, who nominally self-identifies as a conservative. Shea turned over a note from Stevens to the feds stating that the renovations on the home cost $130,000. Somehow, the contents of the note were also leaked to the local fishwrapper, resulting in headlines for a day or so last week. Will this investigation take Stevens down? Don’t know. But I do know that both the FBI and the IRS are playing a very interesting political game going after the second most senior member of the US Senate in such a public manner. We will hope everyone knows what they are doing and does the proper thing.

2. Boyda. One of the freshmen democrat members of the House who defeated a relatively popular Republican – Jim Ryun (KS) last year demonstrated that she was unable to “man up” and listen to bad news (for her p arty and her continued infestation of a congressional seat) – and good news for the rest of us. Boyda attended a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee during which a briefing from the military on progress in Iraq was given. The briefing was pretty positive, reflecting progress in the surge, progress with the new strategy, progress in rooting out and killing Al Qaida by the thousands in Iraq. Boyda couldn’t take it and jumped up and left the room. From A.J Strata’s Strata Sphere last Thursday she says:

If this is the best the democrats can do from a conservative district in Kansas, I think that Jim Ryun, a solid conservative who reportedly is planning on running to regain his seat, will have a field day running against her. Yo Nancy: You can run, but you can’t hide.

3. Mindcrime. Yet another example of the moral cesspool that the modern university system has turned into over comes out of Pace University, who turned over a student to local authorities in NY after he dunked a Koran in the toilet. The student was originally charged under the university diversity / PC rules. Muslim student groups and CAIR got involved, st arted raising Hell, and the university turned over the complaint and the kid to local authorities who promptly charged him with two felonies of perpetrating hate crimes against Islam. Interesting divergence in treatment in NY these days. If you dip a crucifix in a jar of urine and display it in a NYC museum, it is considered trendy, cutting-edge art. If you dip a Koran in a toilet, you are charged with a pair of felonies under local hate crime statutes. Nothing like equal treatment under the law for Muslims and Christians there in NY. Expect this story to blow up nicely, as it is already all over the conservative blogs. LGF, Sun.

4. SCHIP. Congressional democrats and a number of idiotic Republicans (including the entire Alaska delegation) passed an expansion of the Children’s State Health Insurance Program right before they left on vacation. The program is yet another not so small step toward Hillary-care, at a minimum costing an additional mere $30 billion more a year. Congressional democrats intend on paying for the expansion via a substantial increase in tobacco taxes which include the $10/cigar increase in federal taxes which will all but kill the cigar industry here in the US. House democrats brought out the nearly 500 page monstrosity the night before it was voted upon. Nobody read it, and it passed. Senate action was similarly quick, with passage by 68 votes – a veto proof majority. What sorts of goodies were included? Well the maximum coverage age was raised to 25, which turns this into a middle class entitlement. All prohibitions against use of these funds for abortions were stripped, turning the legislation into a financial gift to Planned Parenthood. The legislation allows illegals to suckle at this p articular federal teat, as they and their children are now eligible for free health care money. Expect the president to veto this monstrosity and the democrats to reprise their “For the Children” mantra during the 2008 campaign as they dip yet again into your pocketbooks, liberty and take away your cigars. Cato Institute, Mon.

5. Bridge. A highway bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during rush hour in Minneapolis last Wednesday. To date, there are around ten people dead or missing, with the recovery efforts continuing. The collapse took less than three seconds and was filmed on security cameras. It only took democrats a few minutes to blame the structural failure on Bush, war spending, and st art calling for new taxes. The case being made by the left is their standard case and solution to anything unfortunate – more taxes, more money and more power for the feds over our lives. The Republican Governor of MN disagrees, much to his credit. Fortunately President Bush has fired back at his congressional critics by pointing out that the problem with transportation management is a problem with congressional priorities rather than lack of funding. Interesting enough, hundreds of millions of dollars of transportation funding in Minneapolis were diverted from roads, bridges, new construction, upgrades and maintenance to build a light rail system between downtown and the airport over the last decade. Typically light rail and other mass transit systems are strongly supported by local environmental communities, and the Minneapolis light rail system was no different. The bridge design appears to be an issue in this failure, as there was no redundancy – once one section collapsed, structural support for rest of the sections disappeared and the rest of the bridge quickly collapsed. Bloggers have uncovered a failure of a similar bridge in northeast Ohio in 1996 (this one was not Bush’s fault – but should have been). The failure of gusset plates that connect structural members caused the bridge to sink three inches. It was closed for over six months for repairs. Interestingly enough, the Ohio bridge failed during maintenance and repainting – which was happening on the Minneapolis bridge when it failed. There will be substantial finger pointing and blame placing before this one is over. Sounds like we have a structural design issue though. Our prayers will be with those that have lost and are missing family members.

6. Obama. In an attempt to out-masculine Hillary Clinton during a democrat debate last week, Barak Obama (D, IL) responded to a question about going after Al Qaida leadership in other nations with a threat to conduct military actions against Pakistan. The northwest corner of Pakistan is tribal country with little control by the central government. We believe that the head of the Taliban, and Al Qaida leadership is hiding there and have been working with the Pakistani government to root them out. Obama would rather send in the troops to a Muslim nation with over 130 million people, nukes and a fragile government than work with that government. Hillary immediately ripped him for being an idiot – which was an easy call. The dust-up continued throughout the week. Interestingly enough, none of the democrats ever mentioned the other Muslim nation that is harboring Al Qaida – Iran – or threatened it with military action for harboring Al Qaida.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
Debate USA, http://www.debateusa.com/ ;
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. You can find it at: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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