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Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky. In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance. Under the terms of a 2008 status of forces agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.
Iraq remains a battle zone, and the American diplomats and other civilian government employees will need security. The U.S. military will be gone. Iraq's army and police, despite billions of dollars and years of American training, aren't yet capable of doing the job.
The State Department, better known for negotiating treaties and delivering diplomatic notes, will have to fend for itself in what remains an active danger zone.
[What a weasel way to be able to say our military is out, when we pay others to do the work of our military.]
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The Washington Post reports: A House ethics subcommittee announced Thursday that it found that Rep. Charles B. Rangel violated congressional ethics rules and that it will prepare for a trial, probably beginning in September. The panel is expected to make the details of his alleged violations public next Thursday.
Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been under the House ethics committee's microscope since early 2008 after it was reported that he may have used his House position to benefit his financial interests. Two of the most serious inquiries have focused on Rangel's failure to declare $239,000 to $831,000 in assets on his disclosure forms, and on his effort to raise money for a private center named after him at City College of New York using his congressional letterhead. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR2010072204704_pf.html
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Juan Williams writes: Who is making this stuff up? How is it possible that the first black president of the United States, under pressure for alleged reverse discrimination against whites at the Justice Department, fires a black Agriculture Department official for telling a story of racial redemption? How is it possible that such a bright man as the president repeatedly reacts without the facts when it comes to a topic so explosive as race? Last summer he spoke out on a racial controversy without the facts and buried himself in political quicksand that ended with a staged “beer summit.” [Juan - this is what an empty suit looks like, even though it may be attractive enough to gain some attention. The man is smart, perhaps, but uninformed, totally unprepared, and has an agenda. I will add that this Sherrod woman probably has other remarks, including "get him one of his own kind", which are racist. How can she possibly work for the government in this capacity? I know - because Obama has filled his appointments with radicals who think like him.] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/07/21/juan-williams-shirley-sherrod-obama-president-naacp-agriculture-glenn-beck/
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From Yahoo News: The spokesman for the North Korean delegation to the talks, Ri Tong Il, repeated Pyongyang's denial of responsibility for the March sinking of the ship that killed 46 South Korean sailors and said the upcoming military drills were a violation of its sovereignty that harkened back to the days of 19th-century "gunboat diplomacy."
The exercises will be "another expression of hostile policy against" North Korea. "There will be physical response against the threat imposed by the United States militarily," Ri told reporters in Hanoi. [This must be another example of how our relations with foreign countries has improve under Obama?]
Clinton responded by saying the U.S. is willing to meet and negotiate with the North, but that this type of threat only heightens tensions. She added that progress in the short term seems unlikely, given the circumstances.
"It is distressing when North Korea continues its threats and causes so much anxiety among its neighbors and the larger region," she told reporters. "But we will demonstrate once again with our military exercises ... that the United States stands in firm support of the defense of South Korea and we will continue to do so."http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100723/ap_on_re_as/as_asean
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Cnsnews reports: The Obama administration is backing legislation that includes regulations requiring U.S. businesses to provide to the government data about employee pay as it relates to the sex, race and national origin of employees.
In an orchestrated effort that included a statement by President Barack Obama and an event at the White House featuring Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, the president and his cabinet endorsed the Paycheck Fairness Act. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/69746
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The Washington Post writes: Conceding that they can't find enough votes for the legislation, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to curb greenhouse gas emissions, delivering a potentially fatal blow to a proposal the party has long touted and President Obama campaigned on.
Instead, Democrats will push for a more limited measure that would seek to increase liability costs that oil companies would pay following spills such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR2010072203614.html?hpid=topnews
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National Review writes: The JournoList has started to leak like an over-ripe diaper.Just in case you’ve been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here’s the story. A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv JournoList for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks, and the world of forthright liberal activism generally.
In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama’s racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such “objective” news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time, and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin. http://article.nationalreview.com/438552/an-open-conspiracy-to-slant-the-news/jonah-goldberg
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Big Journalism opines: One of the nastiest episodes in American journalism occurred in the immediate aftermath of John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate during the 2008 election. It was a potential game-changer and, for a moment, it rocked the leftist media back on its heels. Who can ever forget Andrea Mitchell’s gaping-fish-out-of-water reaction to Palin’s electrifying acceptance speech? For one brief, horrible moment, the Marxist Media saw its dream of a People’s Republic dying, shot through the heart by the moose-hunting mom from Nowhere, Alaska. http://bigjournalism.com/fross/2010/07/22/journolist-a-disgrace-to-american-journalism/
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Fox News: The change in language was barely noticeable to the average citizen but political observers are raising red flags at the use of a new term "freedom of worship" by President Obama and Secretary Clinton as a replacement for the term freedom of religion. This shift happened between the President's speech in Cairo where he showcased America's freedom of religion and his appearance in November at a memorial for the victims of Fort Hood, where he specifically used the term "freedom of worship." From that point on, it has become the term of choice for the president and Clinton.
Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don't go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves-yet "freedom of worship" would protect none of these acts of faith."
In the administration's defense, Carl Esbeck, professor of law at the University of Missouri, is quoted by Christianity Today as saying, "The softened message is probably meant for the Muslim world, said. Obama, seeking to repair relations fractured by 9/11, is telling Islamic countries that America is not interfering with their internal matters."
In the administration's defense, Carl Esbeck, professor of law at the University of Missouri, is quoted by Christianity Today as saying, "The softened message is probably meant for the Muslim world, said. Obama, seeking to repair relations fractured by 9/11, is telling Islamic countries that America is not interfering with their internal matters."
Let's be clear, however; language matters when it comes to defining freedoms and limits. A shift from freedom of religion to freedom of worship moves the dialog from the world stage into the physical confines of a church, temple, synagogue or mosque. Such limitations can unleash an unbridled initiative that we have only experienced in a mild way through actions determined to removal of roadside crosses, wearing of religious T-shirts and pro-life pins as well as any initiatives of evangelization. It also could exclude our right to raise our children in our faith, the right to religious education, literature or media, the right to raise funds or organize charitable activities and the right to express religious beliefs in the normal discourse of life. [Elections do have consequences...]
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/07/23/randy-sly-obama-clinton-freedom-religion-freedom-worship-fort-hood/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant: Elena Kagan And 'The Urge To Alter'
By SVETLANA KUNINI am not in any entitlement program, and I'd gladly challenge Mr. Bai's understanding of a high-tech economy, immigration and free trade. I worked for 26 years as a software developer in America, a civil engineer in Russia, and am an immigrant myself.
I am quite sensitive to racial issues — I know from personal experience how a centralized state manipulates ethnic tensions and divides citizens in order to distract them from its own gross incompetence, while it swallows people's liberty
[In discussing Elena Kagen, she writes]: Studying history at Princeton and referring to "socialism's greatness," she was somehow oblivious to the suffering millions of her contemporaries endured around the world throughout the 20th century.
[Quoting Kagen] "The desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter," she wrote. "Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?" [This woman will likely be our next Supreme Court Justice.....]
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=541414&p=2
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Terrific !! Sort of astounding to read the words of Juan Williams....thanks
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